Innovation and productivity in an S&T-intensive sector Information industries in Spain

This paper adds to the empirical literature on the relationships between R&D, innovation and productivity at the firm level. The focus is on Spanish enterprises in information industries, which are acknowledged to be at the forefront for both innovative activity and R&D performance

RIO country report 2015, Spain

The 2015 series of RIO Country Reports analyse and assess the policy and the national research and innovation system developments in relation to national policy priorities and the EU policy agenda with special focus on ERA and Innovation Unio

The role of school leadership on student achievement: Evidence from TIMSS2003

Leadership, and especially head-teachers’ leadership, has been object of study since the late ‘60s, but the concept of leadership is neither unanimously defined, nor a consensus has been yet reached on its actual role and actual relevance within the school environment (Fullan, 2001; Sergiovanni, 2001; Harris, 2005). Good leadership can certainly contribute to school improvement by abetting the motivation, participation, and coordination of the teachers; recent studies have widened the range of action of school leadership research to the various organizational levels: school managers, department heads, coordinators, teachers (Goldhaber, 2002; Harris, 2004), and distributed leadership that could yield a higher impact on student achievement than what yet shown (Spillane et al., 2001, 2004). This dissertation takes its moves within the strand of research that identifies a significant role of leadership for student achievement (e.g. Edmonds, 1979; Cheng, 2002; Marzano, 2003) and tries to understand whether there are patterns of behavior of head-teachers that yield better results than others with respect to facilitating the student learning process and whether such patterns are consistent or replicable across countries. To address this question, the study uses the TIMSS2003 and investigates the relationship between head-teacher time allocation and school characteristics, student background, and student achievement in 18 countries. The model used in the empirical analysis is a three level Multilevel Model with random effects (evaluated using the R-Statistics software) that aims at evaluating the interaction effect between a particular school level variable (the time used by the head-teacher in managerial or leadership activities) and the explanatory variables describing school and student characteristics. What the study shows is that head-teacher specialization (either in management or in leadership) has negligible direct effect on student achievement. Most of all, however, head-teacher specialization is correlated to a lower impact of family SES on student achievement. Moreover, by investigating the impact of school management and school leadership on student achievement on students with different family background in terms of education, it is apparent that the high concentrations of school leadership are especially valuable for students of lower SES. On the other hand, the high concentrations of school management are most valuable for the students of higher SES. One possible explanation of these effects is that the attentiveness to the leadership process implies a deep involvement of the head-teacher in activities related to the modeling and tailoring of the educational process to the needs of the students. Such process has its highest payoffs on the students who come from disadvantaged situations and need special attentions in order to fully express their potential. On the other hand, the focus on the managerial side aims at rationalizing and making the best use of resources. This approach has high payoffs on students of all extractions, but is specifically relevant for the students of higher SES who are possibly already quite independent and whose performance can improve autonomously by making use of the extra resources that the management can provide. The analysis replication of the analysis on a country-by-country level confirms the existence of the afore-mentioned effects. More specifically, the results of the analysis suggest that, in the majority of cases, the head-teacher specialization appears to be correlated to a significant reduction in the dependence of student results from their family socioeconomic status. The same effect can be identified for both Math and Science in most countries. Nonetheless, the identification of a specialization-effect does not say much about the reasons for its existence. One possible explanation is that head-teachers are professionals that try to use at its best the opportunities provided by the institutional setup of the school system. In the more decentralized school systems that leave to the schools responsibilities in terms of monetary sanctions/incentives (hiring and firing, salary upgrades…), the head-teachers would tend to make use of these opportunities and focus most on management activities. Vice versa, in more centralized school systems, which leave to the schools only responsibilities that do not involve a monetary side, the head-teachers would stress their roles as role-models, educators, and motivators for their staff and collaborators. Hence, the final part of the research investigates whether the effect of the declared head-teacher specialization appears to go in the same direction as it could be predicted by looking at the macro-level institutional characteristics of the school system. These data suggest that school leadership and school management do have an impact on student results. However, the variables that enter in the process of determining the head-teacher time allocation are too many for indicating any specific policy direction based on average country behaviors. Still, the specialization of head-teachers in leadership or management is related to significant turnouts in terms of reduced needs of the students to rely only on the family resources (family SES) for improving their performance. In policy terms, such results suggest the need of allowing for different managerial strategies that could exploit local knowledge leads to foster the system’s equity and excellence. The dissertation is organized in 4 chapter plus 2 appendixes. The first introductory chapter looks at the economic nature of the educational good, the importance of its dissemination, and what are some of the possible interaction schemes among the system actors. The second chapter dives in the concepts of school leadership and management by looking at how it has evolved in the past 40 years. Subsequently, it addresses the limitations of the studies that have tried to establish a link between school leadership and student achievement, suggests how these limits can be overcome by means of a more comprehensive definition of the concept and of more advanced statistical techniques. The third chapter presents the research project on the TIMSS2003 dataset, the operationalization of the variables, the model for the statistical analysis, and the results of the study. The fourth chapter further discusses the results by contextualizing them within the legal and operational frameworks of the analyzed educational systems, and it concludes by addressing the limitation of the study, the indications for further research, and the possible suggestions in terms of policy making. The first appendix presents in detail the statistics for all the countries under investigation. The second and last appendix shows the detailed results for the analytic models at aggregate level and reports the dispersion of the residuals for each modelpeer-reviewe

