Go West: The Western Balkans towards European integration

When we talk about the Balkans we think of war, suffering, ethnic cleansing and hatred. And up to a rather recent point in time this was not a misleading idea. Unfortunately, this has been the reality in the Balkans. If one tries to imagine the map of the European Union in 2007 something would come in front of the eyes. An area in the Balkan Peninsula washed by the Adriatic Sea and circulated by Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovenia, all of them EU Member States. The Union has already coined a brand new name for this area, the “Western Balkans”. The principal aim of this work is to introduce the reader to this region. It is a rich mixture of civilisations and ethnic groups, with affiliations to Christianity, both Orthodox and Catholic, and Islam and cultural influences ranging from Roman, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian to Greek and Italian. Who are the Albanians, the Croats, the Serbs, the Macedonians, the Montenegrins and the Bosniaks, and how many of them live in the Western Balkans? Which is their origin and what languages do they speak? This work tries to answer all these questions. An overview of the economy, with a particular attention to the Foreign Direct Investments, is then given. The size of the economy of the region or the GDP is around EUR 50 billion with Croatia being the largest economy. The area grows faster than the rest of Europe. Nevertheless it, with the exception of Croatia, remains among the poorest in the continent. The EU has in several moments sustained the idea that a future enlargement process will welcome these countries in the family. It has put in place the Stabilization and Association Process as a long-term policy tool in order to facilitate and help the WB tackle the challenges of reforming democratic institutions, promoting the development and combating corruption, ethnic violence, poverty and social exclusion. CARDS is the financial arm of this policy. The perspective of the region to join the EU within the present decade however, seems rather unrealistic. Nevertheless, to avoid that the gap between the Western Balkans and their neighbours and the Europe grow wider the EU should include the WB countries in the scheme of pre-accession financial assistance and, moreover, consider them as full Candidate Countries when they conclude a Stabilisation and Association Agreement.Balkans; Ethnic groups; EU Accession; Socio economic development;

Il territorio ascolano e le sue dinamiche demografiche

In this paper we deal with the territorial dynamics of the population in the province of Ascoli Piceno and its evolution over time. After a brief introduction, which concerns the recent institutional change due to the birth of the province of Fermo, we will offer an overview of its structure by age, gender and ethnic composition (section 1.2). Migration has taken on a major relevance on the territory of the province of Ascoli Piceno. Therefore, a separate section (1.3) is dedicated to this phenomenon

The demographic dynamics and the territory of Ascoli Piceno

In this paper we deal with the territorial dynamics of the population in the province of Ascoli Piceno and its evolution over time. After a brief introduction, which concerns the recent institutional change due to the birth of the province of Fermo, we will offer an overview of its structure by age, gender and ethnic composition (section 1.2). Migration has taken on a major relevance on the territory of the province of Ascoli Piceno. Therefore, a separate section (1.3) is dedicated to this phenomenon.Regional Development; Migration;

Italy-Albania The migrant as a bridge between two homelands: The role of remittances

After eighteen years of mass migration of the Albanian population, primarily to Greece and Italy, a question arises. May migrants become potential agents of socio-economic development in their country of origin? This paper focuses on the role and the importance of remittances and their use in Albania through a survey of 400 Albanian immigrants, legally residing in the Marche and Apulia regions in Italy, conducted in the period May - September 2007. Simultaneously, we carried out family surveys of 200 households that had at least one member working abroad. This survey was conducted in rural and urban areas of the Vlorë region in Albania. We build on the theory of “New Economics of Labour Migration” which considers remittances as the core of migrants’ strategy and a link between the socio-economic context in the country of origin and that in the host country. Our findings show that remittances are related, on the one hand, to the family links in the country of origin (but for relatively small amounts, usually decreasing in time). On the other hand, remittances are strongly related to investments in Albania. There emerges the image of a migrant “suspended between two shores”, who, independently from any future migratory project, would like to maintain links with both Albania and Italy, becoming a factor of Albania’s development thanks to their investments and human and social capital.migration, survey, remittance, investment, development

Relaciones laborales entre inventores y generación de conocimiento: un estudio sobre innovación patentada

This study explores the knowledge-creation process that arises from inventors’ working relationships and its impact on company innovation. Innovation is measured by a company’s patenting activities. Our analysis is based on an original database built using OECD micro data obtained from patent applications at the European Patent Office (EPO). An empirical analysis was carried out on a body of firms located in the Italian region of Veneto. Our results reveal that the inventors’ working relationships have a significant impact on a company’s innovation – innovation which is also dependent upon both geography and timescales. Inventors’ working relationships thus produce productivity effects, in terms of patenting activity, both in the short and long term and these impacts are also dependent upon geographical distance. Keywords: working relationships; knowledge creation; patenting activity; inventor productivity.Este estudio explora el proceso de generación de conocimiento que surge de las relaciones laborales entre inventores y su impacto en la innovación empresarial. La innovación se mide por la cantidad de patentes de una empresa. Nuestro análisis parte de una base de datos propia construida a partir de micro datos de la OECD obtenida a partir de solicitudes de patentes en la Oficina Europea de Patentes (EPO). Se realiza un análisis empírico sobre un grupo de empresas ubicadas en la región italiana de Véneto. Nuestros resultados revelan que las relaciones laborales entre inventores tienen un impacto significativo en la innovación empresarial, innovación que también depende tanto de la geografía como de la dimensión temporal. Las relaciones laborales entre inventores, por tanto, tienen un efecto sobre la productividad en términos de patentes, tanto a corto como a largo plazo, y este impacto depende también de la distancia geográfica

