Locational determinants of the ICT sector across Italy

Is the rapid growth of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) activities shaping new local specialization and industrial concentration? Does the analysis of local economic conditions help to explain the formation of “places” specialized in ICT? We use 2001 Census data by Local Labour Systems (LLS) to investigate the characteristics of ICT specialization in Italy. Our investigation is based on a cross-sectional regression model using data for 686 LLS in which the dependent variable is an index of ICT local employment concentration. The measure of concentration we adopted is the location quotient (LQ) index. The LLS specialized in ICT activities in Italy account for 7.3% of total LLS. They are distributed all over the country, although those with highest LQ values are mainly in North-west and Central-south Italy. Our regression analysis provides the following results. The general econometric specification, i.e. that applied to all LLS, supports a positive and significant relationship between LLS specialized in some manufacturing industries (machinery, equipment and instruments; petrochemicals, rubber and plastic products; transport equipment; and paper, publishing and printing) or business services and relatively high localization of ICT employment. Besides, the model indicates that for LLS characterized by manufacturing SMEs there is a low probability of attaining a greater-than-the-national-average ICT employment specialization. These econometric results are in line with the general opinion that product specialization of Italian industries (the so-called “Made in Italy”) and SMEs are less likely to be involved in ICT diffusion to business. Nevertheless, this pattern of results does not justify the interpretation that the industrial districts (where SMEs employment has the largest share) are at the origin of inadequate ICT diffusion to business in Italy. In fact, when the analysis is focused on industrial districts the results are slightly different. In particular, the variable SMEs does not produce a significant coefficient, while textile and clothing industries show a positive association with ICT, even though significant only at 10% level. What is the main policy implication of these empirical findings? National government’s policy makers should become aware that industrial districts are an appropriate instrument to promote the development of the ICT sector, although so far they have been neglected. "Information and Communication Technologies, Local Labour Systems, geographical concentration, local specialization

Assessing the determinants of fast growth in Italy

Few firms grow in a rapid way, but their contribution to employment growth is often impressive. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze both external and internal factors which can affect the probability of being a high-growth firm (HGF) in Italy. We found that HGFs are on average young firms and are present in different sectors, but the role of demand is important to understand their performance at sectoral level. Moreover, our findings show that financial constraints and profitability are not associated with the probability of being a fast-growing firm. HGFs, on average, are characterised by high productivity, but only when growth is measured in terms of sales. The most original results of this study concerns endogenous determinants of fast growth, which have not so far been adequately examined in the literature. First, we found that the concentration of ownership is important for HGFs that grow in sales. Second, the quality of human capital is a strong point for firms experiencing rapid employment growth.: high-growth firms, firm growth, human capital, rapid firm growth

Fabrication of high quality sub-micron Au gratings over large areas with pulsed laser interference lithography for SPR sensors

Metallic gratings were fabricated using high energy laser interference lithography with a frequency tripled Nd:YAG nanosecond laser. The grating structures were first recorded in a photosensitive layer and afterwards transferred to an Au film. High quality Au gratings with a period of 770 nm and peak-to-valley heights of 20-60 nm exhibiting plasmonic resonance response were successfully designed, fabricated and characterized.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Le differenze nel livello di sviluppo fra i paesi: accumulazione di fattori o TFP?

Il divario nel livello di sviluppo economico fra i paesi del mondo (tradizionalmente misurato dal livello del prodotto reale per addetto) e' aumentato in modo significativo a partire dagli anni '70. Questo lavoro, attraverso un esercizio di development accounting, metodologia ispirata al tradizionale approccio di contabilità della crescita, analizza l'importanza relativa dell'accumulazione di fattori produttivi e della componente 'residuale' (valutata come proxy dell’efficienza o Total Factor Productivity) per l'interpretazione di tale divario. In media, utilizzando i dati ufficiali disponibili per misurare l'accumulazione di capitale fisico e capitale umano per ciascun paese, non si arriva a 'spiegare' piu' del 40% del livello di sviluppo economico. Inoltre, come viene sottolineato dalla maggior parte degli studi recenti, la quota della variabilita' cross country del prodotto per addetto che puo' essere attribuita alla TFP risulta essere elevata e crescente. Una dettagliata analisi di sensitivita' sembra confermare la sostanziale solidita' di questi risultati rispetto ai potenziali problemi legati alla scelta delle fonti statistiche, alla misurazione dei fenomeni in oggetto e alla specificazione delle variabili.factor accumulation, neoclassical model, total factor productivity