Reports of the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries CPUE for yellowfin tuna stock assessments (STECF-16-17) - Study

Commission Decision of 25 February 2016 setting up a Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries, C(2016) 1084, OJ C 74, 26.2.2016, p. 4–10. The Commission may consult the group on any matter relating to marine and fisheries biology, fishing gear technology, fisheries economics, fisheries governance, ecosystem effects of fisheries, aquaculture or similar disciplines. This report deals with 6.9. CPUE for yellowfin tuna stock assessments

Environmental assessment of bio-based chemicals in early-stage development: a review of methods and indicators

Climate change and fossil resource depletion are driving a transition to a bio-based economy, for which novel bio-based chemical processes need to be developed. The environmental performance of the novel bio-based chemicals should be assessed during their development, when the production process can still be adapted, although data availability is limited. Many environmental assessment methods applicable during product development ('early-stage methods') exist in the literature. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of these early-stage methods and to evaluate to what extent they are suitable for assessing bio-based chemicals in their early-stage development. The paper first describes the characteristics of early-stage chemical design and the environmental impacts of bio-based products based on published life cycle assessments. Low data requirements, the inclusion of climate change and energy indicators, and the inclusion of environmental impacts from biomass feedstock production are identified as three good-practice principles for early-stage assessment of bio-based chemicals. In the second step, 27 early-stage assessment methods are reviewed and categorized based on their scope and environmental indicators used. Finally, the reviewed methods are evaluated using the good-practice principles. A perfect early-stage method does not exist. However, choosing the most suitable method(s) based on the goal of an assessment and using complementary indicators leads to the most effective assessment for novel bio-based chemicals in development

New primary production in northwest European shelf seas, 1960–2003

Spatial and temporal patterns from 1960 to 2003 in annual potential new primary production (PNP) of the NW European shelf seas were derived from general additive models of nitrate concentrations and from data on riverine and atmospheric fluxes of oxidized nitrogen. Average PNP was highest in the seasonally stratified outer shelf regions (>70 gC m-2 yr-1), where the proportion of PNP accounted for by vertical fluxes from deep water (>65%) was correlated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index. PNP was lowest in the central North Sea (~30 gC m-2 yr-1) and in the southern North Sea was correlated with river inputs that accounted for 24% of the annual total (average ~50 gC m-2 yr-1). Atmospheric deposition accounted for ~3% of annual PNP region-wide, but in the northern North Sea this was higher than the contribution from rivers. Tidal fronts are traditionally considered to be highly productive zones, but we find them to have characteristically low PNP and conclude that they must be loci of high recycled production. The results indicate an exceptional flux of nitrate-rich ocean water onto the shelf in the early 1990s, which resulted in a pulse of PNP coincident with a well-documented 'regime shift' in the pelagic food web. North Sea-wide, long-term average PNP was approximately equal to production by all higher trophic levels combined, though trophic propagation of inter-annual variations was weakly defined. Nevertheless, there is a case for proposing that harvesting in areas and periods of low PNP should be managed more conservatively to minimize the risk of detrimental effects on the food web

ERAWATCH country report 2008 an assessment of research system and policies. Spain

The main objective of ERAWATCH country reports 2008 is to characterise and assess the performance of national research systems and related policies in a structured manner that is comparable across countries. The reports are produced for each EU Member State to support the mutual learning process..