Go West: The Western Balkans towards European integration

When we talk about the Balkans we think of war, suffering, ethnic cleansing and hatred. And up to a rather recent point in time this was not a misleading idea. Unfortunately, this has been the reality in the Balkans. If one tries to imagine the map of the European Union in 2007 something would come in front of the eyes. An area in the Balkan Peninsula washed by the Adriatic Sea and circulated by Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovenia, all of them EU Member States. The Union has already coined a brand new name for this area, the “Western Balkans”. The principal aim of this work is to introduce the reader to this region. It is a rich mixture of civilisations and ethnic groups, with affiliations to Christianity, both Orthodox and Catholic, and Islam and cultural influences ranging from Roman, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian to Greek and Italian. Who are the Albanians, the Croats, the Serbs, the Macedonians, the Montenegrins and the Bosniaks, and how many of them live in the Western Balkans? Which is their origin and what languages do they speak? This work tries to answer all these questions. An overview of the economy, with a particular attention to the Foreign Direct Investments, is then given. The size of the economy of the region or the GDP is around EUR 50 billion with Croatia being the largest economy. The area grows faster than the rest of Europe. Nevertheless it, with the exception of Croatia, remains among the poorest in the continent. The EU has in several moments sustained the idea that a future enlargement process will welcome these countries in the family. It has put in place the Stabilization and Association Process as a long-term policy tool in order to facilitate and help the WB tackle the challenges of reforming democratic institutions, promoting the development and combating corruption, ethnic violence, poverty and social exclusion. CARDS is the financial arm of this policy. The perspective of the region to join the EU within the present decade however, seems rather unrealistic. Nevertheless, to avoid that the gap between the Western Balkans and their neighbours and the Europe grow wider the EU should include the WB countries in the scheme of pre-accession financial assistance and, moreover, consider them as full Candidate Countries when they conclude a Stabilisation and Association Agreement

Human capital, technology intensity, and growth in a regional context

In this study, we develop an empirical analysis of the pattern of growth in one of the Italian best performing regions\u2014the Veneto region\u2014focusing mainly on the role played by human capital employed in sectors with different technological intensities. To do so, we build up an original dataset by merging data available at a very local level (Local Labour Systems-LLS) with our elaborations on data from an employee-employer dataset made available by the Local Labour Agency. The latter dataset includes all employment spells in the Veneto region. This original datasets are used to construct aggregate variables and to estimate growth equations for the cross-section of the Venetian LLSs. The results underline how growth in the Veneto region is positively affected by human capital employed in medium and medium-low technology industries

Porto Marghera and the Industrial Ecology Challenge: Why it did not become an Eco-Industrial Park

A set of factors facilitate the role of Eco-Industrial Parks in addressing the many environmental challenges arising with economic development: among such factors the local context in which the EIP is embedded, i.e. the cohesion of the community, the cooperation among actors, the proximity and the adaptability, as well as the global context and economic phase play a major role. EIPs’ evolution process is path-dependent, hence also history and choices made in the past as well as the context of the industrial sector are very important in determining their success. We study the industrial area of Venice, namely Porto Marghera, as a showcase, in order to understand how history can twist the evolution of an industrial area and determine its destiny. The analysis covers Industrial Symbiosis leverage factors, as well as the local, national and international context drivers that, over time, promoted or hindered the development and evolution of the area. We show how, due to the action of such multiple factors, such large and major Italian industrial area presenting just few years ago characteristics that could have favoured its development as an EIP, resulted eventually in a failure and the closing down of the most relevant economic activities supporting the functioning of the EIP itself. Context factors and single specific shocks, related to local issues as well as to the global, regional, and national scale, shifted the evolutionary path of a well-integrated EIP, even though the technical and internal characteristics of the industrial area were in place

Knowledge externalities and knowledge creation: the role of inventors’ working relationships and mobility

We study the transmission of tacit knowledge arising from working relationships established by inventors and its impact on firms’ knowledge creation. First, we consider knowledge spillovers that originate through inventor working relationships that are not the result of collaboration agreements among patenting firms. Second, we analyse their effect on the creation of new knowledge as measured by companies’ patenting activity. The study focuses on the role played by geographical proximity. The analysis was carried out on the population of firms located in the Italian region of Veneto and is based upon the original OECD REGPAT database that records all patenting applications at EPO