Capitale sociale, contesto istituzionale e performance innovativa delle imprese

Questo lavoro intende verificare se la presenza di fattori socio-istituzionali (capitale sociale, l’attivismo istituzionale e l’accumulazione di esperienze di azione collettiva fra imprese) in un territorio, valorizzando il ruolo delle esternalità “da conoscenza”, possa favorire la performance innovativa della singola impresa. Si utilizzano i dati dell’Indagine Capitalia sulle imprese manifatturiere italiane e la banca dati ISL dell’Università di Parma per elaborare un modello econometrico in cui il processo innovativo è condizionato da fattori interni ed esterni all'impresa. I risultati suggeriscono che la capacità innovativa delle imprese è favorita dalla presenza di capitale sociale (inteso come senso civico e come interazione sociale) e dall’attivismo delle istituzioni intermedie.Social Capital, Intermediate Institutions, Collective Action, Product and Process innovation, Technological Spillovers, Knowledge Spillovers

Determinanti della domanda di laureati nell'industria manifatturiera italiana

Tertiary education attainment of italian labour force, particularly in the manufacturing industry, shows empirically a large gap with respect to the other OECD countries, although human capital growth has been increasingly addressed as one of the main channel towards productivity, competitive success and firm size growth. The paper analyses empirically four different explicative hypotheses, each with its own set of proxies: firm size, sectoral differences in human capital intensity, education supply of the labour force, and firm-specific demand issues. Estimates show that while structural explanations based on firm size and sectoral differences play a key causal role in determining the observed low level of human capital, supply conditions seem to have a lower esplicative power, both directly through local supply of educated workers and indirectly through their weight on the labour cost. Firm-specific demand variables, particularly those proxying for the complexity and richness of organizational structure and management, show instead the highest explicative power. More particularly, family-managed firms seem to perform a sort of "subjective resistance" to a more intensive employment of highly educated labour force.Human capital, Educational attainment, Labour demand, Labour supply, Graduate employment , Staff ratio, White Collars, Manufacturing industries, Firm size, Italy

Capitale sociale, associazionismo economico e istituzioni: indicatori statistici di sintesi

In current debate, economic development is connected with relative social capital endowment, the diffusion of co-operative practices between firms and the role and efficiency of institutions. In this paper a factor analysis approach is used to provide synthetic indicators of these variables for Italian provinces. These indicators could be included in the set of analytical tools for the study of the relationship between economic development, public goods supply and collective action.social capital, economic institutions, firms co-operation, factor analysis

An Experimental Study on Pitch Compensation in Pedestrian-Protection Systems for Collision Avoidance and Mitigation

This paper describes an improved stereovision system for the anticipated detection of car-to-pedestrian accidents. An improvement of the previous versions of the pedestrian-detection system is achieved by compensation of the camera's pitch angle, since it results in higher accuracy in the location of the ground plane and more accurate depth measurements. The system has been mounted on two different prototype cars, and several real collision-avoidance and collision-mitigation experiments have been carried out in private circuits using actors and dummies, which represents one of the main contributions of this paper. Collision avoidance is carried out by means of deceleration strategies whenever the accident is avoidable. Likewise, collision mitigation is accomplished by triggering an active hood system

Structuring and functionalization of non-metallic materials using direct laser interference patterning: A review

Direct laser interference patterning (DLIP) is a laser-based surface structuring method that stands out for its high throughput, flexibility and resolution for laboratory and industrial manufacturing. This top-down technique relies on the formation of an interference pattern by overlapping multiple laser beams onto the sample surface and thus producing a periodic texture by melting and/or ablating the material. Driven by the large industrial sectors, DLIP has been extensively used in the last decades to functionalize metallic surfaces, such as steel, aluminium, copper or nickel. Even so, DLIP processing of non-metallic materials has been gaining popularity in promising fields such as photonics, optoelectronics, nanotechnology and biomedicine. This review aims to comprehensively collect the main findings of DLIP structuring of polymers, ceramics, composites, semiconductors and other non-metals and outline their most relevant results. This contribution also presents the mechanisms by which laser radiation interacts with non-metallic materials in the DLIP process and summarizes the developed surface functions and their applications in different fields.Fil: Mulko, Lucinda. Technische Universität Dresden; AlemaniaFil: Soldera, Marcos Maximiliano. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigación y Desarrollo en Ingeniería de Procesos, Biotecnología y Energías Alternativas. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Instituto de Investigación y Desarrollo en Ingeniería de Procesos, Biotecnología y Energías Alternativas; ArgentinaFil: Lasagni, Andrés Fabián. Technische Universität Dresden; Alemani