1,720,997 research outputs found
Agricultural and biotechnology patents as an adaptation strategy to climate change: A regional analysis of European farmer's efficiency
No full textThis chapter analyses the effect of innovation encouraged by climate change challenges on European farmers’ technical efficiency. Using the stochastic frontier approach, we estimate the impact of agri-cultural patents on farmers’ technical efficiency by taking into account both unobservable heterogeneity and heteroscedasticity in the inefficiency term. Our findings suggest that European farmers remain quite far from the maximum frontier and irrespective of the country in which they reside; farmers who innovate are more efficient than those who do not. Thus, the inefficiency of agricultural agents in the European context leaves space for policies that incentivise firms to adopt climate change adaptation strategies through technological innovation
A short survey on climate change and environmental innovations
No full textClimate change is and will be in the coming years one of the major challenges facing the world. The best strategy to cope with climate anomalies seems to be fostering the ability to innovate and find tech-nological solutions. Therefore, understanding the relationship between the stimuli brought about by climate variability and the propensity to innovate is of paramount importance. To this end, this chapter provides some background on climate change and innovation economics and then focuses on climate-induced innovation in the context of mitigation technologies and adaptation strategies
Institutions, firms and environment in a framework of innovation
No full textThe aim of the paper is the analysis of innovation and institution as the key elements for reaching a higher social welfare and environmental quality. To determine a social optimum or a Pareto improvement, we consider the interaction between institution and firm in the short and in the medium/long run. Using a static comparative analysis, the interaction of these two agents, institution and market, is examined. Within the market an entrant and an incumbent firm are present, where the entrant firm represents the firm who radically innovates. Even if in the short run results show that the market alone is able to realize a Pareto improvement, however, whenever institution intervenes through an innovation adoption, both in short and in medium/long run a preferable solution with a better performance is reached. Our main results highlight that the strategic role of an innovating institution in each case considered consists in innovating towards green technology and in creating a competitive, attractive and environmentally sustainable milieu. From this point of view, technology innovation plays a central role in an economic and territorial development, orienting and optimizing the relationship between environmental quality and firm performance
Climate variability and agriculture in Italy: a stochastic frontier analysis at the regional level
No full textIn the next future, climate change effects will represent a challenge for Europe and the Mediterranean area. These will have to cope with a rapid increase in climate variability. Although many economic sectors may be affected, agriculture is the most susceptible as climate heavily affects crop production trends, yield variability and the availability of areas suitable for cultivation. Using the stochastic frontier approach, the aim of this work is to analyse the impacts of climate variability on Italian regional technical efficiency in the agricultural sector for a period spanning from 2000 to 2009. Considering that technical inefficiency could be influenced by two main annual meteorological variables—the deviation of rainfalls and minimum temperature from the 1971–2000 mean value—and by seasonal rainfalls and minimum temperature moving average values, we find that annual, as well as spring and autumn rainfalls, have significant and beneficial effects on efficiency and hence on regional crop yields. The minimum temperature is efficiency-increasing in summer and winter while is detrimental in autumn
Measuring water-use in response to climate change: an analysis of the efficiency of Italian crop production system
No full textOfficial meteo-climatic statistics show the variability of weather conditions. Their effects on socioeconomic
and natural environments should be analyzed in multi-dimensional studies. Among sectors,
agriculture is expected to be the most sensitive as well as water resources availability. The aim of
our analysis is to measure the performance of Italian regions in crop production by estimating both
production technology - including a measure of irrigation water used as input - output elasticities and
returns to scale and productive efficiency or technical efficiency where rainfalls and temperatures are
proxies of CC conditions in the period 2000-2010 at Italian regional level, using the stochastic frontier
approach (SFA). The scarce official statistics on irrigation water in agriculture make our analysis
challenging. Our results point out the need i) to strengthen official statistics on irrigation water to
improve the analysis on inputs of farmer’s crop production in Italy; ii) to update meteo-climatic and
