1,721,404 research outputs found
Mission-oriented public organizations for knowledge creation
No full textThe purpose of this chapter is to investigate and discuss the role played by the state in enhancing technological progress, creating knowledge and fostering radical innovation. This catalyst function may take place in different ways.
The authors focus on two channels: (a) R&D of traditional state-owned or state-invested enterprises and (b) public procurement for innovation (PPI) through research infrastructures, which according to the authors are a new form of knowledge-based public enterprise.
Public enterprises and public organizations in general may in fact play an active role as inventors and innovators. Recent evidence published by Musacchio (2017), Sterlacchini (2012), and Clò, Florio and Rentocchini (2017) shows that public enterprises may innovate even more intensively than their private peers.
This is because government can act as a long-term investor while private firms are more likely to have a short-term view and be financially constrained. Moreover, the public sector adopts a more positive attitude to risk taking and engages in more risky research (see Mazzuccato, 2016): it can invest in breakthrough technologies, in pure research and in areas where discoveries may have less marketable applications. On the other hand, private companies are more oriented towards promising technologies with more immediate economic opportunities.
The authors shed light on these mechanisms and provide new evidence about the innovative capacity of state-owned enterprises by comparing their R&D and patent behaviours and propensities in high-innovation sectors with those of private companies.
A second relevant role for government is to stimulate innovation via public procurement. This is considered an important demand-side innovation policy (see Aschhoff & Sofka, 2009; Martin & Tang, 2007), especially when the development of sophisticated products is required.
PPI occurs when public authorities act as launch customers for innovative goods or services that do not exist yet or are not available on a large scale. Acting as first buyer, the government enlarges the size of the market and creates new segments. Again, this is crucial in economic fields characterized by high risk that cannot be borne entirely by the private sector.
Empirical studies have shown that PPI has a positive effect on firms’ R&D investment, with a greater demand-pull effect than that of other private contracts (Litchtenberg, 1988), and it is a possible complement or even an alternative to supply-side policies (Edler & Georghiou, 2007). PPI’s impact on firms’ expenditures on innovative activities is stronger than that of R&D subsidies and tax credits (Guerzoni & Raiteri, 2015; Mazzuccato, 2016).
Particularly interesting is the case of procurement contracts for large-scale research infrastructures (RIs). The existing literature, mainly based on supplier surveys and case studies, suggests that PPI may generate significant technological spillovers accruing to (private) firms involved in the RI supply chain. This kind of analysis has been applied to different RIs such as CERN (Schmied, 1977; Bianchi-Streit et al., 1984; Autio et al., 2003; Autio, 2014; Florio et al., 2017), NASA (Hertzfeld, 1998; Chapman et al., 1989) and ESA (Schmied, 1982; Schenk et al., 2002).
Another relevant strand of the literature has applied cost-benefit analysis to research, development and innovation infrastructure (see Florio, Forte & Sirtori, 2016; Battistoni et al., 2016).
The authors critically review existing contributions and summarize their main findings
Introduction: The History of the European Infrastructure Finance: An Analytical Framework
No full textHow have socio-economic resources been mobilized to pay public works – affected by a fundamental intertemporal mismatch between social costs and benefits – from the Roman Age up to twenty century-Europe? This chapter tries to answer this question, first looking at finance in a broad sense, as a set of mechanisms bringing resources to infrastructure, second focusing on some core factors as technological and organizational change, public and private involvement, national and international drivers. A final taxonomy, then, outlines the macrotypes of infrastructure financing that have been analyzed in the book, showing clearly how it is impossible to identify a unique pattern of infrastructure finance that always and everywhere is superior in terms of long term-sustainability, growth and welfare effects. History teaches us that there are no recipes, but only a set of stories that may suggest some analogies to contemporary problems and may represent a way of testing conventional hypothesis
Applied welfare economics : cost-benefit analysis of projects and policies
No full textWhat is the effect of a new infrastructure on the well-being of a local community? Is a tax reform desirable? Does the privatization of a telecommunication provider increase social welfare? To answer these questions governments and their policy advisors should have in mind an operative definition of social welfare, and cannot rely on simple official statistics, such as GDP. The price we observe are often misleading as welfare signals, and costs and benefits for the society should be based on ‘shadow prices’, revealing the social opportunity costs of goods and of changes of the world. This book explains how to apply these welfare economics ideas to the real world.
