A note on optimal capital stock and financing constraints

There is a robust literature on the relationship between financing constraints and real investment. Little has been said on the relationship between financing constraints and capital stock in the long run. This note focuses on this last issue. To keep the model tractable, we assume that the firm employs a single input, and this input is used as collateral. We get three main results. Firstly, we show that the optimal capital stock chosen by a firm is affected by financing constraints even when they are slack at the current time. Secondly, we show that the net present value of the potentially constrained firm is always smaller than the one of the never constrained firm. Finally, we find that in the presence of latent financing constraints the firm does not limit itself to reducing its investment when the upper limit is reached. What it actually does is to lower its long run optimal capital stock, amplifying the effects of constraints in the long run

Experimental analysis of the station keeping response of a double-barge float-over system with an elastically scaled physical model

In this paper, an experimental investigation of the global response to waves relative to a newly developed float-over concept by TechnipFMC Rome Operating Center for transportation, installation and decommissioning of the off-shore platform topside is presented. A flexible scaled model of the float-over system was tested in the wave basin to determine the range of the sea-state conditions for which the response of the catamaran float-over is acceptable for mating operations. The present analysis is part of a more extensive experimental campaign which has involved also the use of a scaled rigid physical model (Dessi et al., 2016) and numerical simulations for which the collected data provide also a validation database

DATA DRIVEN AND MODEL-BASED VERTICAL SLOSHING REDUCED ORDER MODELS FOR AEROELASTIC ANALYSIS

A thorough understanding of the effects of sloshing on aircraft dynamic loads can be exploited for the future design of aircraft to be able to reduce their structural mass. Indeed, the high vertical accelerations caused by the vibrations of the structure can lead to the fragmentation of the fuel free surface. Fluid impacts on the tank roof are potentially a new source of damping for the structure that have hardly been considered before when computing the dynamic loads of the wings. This work aims at applying recently developed reduced-order models for vertical sloshing to a representative aeroelastic testbed, to investigate their effects on the wing’s response under pre-critical and post-critical conditions. The vertical sloshing dynamics is considered comparing three different reduced order models based, respectively, on neural networks, equivalent mechanical model, and surrogate model then integrated into the aeroelastic syste

In the eye of the storm : the Italian economy and the eurozone crisis

The eurozone crisis had a more significant and longer-lasting impact on Italy than on virtually any other member state, with the effects still visible a decade after. The extent of the shock was surprising in view of progress Italy had apparently made in the 1990s in terms of enhancing its capacity to meet the demands of European Monetary Union. The explanation for this traumatic economic experience lies in Italy’s deep, long-term, structural tensions which were placed under severe pressure during the 1990s and which were cracked open by the 2011 sovereign debt crisis. These have had long-standing economic effects as well as political ramifications in terms of a significant change in the Italy–EU relationship

Sustainability of grape-ethanol energy chain

The aim of this work is to evaluate the sustainability, in terms of greenhouse gases emission saving, of a new potential bio-ethanol production chain in comparison with the most common ones. The innovation consists of producing bio-ethanol from different types of no-food grapes, while usually bio-ethanol is obtained from matrices taken away from crop for food destination: sugar cane, corn, wheat, sugar beet. In the past, breeding programs were conducted with the aim of improving grapevine characteristics, a large number of hybrid vine varieties were produced and are nowadays present in the Viticulture Research Centre (CRA-VIT) Germplasm Collection. Some of them are potentially interesting for bio-energy production because of their high production of sugar, good resistance to diseases, and ability to grow in marginal lands. Life cycle assessment (LCA) of grape ethanol energy chain was performed following two different methods: i) using the spreadsheet BioGrace, developed within the Intelligent Energy Europe program to support and to ease the Renewable Energy Directive 2009/28/EC implementation; ii) using a dedicated LCA software. Emissions were expressed in CO2 equivalent (CO2eq). These two tools gave very similar results. The overall emissions impact of ethanol production from grapes on average is about 33 g CO2eq MJ–1 of ethanol if prunings are used for steam production and 53 g CO2eq MJ–1 of ethanol if methane is used. The comparison with other bio-energy chains points out that the production of ethanol using grapes represents an intermediate situation in terms of general emissions among the different production chains. The results showed that the sustainability limits provided by the normative are respected to this day. On the contrary, from 2017 this production will be sustainable only if the transformation processes will be performed using renewable sources of energy

Un peccato di omissione. Commento su Ciocca e Toniolo

Commento agli interventi di Ciocca e Toniol

The Economics of Imperfect Markets

This book is one of the final products of a research project on the effects of market imperfections on economic behavior and decisions. The project was put together by four Italian universities (Universit`a di Roma “Tor Vergata” and “La Sapienza” Universit` a Cattolica del Sacro Cuore – Piacenza and the Universit`a di Urbino “Carlo Bo”) in 2005 and funded by the Italian Ministry of Higher Education and Research for the period 2006–2007. The research title of the project “Corporate governance, financial systems and firms’ performances” was indicative of its agenda: to investigate the role of market imperfections and their interactions on firms’ decisions. In 2006 (May 12) the research group held the first conference at the Universit`a di Urbino where intermediate results were first presented and discussed with outstanding scholars from US, UK, and Italian universities, and the European Central Bank. The book reproduces the papers presented at the Universit`a di Roma “La Sapienza” conference (May 16–17 2008) and is organized in two parts. The first one discusses imperfections that are mainly related to the working of financial markets. The second part includes contributions which focus on different topics of real market imperfections. We wish to thank Steve Nickell, Philip Vermeulen and all the participants at the Urbino and Rome conferences who made both events extremely productive with their scientific contributions. We are especially grateful to Bob Chirinko who participated in both conferences and constantly encouraged us to carry out our scientific project on the economics of imperfect markets