hydrological measures according to the official international guidelines
Smart Cities and Eu growth strategy: a Comparison among European Cities
No full textThe level of interest in smart cities has been growing during these last years. The academic literature (Holland, 2008;
Caragliu et al., 2009, Nijkamp et al., 2011 and Lombardi et al., 2012) has identified a number of factors that
characterise a city as smart, such as economic development, business-friendly, environmental sustainability, social
innovation, information and knowledge process, and human and social capital. Thus, the smartness concept is strictly
linked to urban efficiency in a multifaceted way as well as to citizens’ wellbeing through the use of appropriate
technologies. Instead, from a “political perspective” smartness is mainly related to the ability of using ICT (Information
and Communication Technology) as instrument to strengthen economic growth. In this perspective, a research by
Giffinger et al. (2007) to support European policy has defined the concept of smart city on the basis of several
intangible indicators (such as a smart economy, smart mobility, smart environment, smart people, smart living, and
smart governance) and has become a benchmark for European policy makers (European Parliament’s Committee on
Industry, Research and Energy, 2014). Following this influential research, the aim of our paper is to verify how much
these smartness indicators can influence the efficiency and indirectly the growth of the same sample of European cities.
Using the concept of output maximising, we built a stochastic frontier function in terms of urban productivity and/or
urban efficiency by assessing the economic distance that separates cities from that frontier. Moreover, this approach,
which distinguishes between inputs and efficiency, allows us to incorporate the smartness indicators into the systematic
component within the error term. As a result, our conclusions identify a different ranking of European cities with
respect to Giffinger et al. (2007) analysis, thereby highlighting the need for a better and more robust definition of these
indicators
Mines and quarries production: A driver analysis of withdrawals in Italy
No full textThe growing demand for non-energy mineral resources has determined relevant withdrawals as well as import-export flows. This paper aims to disentangle the drivers of raw non-energy mineral resources extraction in Italy. Using a new dataset of raw resources extracted from mines and quarries in the 21 Italian regions (19 regions and 2 autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano) for the period 2013–2016, our empirical analysis confirms the relevance of mining and quarrying producer price index as well as the manufacturing and construction sectors as main drivers. In line with the Hotelling (1931)'s theory, a positive relationship between m&q mineral resources extraction intensity and m&q producer price index is also estimated
Climate variability and agricultural production efficiency: evidence from Ethiopian farmers
No full textIt is known that climate and weather variability have negative impacts on agricultural production efficiency. The aim of this study is to analyse the impact of climatic variables on farms’ efficiency in Ethiopia making use of nationally representative datasets from Living Standards Measurement Study–Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) 2011/2012. By using the Stochastic Frontier Approach, we estimate simultaneously the farmers’ optimal production function and technical inefficiency equations, taking into account unobserved heterogeneity of farmers. Our main findings show that climate change variables have a positive effect on households’ efficiency but the impact depends on the different geo-climatic characteristics of the regions of the country
Irrigation water intensity and climate variability: an agricultural crops analysis of Italian regions
No full textThis paper examines the relationship between the requirement of water resources for irrigation and climate variability and analyses the ranking of the best and worst performance of irrigation water intensity for each Italian region. To measure water resources demanded by agriculture, the irrigation water intensity (IWI) indicator has been computed as the ratio between volumes of irrigation water and total crop harvested. By applying panel data methodologies to a regional dataset spanning from 2000 to 2009, we may address heterogeneity and omitted variable issues. By merging meteo-climatic with agricultural variables, we may confirm that water precipitations, maximum temperature, irrigation propensity indicator, and yields are the main and relevant determinants of the IWI indicator. Moreover, results confirm our expectations that regions belonging to South and Islands macro-areas seem the best performers in terms of irrigation water intensity. Also, our analysis reveals limited availability of information on water resource data and suggests strengthening the need for regularly collecting data and producing statistics to support in designing adequate tools for optimal policies
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