1,720,995 research outputs found
University-Industry Collaboration in the Biopharmaceuticals: the Italian Case,
No full textWe investigate the determinants of University–Industry (U–I) interactions in the biopharmaceuticals in Italy over the period 2004–2010, choosing co-publishing as a proxy of U–I partnerships. We construct a novel dataset of co-published articles, that contains measures of proximities, agglomeration, firms’ and universities’ characteristics. Following a consolidated methodology, we integrate our dataset of effective interactions with the set of all potential interactions, to estimate probabilistic models for the occurrence and the intensity of U–I interactions. Our main findings confirm and extend the predictions of the previous literature: (1) geographical proximity and prior partnership increase the probability and the intensity of co-publication; (2) the proximity of a firm to other bio- pharmaceutical firms and universities attenuates the relevance of geographical proximity; (3) there exists complementarity between prior partnerships and geographical proximity. A novel result is that firms’ and Universities’ size, firms’ R&D and patents expenditure and the composition of the academic staff as well as quality of academic research exert a significant impact on the intensity of co-publishing
Family dissolution and precautionary savings: an empirical analysis
Full text linkThe main research question of this paper is whether or not the risk of family disruption has an impact on the consumption/saving decisions of households. Although little empirical work exists in this area, often presenting indirect evidence, the theory is divided over the effect of family risk over saving and wealth accumulation. By using data from the Italian Survey on Households Income and Wealth, we build a probabilistic model to assess the probability of marital splitting, and then we insert this probability as a distinct or interacted regressor, in a statistically consistent way, into a linear model of consumption. Furthermore, we study the differential behaviour, in terms of consumption/saving choices, of couples experiencing marital splitting over the subsequent two years. The main result of our analysis is that family disruption risk generates precautionary savings, reducing current consumption. In fact, according to our estimates, on average, the risk of divorce generates an amount of additional yearly precautionary savings of around 800 euros at constant prices of the year 2000, which represents 11% of overall household savings
International Investment Positions and Risk-Sharing: An Empirical Analysis on the Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey
No full textGlobalization and International Risk-sharing: The Role of Social and Political Integration
No full textThis study explores the relationships among various dimensions of globalization (i.e., economic, social, and political) and international risk-sharing, by exploiting the KOF globalization indices over a long time horizon (1970–2014) and for several groups of countries (i.e., World; Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); European Union (EU); European Monetary Union (EMU); high-income economies (HI); and low and middle-income economies (LMI)). To this end, we follow a standard regression-based approach augmented by interaction terms. To date, the empirical literature has only investigated the economic and financial facets of globalization; we, on the other hand, find a significant relationship between risk-sharing and noneconomic aspects of globalization. For several groups of industrialized countries, social and political integration positively correlate with risk-sharing. The economic factor does not explain all the improvements that relate to globalization, and political integration plays a remarkable role in shaping risk-sharing opportunities, both among EMU/EU countries and on a global scale. For advanced economies, in an increasingly globalized world, political integration should be of great concern
Tax incentives and household investment in complementary pension insurance: some recent evidence from the Italian experience
Full text linkWe show, by a simple difference-in-difference methodology that, contrary to prior research, robustly raising the deductibility limit associated to pension fund holdings in Italy did not succeed in boosting households’ contributions to this form of savings. Some other empirical finding also suggest that this policy measure may have not even increased the average amount of first time contributors to such funds. In view of the specific features of the Italian market for complementary insurance (relatively young and less developed), these empirical results might be of interest to policymakers acting in countries with similar features (for instance, some of the more recent EU members)
Channels of risk sharing at micro level: Savings, investments and risk aversion heterogeneity
No full textApplying the standard income variance decomposition methodology, the paper explores for the first time the role and the extent of smoothing channels at a micro level using a sample of UK households. Our empirical analysis of British Household Panel Survey data concludes that the bulk of risk sharing in the UK is driven by the savings channel. By allowing for risk aversion heterogeneity, we detect an inverted U-shaped relationship between risk aversion and the extent of smoothing achieved through financial markets. We also analyse the issue of risk sharing by income, education levels and region. We find that risk sharing is more effective (higher) for individuals whose savings are more flexible, while it is less effective (lower) for individuals characterized by more stable savings rate (like the Scottish population), regardless of their economic conditions
Foreign Portfolio Diversification and Risk-Sharing
No full textWe investigate income smoothing associated with international portfolio diversification by decomposing the net factor income (NFI) channel into interests, dividends and retained earnings, for OECD and EU countries. We find that interest receipts and equity dividend payments contribute significantly to absorb domestic income shocks. Geographically concentrated portfolios and, in particular, biases toward EU markets have a strong negative effect on the degree of risk-sharing
Testing big data in a big crisis: Nowcasting under COVID-19
Full text linkDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, economists have struggled to obtain reliable economic predictions, with standard models becoming outdated and their forecasting performance deteriorating rapidly. This paper presents two novelties that could be adopted by forecasting institutions in unconventional times. The first innovation is the construction of an extensive data set for macroeconomic forecasting in Europe. We collect more than a thousand time series from conventional and unconventional sources, complementing traditional macroeconomic variables with timely big data indicators and assessing their added value at nowcasting. The second novelty consists of a methodology to merge an enormous amount of non-encompassing data with a large battery of classical and more sophisticated forecasting methods in a seamlessly dynamic Bayesian framework. Specifically, we introduce an innovative “selection prior” that is used not as a way to influence model outcomes, but as a selecting device among competing models. By applying this methodology to the COVID-19 crisis, we show which variables are good predictors for nowcasting Gross Domestic Product and draw lessons for dealing with possible future crises
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
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