1,720,962 research outputs found
The political economy of privatization in rich democracies. Herbert Obinger, Carina Schmitt and Stefan Traub. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. 2016. 156 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-966968-4
No full textInfrastructure and growth in a spatial framework : evidence from the EU regions
No full textThis paper examines the return to infrastructure in the European Union regions in a spatial framework. It innovates on the earlier literature on infrastructure and growth by a combination of regional focus, disaggregation of infrastructure types and consideration of spatial dependence. Different types of infrastructure capital are considered as determinants of economic performance at the Nomenclature des Unités Territoriales Statistiques level. To account for growth spillovers among regions, a spatial Durbin model is estimated. The results confirm the important role of infrastructure and identify the highest rates of return as associated with telecommunication, quality and accessibility of transportation networks, with a positive impact of roads and railways
Shadow wages for the EU regions
No full textAccording to cost-benefit analysis theory, the shadow wage rate (SWR) is the social opportunity cost of labour. After reviewing earlier theoretical and empirical literature, we define the SWR under four labour market conditions: fairly socially efficient (FSE), quasi-Keynesian unemployment (QKU), urban labour dualism (ULD) and rural labour dualism (RLD). We offer, for the first time, a short-cut empirical estimation of the shadow wages for the European Union (EU) at the regional (NUTS2) level. Our estimated values are in the form of conversion factors, i.e. coefficients that translate actual observed real wages into shadow wages, as required by the evaluation of public investment projects under the Structural Funds of the EU. Our results are obtained with an empirical strategy that is easy to implement with aggregate regional data, differently from traditional micro-data-based approaches to the estimation of the SWR, which are costly, project specific and often difficult to apply because of lack of information
Governments in the market for corporate control : evidence from M&A deals involving state-owned enterprises
No full textRecent evidence suggests that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are increasingly taking over other firms. Such domestic or transborder acquisitions are the reverse of privatizations, where SOEs are the target of private investors. The question we ask is whether, because of the specific objectives and risks faced by governments, SOEs deviate from the benchmark of deals involving private firms on both sides of the merger and acquisition (M&A) transaction. To answer this new research question, we focus on a set of firm-level characteristics of the targets and acquirers involved in the deals. We built an original dataset of 31,479 deals in 138 countries drawing from Zephyr and Orbis (Bureau Van Dijk) data. Empirical results of multinomial logit and OLS models show that deals involving SOEs are clearly different from the benchmark of private–private deals. This is mainly due to the greater assets, higher solvency ratios, broader experience of deals, and closer proximity to targets of the acquirers (both public and private) under public–private, public–public, and private–public deals compared to private–private deals
On the interaction between public and private capital in economic growth
No full textThis paper introduces two forms of interaction between private and public
capital in an endogenous growth model in which productive government expenditure takes the form of a stock-variable and public capital is used in part as an input in the production of final output and in part to increase its own supply. While the first form of interaction involves the stocks of the two capital-goods and takes place within the final output sector through the specification of the aggregate production functio(Cobb–Douglas vs. CES), the second one concerns the rates of investment in the two kinds of capital. The share of productive public expenditure devoted to output production
can be either exogenous or endogenous. Our results suggest that when this share
is exogenous, along the balanced growth path the optimal growth rate of the economy is a positive function of the degree of complementarity between the two formsof investment. When the share of productive public expenditure devoted to output production is endogenous, the public capital share in GDP becomes, along with the model’s preference parameters, an important determinant of the economy’s long run growth.We also find that the optimal growth rate is an increasing function of the elasticity of substitution between public and private capital inputs in goods production, and is independent of the complementarity /substitutability between the two forms of investment
Smartness and European urban performance: assessing the local impacts of smart urban attributes
No full textIn this paper we adopt a comprehensive definition of Smart City and examine whether and how the main characteristics of urban smartness are growth-enhancing. With a sample of cities from the European Union we assess the cityspecific impacts on urban performance of a complex ‘‘urban smartness’’ indicator by applying a Spatial Autoregressive Local Estimate to an urban production function. The results of this econometric analysis point in the direction of the importance of space-specific characteristics in shaping the economic effect of smart urban qualities, providing grounding to place-based public policies that account for local characteristics. We also identify different clusters with respect to the impacts of smartness on urban performance and wealth, highlighting the need for geographically differentiated policy actions
Regional infrastructure and convergence : growth implications in a spatial framework
No full textIn this paper we contribute to the debate on convergence, by presenting an overview of the catch up process of the EU regions between 1995 and 2006, focusing on both absolute and conditional β convergence. Our focus is on the role of infrastructure stock in shaping the growth and convergence process between EU regions and to what extent the spatial dimension of the data affects results. We also explicitly examine the link between infrastructure evolution and regional economic growth with a spatial panel data approach. Our results confirm an ongoing convergence process at the EU regional level, and assess the important role of transport and telecommunication infrastructure, with traditional and spatial estimation techniques. We also confirm, in a panel setting, the strong positive correlation between transport and TLC indicators and GDP growth at the regional leve
Public procurement in Big Science: politics or technology? The case of CERN
Full text linkPublic procurement from Big Science Centers (BSCs) yields a variety of spillover effects that can ultimately have growth enhancing consequences for their Member States (MS). We study the determinants of procurement for the biggest research infrastructure ever built: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. A unique database of firms that have registered to become industrial partners of the LHC program allows us to estimate the determinants for potential suppliers of receiving an order from CERN. We compare the relative weight of firms' technological features and CERN's procurement rules aimed at securing a juste retour for its MS. While, in accordance to CERN's procurement rules our results highlight the role of both technological factors and political constraints, we also show the existence of a premium toward Swiss and French firms. We document that the constraints related with the achievement of a juste retour affect -- directly or indirectly -- the procurement policy of many European BSCs and international bodies whose budget is financed by the public funds of their MS. Therefore, our results have policy implications that go beyond our empirical application
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