130,912 research outputs found
Growth without finance, finance without growth
No full textThe international comparative evidence on the nexus between finance and growth is ambiguous, owing to the many difficulties in isolating finance, separating its growth effect from that of the other factors. To overcome this problem, we study the effects of financial development on growth from 1960 to 2010 in one country – Italy. Thus we have the same political, legal and regulatory framework but also sharply differing development conditions between regions. After World War II Italy achieved an “economic miracle” similar to what China and India are now experiencing, followed by a lengthy phase of decline. Accordingly, we can distinguish the effect of financial development on growth from other potential causal factors while also considering regions with sharply different economic conditions. Our results show that from 1960 to 1980, when the Italian “economic miracle” was still under way, finance played no significant role in favouring the surge in economic growth, which most likely depended on internal consumption. Between 1980 and 2010, by contrast, the great expansion of Italian financial markets and institutions did have a positive effect on regional economic performance, but overall growth rates were nevertheless low. Although our empirical evidence supports the view that finance is more important for growth in less highly developed regions, it also shows that financial development has not helped to overcome the Italian economic divide
Competition Among Dominant Firms in Concentrated Markets: Evidence from the Italian Banking Industry
No full textConventional models of the industrial organisation theory usually state that in concentrated industries firms have significant market power, and that competition can be easily reduced if the leading firms collude. However, recent theoretical analyses show that strong concentration does not necessarily prevent competition among firms. In this paper we consider the Italian banking industry, where the eight largest firms operate at a national level, manage about a half of total loans, and have a notably larger dimension than the other competitors. We estimate a structural model – formed by a demand equation, a cost equation and a price cost margin equation, the latter containing a behavioural parameter – to assess the market conduct of the largest banks for the period 1988-2000. Our finding is that, in spite of their noteworthy size and significant market share, in these years the largest banks have been characterised by a more competitive conduct than the Cournot outcome: this is in line with the results of the latest literature of the field, for which in the banking industry there is often no conflict between competition and concentration.
Artificial Intelligence Applied to Spatial Cognition Assessment
No full textSpatial cognition is a function that strongly affects adaptation. This is particularly evident when it is impaired, as often happens after brain injury. Neglect, or hemispatial visual neglect, is a dramatic consequence of right hemisphere damage that leads patient to ignore the left, controlateral part of the space. It is assessed with tasks and tests that require to direct attention on the whole visual field, both on left and right. Also in healthy people, spatial exploration is not perfectly symmetrical, as witnessed by the phenomenon called pseudo-neglect. In recent years, these tools have been enhanced by new technological solutions, producing new data. In this paper, we describe our attempt to use Artificial Intelligence for the assessment of spatial cognition starting from the enhanced version of the Baking Tray Task, the e-BTT. Results indicate that Artificial Intelligence can be an effective method to analyze these new data thus leading to a more comprehensive assessment
MeSH term explosion and author rank improve expert recommendations
No full textInformation overload is an often-cited phenomenon that reduces the productivity, efficiency and efficacy of scientists. One challenge for scientists is to find appropriate collaborators in their research. The literature describes various solutions to the problem of expertise location, but most current approaches do not appear to be very suitable for expert recommendations in biomedical research. In this study, we present the development and initial evaluation of a vector space model-based algorithm to calculate researcher similarity using four inputs: 1) MeSH terms of publications; 2) MeSH terms and author rank; 3) exploded MeSH terms; and 4) exploded MeSH terms and author rank. We developed and evaluated the algorithm using a data set of 17,525 authors and their 22,542 papers. On average, our algorithms correctly predicted 2.5 of the top 5/10 coauthors of individual scientists. Exploded MeSH and author rank outperformed all other algorithms in accuracy, followed closely by MeSH and author rank. Our results show that the accuracy of MeSH term-based matching can be enhanced with other metadata such as author rank
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
"Closing the R&D Gap, Evaluating the Sources of R&D Spending"
No full textBoth spending and tax policies have been implemented in the United States with the goal of stimulating private sector research and development (R&D). Karier questions whether current R&D policy, especially the research and experimentation tax credit, can contribute to closing the gap between nondefense expenditures on R&D in the United States and such expenditures in other countries, such as Japan and Germany. He also explores possible changes to our current R&D policy to make it more effective.
La performance delle banche: possibili determinanti interne ed esterne
No full textIl lavoro si propone di esaminare l'impatto delle principali variabili interne ed esterne alle singole banche sulla loro performance ed organizzazione, esaminando un campione di istituti di credito europei e americani per il periodo 1999-2010, caratterizzato da diverse fasi cicliche dell’attività economica e finanziaria
Gap Estimation with Neural Network Models Iter Task on Diagnostics Design and R&D
No full textReport CREATE/ITER/DIAG/2001/1 (N 55 LR 1 01-05-07 W 0.1
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