Assessing the Competitive Behaviour of Firms in the Single Market: A Micro-based Approach

This Report analyses and compares a number of indicators related to the evolution of the competitive behaviour of firms in the Single Market, from 1999 to 2007, in a selected number of both manufacturing and services industries and eight EU countries: Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain and Sweden. A novelty of the approach is that the analysis is derived from firm-level observable data, which allow to grasp not only information on the average changes taking place in each industry and across countries, but also the distribution and sources of these changes in terms of individual firms' pricing behaviour and market shares, an information which is impossible to gather in detail from aggregate, traditional sector-level measure

No Shoneen: Gaelic Games and the Athletic Hero in the Irish Periodical Press

Overview of my PhD thesi

Assessing the Competitive Behaviour of Firms in the Single Market: A Micro-based Approach

This Report analyses and compares a number of indicators related to the evolution of the competitive behaviour of firms in the Single Market, from 1999 to 2007, in a selected number of both manufacturing and services industries and eight EU countries: Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain and Sweden. A novelty of the approach is that the analysis is derived from firm-level observable data, which allow to grasp not only information on the average changes taking place in each industry and across countries, but also the distribution and sources of these changes in terms of individual firms' pricing behaviour and market shares, an information which is impossible to gather in detail from aggregate, traditional sector-level measure

Against British Influences: Home Rule and the Autonomy of Irish Popular Culture in Ireland’s Juvenile Periodicals

This paper aims to analyse a largely uncharted topic, i.e. the representation of Ireland’s struggle for political and cultural self-determination in the nationalist press for Irish youth. In particular, I will examine four papers (Our Boys, Fianna, Young Ireland, and St. Enda’s), which represented the various nuances within the ranks of Irish nationalism. Combining literary and historical interests, I will devote my attention to the editorials and literary contributions published in the 1910s and 1920s to illustrate how these juvenile periodicals engaged their readership in a discussion on the necessity of Home Rule and Ireland’s cultural independence. Textual attention to the rhetorical and literary strategies adopted by the contributors helps to expose the nuances and shifts in the Irish nationalists’ view on the issue, and how nationalist ideas were repackaged for a youthful audience. Moreover, since the four papers were meant as home-grown substitutes for the examples of British popular culture such as the Boys’ Own Paper, their analysis will cast light on the nationalists’ yearning for the development and success of truly Irish popular culture among the youngsters. The Irish periodicals waged a battle against their British counterparts — a battle which Ireland’s youth was incited to fight

The Past Contains a Promise of Regeneration: Narratives of Ireland’s Future in Early-Twentieth-Century Juvenile Periodicals

This article investigates the popular periodicals for juveniles Our Boys, Fianna, Young Ireland and St. Enda’s, which were cherished by Irish nationalists as home-grown substitutes for the alienating British story papers in the Ireland of the early twentieth century. With Ireland still under British rule, these periodicals were concerned about the role of youths in the context of nation-building and my contention is that the people involved in such editorial enterprises viewed them as potentially transformative forces of society, which not only harnessed the power of the idea of political upheaval, but also forged the agents who were to build the envisioned free Irelands. Contributing to the definition of an appropriate ‘post-independence’ national identity, they thus offered to the young visions of the future nation that predicated its legitimacy upon an appeal to the past and the appreciation of traditions. At the same time, young readers were presented with exemplary models of Irish citizenship drawn from Irish heritage of myths and histories. Hence, through the close scrutiny of primary texts from the crucial 1914–23 years, my objective is to show how the future Irelands first imagined and narrated in the periodicals would find their roots in the past and draw energies and strength from the nation’s cultural heritage

Assessing the Competitive Behaviour of Firms in the Single Market: A Micro-based Approach

This Report analyses and compares a number of indicators related to the evolution of the competitive behaviour of firms in the Single Market, from 1999 to 2007, in a selected number of both manufacturing and services industries and eight EU countries: Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain and Sweden. A novelty of the approach is that the analysis is derived from firm-level observable data, which allow to grasp not only information on the average changes taking place in each industry and across countries, but also the distribution and sources of these changes in terms of individual firms' pricing behaviour and market shares, an information which is impossible to gather in detail from aggregate, traditional sector-level measures.european union,eu,setzer,wolff,van den Noord,euro area,money,heterogeneity,money holdings

Institutional Transplant and Cultural Proximity: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Prussia

The economic impact of an institutional transplant depends on the underlying cultural envi-ronment of the receiving country. This paper provides the first evidence that the positive effect of importing good institutions cancels out when the receiving territories are characterized by cultural traits in conflict with those embedded in the imported institutions. We obtain this result using county-level data from late nineteenth-century Prussia. This environment allows us to exploit both the quasi-natural experiment generated by the radical Napoleonic institutional reforms and the deeply rooted cultural heterogeneity across Prussian counties. First, using religious affiliation as a proxy of cultural commonality, we find no effect of French institutions in Protestant areas. Then, using hand-collected data on pre-Napoleonic reigns we show that kingdoms with stronger ties to French culture exhibit a more effective transplant even when controlling for institutional proximity. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that cultural compatibility between the country exporting the institution and the receiving areas is a significant determinant of a successful transplant

Institutional transplant and cultural proximity:Evidence from nineteenth-century Prussia

This article presents evidence that cultural proximity between the exporting and the receiving countries positively affects the adoption of new institutions and the resulting long-term economic outcomes. We obtain this result by combining new information on pre-Napoleonic principalities with county-level census data from nineteenth-century Prussia. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment generated by radical Napoleonic institutional reforms and the deeply rooted cultural heterogeneity across Prussian counties. We show that institutional reforms in counties that are culturally more similar to France, in terms of religious affiliation, generate better long-term economic performance

Enhancing creativity through Biological Stimuli during new products ideation

The development of new and innovative products consists in a competitive advantage, allowing companies to overcome competitors, maintain or even increase its market share. As the product development cycle is shortening, a greater effort is required at the ideation of new technologies and products. In this context, the bio-inspired design has been receiving attention as a creativity strengthening method. However, the majority of methods and tools proposed in this field present biological stimuli in the form of literature extracts, requiring a great cognitive effort from the design teams in abstracting principles to generate ideas. In this paper a systematic approach to biological stimuli development is presented, as well as its contribution during the ideation process. An experiment was conducted on the context of a product design course. As result, it was evidenced that the biological stimulators contributed to the increase of the ideas\u27 utility and variety, favoring the innovation process

Robust 24 Hours ahead Forecast in a Microgrid: A Real Case Study

Forecasting the power production from renewable energy sources (RESs) has become fundamental in microgrid applications to optimize scheduling and dispatching of the available assets. In this article, a methodology to provide the 24 h ahead Photovoltaic (PV) power forecast based on a Physical Hybrid Artificial Neural Network (PHANN) for microgrids is presented. The goal of this paper is to provide a robust methodology to forecast 24 h in advance the PV power production in a microgrid, addressing the specific criticalities of this environment. The proposed approach has to validate measured data properly, through an effective algorithm and further refine the power forecast when newer data are available. The procedure is fully implemented in a facility of the Multi-Good Microgrid Laboratory (MG(Lab)(2)) of the Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, where new Energy Management Systems (EMSs) are studied. Reported results validate the proposed approach as a robust and accurate procedure for microgrid applications