Foreign Ownership and Productivity: is the Direction of Causality so Obvious?

multinational firms, total factor productivity, panel data

Does ICT Investment Spur or Hamper Offshoring? Empirical Evidence from Microdata

In this paper we provide empirical evidence on the effect of ICT investment on the propensity to offshore for a large sample of Italian manufacturing firms. Contrary to previous literature focusing on the service sector, after taking into account the endogeneity of ICT investment in the offshoring decision equation we find a negative and significant effect of ICT on the propensity to offshore some stages of the production process. Furthermore this effect turns out not to depend on the type of ICT investment and applies both to hardware and software/telecommunication expenditures. A potential explanation for our finding is that ICT investments in manufacturing increase the complementarity of production processes within the firm, thereby reducing the incentive to offshore. Our results seem therefore to suggest that negative exogenous shocks to ICT prices–possibly induced by targeted policy programs aimed at the diffusion of ICT technologies–do not favor offshoring of manufacturing activities.ICT Investment, Offshoring, Maximum Likelihood System Estimation

Effects of mergers and acquisitions: a critical survey of the empirical evidence

The aim of this paper is to review the "state of the art" of empirical analysis on the subject of the effects of mergers and acquisitions. After a brief introduction I will present the conflicting evidence outlined, up to the mid eighties, by the Industrial Organization stream of analysis and the Financial Economics one; afterwards, the most important contributions emerged since then, innovative in terms of amount and type of data used and in terms of more accurate methodologies, will be presented. Finally, special attention will be devoted to the still scattered empirical evidence for Italy.

Attracting Foreign Investments in Europe - are Italian Regions Doomed?

Foreign direct investments in Europe have grown substantially over the last decade, but Italian regions account for a very small portion of such increase. Why does Italian regions attract such a low number of foreign investors? Is it a regional or a country problem? One explanation for this pattern could be that the characteristics of Italian regions are not attractive to foreign multinationals. A different, although not alternative, explanation is that Italian regions may be ‘doomed’ by the fact that they all share common national policies and institutions (such as, tax regimes, efficiency of bureaucracy, degree of labour market regulation and effectiveness of the legal and property right protection system) which discourage foreign firms to locate their plants in Italy. This view follows a tradition of cross-country studies which have addressed the role of institutional and policy characteristics as determinants of inward FDIs. In this paper we will model the potential attractiveness of 52 NUTS1 regions in 5 EU countries in terms of their main observable characteristics and will investigate whether Italian regions attract more or less than their potential. In other words, we will ask whether a EU region with the same characteristics of an Italian region will attract a different amount of FDIs. Second, we will evaluate the impact of some national policy and institutional characteristics on the attractiveness of regions and we will assess the role of such factors in explaining the Italian specificity. Third, we will simulate the relative contribution to FDIs in Italian regions of regional and national variables. This exercise will help us assessing to what extent the low attractiveness of Italian regions is the result of specific regional characteristics or of countrywide factors.

Location Determinants of Greenfield Foreign Investments in the Enlarged Europe: Evidence from a Spatial Autoregressive Negative Binomial Additive Model

This paper addresses two important methodological issues in the analysis of industrial location: spatial dependence and nonlinearities. To this end, we estimate a semi-parametric spatial autoregressive negative binomial model using data on the number of inward greenfield FDI occurred over the 2003-2007 period in 249 European regions. Results support the view that multinational firms’ location choices are very spatially dependent, even controlling for a large number of regional characteristics. A spatial lag model with a non-parametric spatial filter allows us to purge the residuals from spatial dependence and yields sensible changes in the magnitude of some estimated coefficients. We also provide robust evidence of nonlinearities. In particular, we find that the effect of agglomeration economies fades down as the density of economic activities reaches some limit value.Multinational firms, greenfield FDI, count data, spatial econometrics, semiparametric econometrics

Spatial clustering and nonlinearities in the location of multinational firms

We propose a semiparametric geoadditive negative binomial model of industrial location which allows to simultaneously address some important methodological issues, such as spatial clustering and nonlinearities, which have been only partly addressed in previous studies. We apply this model to analyze location determinants of inward greenfield investments occurred over the 2003-2007 period in 249 European regions. The inclusion of a geoadditive component (a smooth spatial trend surface) allows to control for omitted variables which induce spatial clustering, and suggests that such unobserved factors may be related to regional policies towards foreign investors Allowing for nonlinearities reveals, in line with theoretical predictions, that the positive effect of agglomeration economies fades as the density of economic activities reaches some limit value.industrial location, negative binomial models, geoadditive models, european union.

Experimental characterization of dacron 360 woven constitutive behavior

In the present paper some experimental analyses of Dacron© 360 woven aimed to characterize its constitutive behavior are presented. This woven, widely adopted in sail manufacturing, is obtained by weaving polyethylene terephthalate (PET) yarn and it shows some peculiar features due to the manufacturing process. The experimental tests, in terms of tensile tests and cyclic tests, clearly show the orthotropy features of the material, its high strength and deformability. Finally, the examination with optical microscope of the tested specimens allows to evidence how the warp and weft yarns interact

Welded section defence by LRPD devices

The present paper concerns a special application of some recently proposed structural devices, called LRPD, able to protect the welded sections of frame steel structures from undesired brittle collapse ensuring the good expected ductile behaviour. Standard I-shaped cross-sections are treated, and the proposed devices are suitably considered as moment resisting connections between beams and columns. At first the domain representing the brittle safe conditions is defined in the N,V,M space; then a sample plane frame subjected to seismic load conditions is studied and it is proved that, equipping the structure with the proposed devices suitably designed, the generalized stresses at the welded sections remain within the relevant brittle safe domain and the structure is able to dissipate a significant amount of plastic dissipation energy

On the optimal design of base isolation devices

The paper deals with the optimal design of a base isolation system for a given structure subjected to seismic loads. In particular, an appropriate minimum displacement seismic protection device optimal design formulation is proposed for an assigned elastic perfectly plastic steel frame constrained to behave in conditions of elastic shakedown. The chosen base isolation device is constituted by elastomeric isolators. Suitable combinations of fixed and seismic loads are considered. According to the unrestricted shakedown theory, the seismic input is given as any load history appertaining to a suitably defined seismic load admissibility domain. The relevant dynamic structural response is obtained by means of a modal analysis making reference to the non-classically damped structural model. Some numerical applications conclude the paper