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.

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.

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

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

Customer e-Loyalty in Online Retailing: Testing a Measurement Scale

Research aim: In recent years, the interest for the activities aimed to nurture a strong relationship among retailers and their customers have increasingly intensified, especially in digital environments. Recently those activities have seen their relevance increased by the growing positive impact of COVID-19 pandemic on online retailing. Working on existing customers rather than capturing new ones is the new imperative for retailers, even if we refer to online platforms, obviously without underestimating the acquisition attempts of new customers. The aim of this study is to test a conceptual model of measurement for Customers e-Loyalty (CeL) in digital context in order to evaluate its impacts on digital retailers (e-commerce retailers, e-banking retailers, e-service providers). Methodology: it has been adopted a component-based Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) on a sample of Italian digital users, who makes online purchases prevalently on Amazon in order to test the CeL scale of measurement as a conceptual (meta) model. A structured questionnaire has been administered online to the consumers through Google Forms. Findings: The study has permitted to get some counterintuitive evidence related to the process of formation of customer loyalty in digital context. The trust isn’t a determinant of CeL and the affective loyalty doesn’t impact any of the elementary dimension of CeL, nor impacts on conative loyalty. Finally, the model has been able to better capture the impact of the individual dimensions of CeL on its outcomes (price sensitiveness, intentional SOW, e-WOM). Theoretical implication and originality: Propose a reliable customer e-loyalty measurement scale in online retailing. The statistical assessment of this conceptual model will permit, in the middle term, also to measure the CeL in several other retailing industries. Furthermore, in a next step, this investigation, could be extended to other geographical settings. Managerial Implication: the better understanding of the relationships among the latent variables and outcomes in the model might encourage the online retailers to figure out appropriate course of actions to win customers’ commitment and satisfaction and to provide better services in order to create a loyal customer base in a digital context

A branch and bound approach for the design of decentralized supervisors in Petri net models

The paper addresses the design of compact and maximally permissive decentralized supervisors for Petri nets, based on generalized mutual exclusion constraints. Decentralization constraints are formulated with respect to the net transitions, instructing each local supervisor to detect and disable transitions of its own control site only. A solution is characterized in terms of the states it allows and its feasibility is assessed by means of two separate tests, one checking the required behavioral properties (e.g., liveness, reversibility and controllability) of the induced reachability subgraph and the other ensuring the existence of a decentralized supervisor enforcing exactly the considered set of allowed states. The second test employs an integer linear programming formulation. Maximal permissivity is ensured by efficiently exploring the solution space using a branch and bound method that operates on the reachable states. Particular emphasis is posed on the obtainment of the controllability property, both in the structural and the behavioral interpretation

Automata for specifying and orchestrating service contracts

An approach to the formal description of service contracts is presented in terms of automata. We focus on the basic property of guaranteeing that in the multi-party composition of principals each of them gets his requests satisfied, so that the overall composition reaches its goal. Depending on whether requests are satisfied synchronously or asynchronously, we construct an orchestrator that at static time either yields composed services enjoying the required properties or detects the principals responsible for possible violations. To do that in the asynchronous case we resort to Linear Programming techniques. We also relate our automata with two logically based methods for specifying contracts

From Orchestration to Choreography through Contract Automata

We study the relations between a contract automata and an interaction model. In the former model, distributed services are abstracted away as automata - oblivious of their partners - that coordinate with each other through an orchestrator. The interaction model relies on channel-based asynchronous communication and choreography to coordinate distributed services. We define a notion of strong agreement on the contract model, exhibit a natural mapping from the contract model to the interaction model, and give conditions to ensure that strong agreement corresponds to well-formed choreography.Comment: In Proceedings ICE 2014, arXiv:1410.701

The reconstructive role of TachoSil in neurosurgery

Hemorrhages, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) fistula and infections are the most challenging post-operative complications in Neurosurgery [1–5]. Fibrin sealant agents have been developed with the aim to provide efficient hemostasis and safe dural closure [3,6–14]. In this study we report our initial experience using TachoSil® (haemostatic surgical patch; Nycomed, Linz, Austria) in achieving hemostasis and CSF leakage repair during cranio-cerebral procedures [15–18]. We describe and show the unique features of this fibrin sealant, pioneered with stunning success in many surgical procedures known to be at high risk of peri- and postoperative bleeding (i.e. nephrectomies, pulmonary lobectomies, ballistic injuries, arthroplasties, coronary bypass graftings), but still not widely exploited at its best in the field of Neurosurgery