1,721,097 research outputs found
Major public enterprises in Italy
Full text linkItalian State-owned enterprises (SOEs) continue to occupy a strategic position in the national economy. In 2013, their aggregate value added was equal to 17% of the Italian national GDP, and they counted for around 40% of the total Italian stock market capitalization. The present paper focuses on the top ten Italian SOEs over the period 2004-2013. A first overview of the changes in their internal and external environment suggests the crucial importance of institutional conditions and the lack of a coherent policy design for privatisation and regulation, as the timing and the intensity of the reforms has varied deeply among sectors. Nevertheless, contemporary Italian SOEs have been increasingly exposed to market incentives, and they seem nowadays more oriented to markets than to public values, with some remarkable divergences depending on the degree of public control and market liberalization. Our textual analysis of the SOEs’ statutes reveals a total absence of direct references to a formal public mission. Social goals have been increasingly addressed by means of regulation, while only Ferrovie dello Stato and Poste Italiane are formally subject to the Universal Service Obligation. We also find that, on average, the management and performance of the Italian SOEs has improved and it holds the comparison with private and public European industry peers. Still, remarkable differences across markets and across sectors persist. Listed SOEs are largely profitable and distribute positive dividends to their shareholders. Among them, Eni, Enel and Finmeccanica have expanded their business internationally, though cross-border M&As. As a result, a high share of their revenues and employees originates out of Italy. This suggests that their strategies are no more committed to political goals, such as employment protection. Conversely, other SOEs are somehow compelled to maintain an informal public mission. Unlisted SOEs that provide universal services often incur in economic losses which are partly covered by public subsidies or by taxpayers.Nevertheless they also have modernized their management and expanded into new profitable markets, such as high speed train (FS) and financial and insurance services (Poste Italiane). SOEs managing networks have invested in national strategic infrastructures and their employees and revenues are largely domestic-based. Finally, aggregate data do not reveal strong divergences among the Italian SOEs and their industry peers in terms of employment policies and labor productivity, with some important divergences among SOEs operating in labor-intensive and capital-intensive sectors. In terms of investments in fixed assets we observe divergences among SOEs and private ones. The former have increased their investments in tangible assets over time, while investments by private industry peers have been negatively affected by the financial crisis
Italian State-Owned Enterprises After Decades of Reforms : still public?
No full textThe present paper analyzes the top ten Italians tate -owned enterprises (SOEs) over the period 2004 - 2013, after
both their corporate organization and the irmarkets have been deeply reforme d
We question whether SOEs’ strategies are more profit or public oriented.
The authors find that, on average, the management and performance of the Italian SOEs has improved and it holds
the comparison with private and public European industry peer
s. Still, remarkable divergences persist among Italian in terms of performance and orientation towards markets or public values, largely depending on the intensity of the reforms they went through. Listed SOEs operating in liberalized markets are lar gely profitable and distribute dividends. They have expanded their business internationally, though
cross-border M&As. As a result, a high share of their revenues and employees originates out of Italy.
Conversely, unlisted SOEs operating in non-competitive markets are still somehow compelled to maintain an informal public mission; they provide universal services, they often incur in economic losses , which are partly covered by taxpayers
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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