After a theoretical discussion of the concept of social welfare, a critical analysis of the traditional doctrine of welfare economics embodied in the Two Fundamental Theorems, and a presentation of social cost-benefit analysis, the book introduce the readers to an applied framework. This includes the empirical estimation of shadow prices of goods, of the social cost of labour and capital, the assessment of risk. This book also includes the state of the art of international experience with CBA, including ex-post evaluation of major projects, economic rates of return in different sectors, and a case study on privatisation, is presented.
This book offers a unique and original blend of theory, empirics and experience. The theoretical discussion clarifies why shadow prices are not virtual market equilibrium prices, as they arise as the solution of a planning problem, often with governments and economic agents constrained in their information and powers. The empirical chapters show how to compute proxies of the shadow prices in simple ways. The experience chapters draw from first hand research, gained by the Author and his collaborators over many years of advisory work for the European Commission and other international and national institutions
Neutralità fiscale, investimenti in crescita: oltre l'approccio King-Fullerton
No full textQuesto volume raccoglie alcuni dei lavori più rappresentativi presentati alla VII riunione scientifica della SIEP, svoltasi in Pavia dal 6 al 7 ottobre 1995, dedicata ad affrontare nei suoi multiformi aspetti la sempre attuale ed importante problematica della riforma tributaria.
Lo scopo non è soltanto di portare alla conoscenza di un pubblico più Vasto i risultati della meditazione di studiosi, ma anche e sopra tutto di stimolare la discussione su aspetti importanti della riforma del sistema tributario.
II volume è articolato in una prima parte dedicata all'esame dei progetti di riforma tributaria in Italia, con una breve riflessione sulla problematica delle riforme tributarie di A. Fossati e la accurata puntualizzazione del dibattito attuale sull'lRPEF di L. Bernardi.
Nella seconda parte, dedicata ai problemi generali delle riforme, è incluso prima di tutto il saggio di G. Vitaletti che propone, nella tradizione classica italiana, ipotesi di riforma del sistema tributario, basate sul principio del beneficio. In secondo luogo compare il lavoro di M. Bernasconi sulla problematica dell'evasione, con la quale ogni progetto di riforma deve comunque confrontarsi.
La terza parte raccoglie proposte di riforma su due singoli settori produttivi: sulla riforma dell'imposizione diretta nel settore agricolo (F. Lechi e M. Ferretto), e sul settore non profit (B. Bises).
Nella quarta parte sono raccolti contributi sulla discussione della tassazione del capitale, del reddito d'impresa e sugli intermedìari finanziari, rispettivamente affrontati da M. Florio, S. Giannini e R. Paladini.
La quinta parte, infine, è tutta dedicata a studi di riforma basati su tecniche di simulazione. In particolare B. Cavalletti, R. Levaggi, A. Ruocco e G. Pireddu utilizzano l'analisi in equilibrio generale, mentre, M. Matteuzzi e S. Toso, M. Baldini e C. De Vitiis con F. Di Nicola usano le tecniche della microsimulazione. Assieme considerati, questi studi costituiscono un'importante esemplificazione di come le moderne tecniche di analisi economica possano essere utilizzate per progettare riforme tributarie
Segnali di prezzo: analisi empirica per la valutazione delle riforme dei servizi di pubblica utilità
No full textInfrastructure, convergence and investment decisions in the European Union : scelta di interventi presentati all'8. Milan European economy workshop nel 2009
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Does privatisation matter? : the long-term performance of British Telecom over 40 years
No full textIn this paper, we offer and discuss new evidence on the performance of British Telecom (BT) before and after privatisation. We use a unique data-set based on company accounts over 40 years (1960–99) and original additional company data on several variables. We focus particularly on output, prices, revenues, costs, employment, productivity, profits and investment. Our key findings are that operating profits (i.e. gross profits before interest and tax) were remarkably stable before and after divestiture, and that ownership change per se had little discernible impact on productivity trends, particularly between 1984 and 1991. Major changes in performance after 1991 were, however, related to variations in financial arrangements, competition and regulatory pressure. This allows us to regard the BT case history as a natural experiment on the relative importance of privatisation, liberalisation and regulatio
Analyse cout-avantages et objectives macro-économiques : lecons tirées de l'experience italienne
No full textCet article fait partie d'un projet de recherche supporté par le Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche et par le British Foreign Office. Une premiere version fut préparée au cours d'une visite à Oxford où l'auteur a eu le plaisir d'en discuter avec Anthony Courakis (Brasenose College) et Maurice Scott (Nuffield College). Il est également redevable à Nicholas Stern (London School of Economics) pour ses commentaires sur une version ultérieure, à Ugo Finzi et à Anandrup Ray (IBRD‐ Washington DC) et à deux referees anonymes. Il est responsable des erreurs qui subsisteraient
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