1,721,233 research outputs found
Productivity growth in the Old and New Europe: the role of agglomeration externalities
No full textAs Europe is currently characterized by huge disparities in the economic performance of “old” and “new” States, we investigate whether this is the result of local agglomeration - specialization and diversity - externalities. Our spatial econometric analysis focuses on total factor productivity dynamics over the period 1996-2007 for 13 industries located in 276 European regions. Consistently with the “nursery cities” theory, we find that diversity exerts a positive effect in the knowledge intensive services of the “old” Europe urban areas, while specialization is still effective in the “new” Europe low-tech manufacturing. Human and technological capital have also a positive impact
Intangible capital and firms productivity
No full textFirms competitive strategies and performances in industrialised countries is increasingly based on assets, labelled as “intangible capital”, such as the inventions of new processes and products, the improvements of the employees skill, the creation of a reputation for company’s products. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the role of internal intangible capital on firms productivity in addition to the well-known one played by traditional inputs. Moreover, firms productivity is crucially affected by the external socio-economic conditions; thus, we control for the availability of intangible assets specific to the region (human, technological and social capital) as well as for the regional infrastructural endowments. In our empirical application we analyse a large panel of European companies belonging to 116 regions of six countries, considered over the period 2002-2006. The estimation results - robust to various ways of disaggregating the sample data (by country, macro-sector and firms dimension) and to different econometric methodologies (IV, Olley-Pakes, Levinsohn-Petrin) - show the positive influence of the internal intangible capital on firms productivity levels and also the crucial role played by the intangible assets at the regional level. These results remark the importance of policies designed to stimulate the accumulation of intangible capital stocks internal to the firms through appropriate fiscal policies and to create a favourable external environment based on high endowments of human, social and technological capital
Total factor productivity, intangible assets and spatial dependence in the European regions
No full textIn the last decade there has been an upsurge of studies on international
comparisons of Total Factor Productivity (TFP). The empirical evidence
suggests that countries and regions differ not only in traditional factor
endowments (labour and physical capital) but mainly in productivity and
technology. Therefore, a crucial issue is the analysis of the determinants of such
differences in the efficiency levels across economies.
In this paper we try to assess these issues by pursuing a twofold aim. First, we
derive a regression based measure of regional TFP, which has the nice
advantage of not imposing a priori restrictions on the inputs elasticities; this is
done by estimating a spatial Cobb-Douglas production function relationship for
199 European regions over the period 1985-2006. Secondly, we investigate the
determinants of the TFP levels by analyzing the role played by intangible
factors: human capital, social capital and technological capital. The estimations
are carried out by applying the spatial 2SLS method and the SHAC estimator to
account for both heteroskedasticity and spatial autocorrelation. It turns out that
a large part of TFP differences across the European regions are explained by the
disparities in the endowments of these intangible assets. This outcome indicates
the importance of policy strategies which aim at increasing the level of
knowledge and social capital as stressed by the Lisbon agenda
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
Education or creativity: What matters most for economic performance?
Full text linkThere is a large consensus among social researchers on the positive role played by human capital on economic performances. The standard way to measure the human capital endowment is to consider the educational attainments by the resident population, usually the share of people with a university degree. Recently, Florida (2002) suggested a different measure of human capital - the "creative class" - based on the actual occupations of individuals in specific jobs like science, engineering, arts, culture, entertainment. However, the empirical analyses carried out so far overlooked a serious measurement problem concerning the clear identification of the education and creativity components of human capital. The main purpose of this paper is to try to disentangle this issue by proposing a disaggregation of human capital into three non-overlapping categories of creative graduates, bohemians and non creative graduates. By using a spatial econometric framework to account for spatial dependence, we assess the concurrent effect of the human capital indicators on total factor productivity for 257 regions of EU27. Our main results indicate that the highly educated creative group is the most relevant one in explaining production efficiency, while the other two categories - non creative graduates and bohemians - exhibit negligible effects. Moreover, a relevant influence is exerted by technological capital and by the level of tolerance providing robust evidence that an innovative, open, inclusive and culturally diverse environment is becoming more and more crucial for productivity enhancements
Productivity growth in the Old and New Europe: the role of agglomeration externalities
Full text linkThe recent history of the European Union is characterized by a dual picture showing the Old and the New countries in sharp contrast with respect to several economic dimensions. In particular, regions and industries in Eastern countries have shown an excellent performance whilst Western countries have kept moving on a rather slow track. Our aim is to assess the intertwined performance of regions and
industries in New and Old economies within Europe by investigating the dynamics of total factor productivity over the period 1996-2007 and the role played by local
externalities in the agglomeration process of economic activities. Among the determinants of local industry growth we analyse the agglomeration externalities and, in particular, we focus on the different impact of the specialisation and diversity externalities. Moreover, we analyse the potential influence of regional intangible
assets such as human and technological capital while controlling for other territorial features which may affect the efficiency of the local industry. The empirical analysis
makes use of spatial econometric techniques to take into account the possibility of cross-border externalities
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