Performance, IT maturity and offshoring behaviour of Italian manufacturing corporations in the dire straits of globalisation

This study examines productivity and profitability of Italian manufacturing corporations in relation to IT usage and offshoring of intermediate goods. The information set is based on a balanced panel of enterprises' economic accounts and foreign trade statistics for the years 2000-2004, linked to 2002 and 2004 surveys on ICT usage. The analytical framework is similar to one previously developed for Sweden, allowing for (partial) comparability. Offshoring is positively related to productivity, although the significance of intensity variables depends on employment size and industry. The same occurs for some variables of IT maturity (workers using PCs and a composite indicator), and for human resources as proxied by cost of labour (i.e. wage levels). These variables also show a positive impact on profitability, although limited to productions which are easy to outsource. Offshoring decisions and IT maturity, instead, do not present any strong mutual relation. The key issue of the direction of causality between IT maturity, offshoring and productivity is also tentatively addressed: lagged offshoring appears to weakly impact productivity, while lagged IT maturity does not, and a reverse causality from productivity to IT maturity is revealed. This first evidence, albeit limited, challenges some commonplaces, suggesting the coexistence of different business models. A richer information set should allow for a more appropriate treatment of these issues, as well as for extending the analysis to other, crucial determinants of performance.Firm behaviour, productivity, profitability, IT usage, offshoring, industrial studies, Manufacturing, Italian economy

Streamlining Microdata for the Analysis of ICT, Innovation and Performance

This report portrays the outcomes of the workshop Bridging microeconomic data sources for the analysis of ICT, innovation and performance organised by IPTS on the state of art in international micro-founded analyses on Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), R&D, innovation, and economic performance. Micro-level statistics allow to elicit the internal variability of productive systems. For this reason, they can be extremely useful for understanding industry and macro dynamics, as well as for policy design and monitoring. Nonetheless, large-scale application of these statistics is still limited for different reasons, mostly related to the availability of information. Against this background, the workshop aimed to provide a broad overview of completed and ongoing analyses at National, European and OECD levels, and also to share experiences and discuss proposals to address current issues and fully deploy the potential of micro-data. The studies presented covered the whole techno-economic paradigm related to ICTs, innovation and performance, including: factors determining the intensity and sophistication of ICT usage; its relationships with patterns of innovation and performance at firm and macroeconomic levels; the determinants of the EU-US gap in research and knowledge intensive activities; the role of entrepreneurship, and the capability of firms to grow. To this end, the studies used a number of sources in different combinations. Methodological issues addressed in the presentations and debate included: problems encountered when trying to enhance the potential of bridging micro-sources and possible solutions, interactions with macro data, complementary and non-official statistical sources; measurement of ICT-related activities and R&D across the economy, and the reconciliation of company information to BERD (business expenditure in R&D) statistics; the building of composite indicators and their effectiveness, etc. The report summarises experiences and views gathered and shared on these topics.JRC.DDG.J.4-Information Societ

PREDICT 2016 Country Factsheets: EU Member States – Purchasing Power Standard

The PREDICT 2016 EU Member States factsheets (Purchasing Power Standard) present essential statistical data regarding the performance of the EU ICT sector in each EU Member State, and their comparison to the EU average.JRC.B.6-Digital Econom

PREDICT 2016 Country factsheets: EU Member States – Benchmarking with Non-EU Countries

The PREDICT 2016 EU benchmarking factsheets present essential statistical data regarding the performance of the EU ICT sector in EU and 12 non-EU countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Japan, Korea, Norway, Russia, Switzerland, Taiwan, and the United States. The data is presented in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) to allow comparability.JRC.B.6-Digital Econom

RFID: Prospects for Europe: Item-level Tagging and Public Transportation

This report, which is part of the COMPLETE series of studies, investigates the current and future competitiveness of the European industry in RFID applications in general and in two specific cases: item-level tagging and public transportation. It analyses its constituent technologies, drivers and barriers to growth, actual and potential markets and economic impacts, the industrial position and innovative capabilities, and it concludes with policy implicationsJRC.DDG.J.4-Information Societ

Performance, IT maturity and offshoring behaviour of Italian manufacturing corporations in the dire straits of globalisation

This study examines productivity and profitability of Italian manufacturing corporations in relation to IT usage and offshoring of intermediate goods. The information set is based on a balanced panel of enterprises' economic accounts and foreign trade statistics for the years 2000-2004, linked to 2002 and 2004 surveys on ICT usage. The analytical framework is similar to one previously developed for Sweden, allowing for (partial) comparability. Offshoring is positively related to productivity, although the significance of intensity variables depends on employment size and industry. The same occurs for some variables of IT maturity (workers using PCs and a composite indicator), and for human resources as proxied by cost of labour (i.e. wage levels). These variables also show a positive impact on profitability, although limited to productions which are easy to outsource. Offshoring decisions and IT maturity, instead, do not present any strong mutual relation. The key issue of the direction of causality between IT maturity, offshoring and productivity is also tentatively addressed: lagged offshoring appears to weakly impact productivity, while lagged IT maturity does not, and a reverse causality from productivity to IT maturity is revealed. This first evidence, albeit limited, challenges some commonplaces, suggesting the coexistence of different business models. A richer information set should allow for a more appropriate treatment of these issues, as well as for extending the analysis to other, crucial determinants of performance

Performance, IT maturity and offshoring behaviour of Italian manufacturing corporations in the dire straits of globalisation

This study examines productivity and profitability of Italian manufacturing corporations in relation to IT usage and offshoring of intermediate goods. The information set is based on a balanced panel of enterprises' economic accounts and foreign trade statistics for the years 2000-2004, linked to 2002 and 2004 surveys on ICT usage. The analytical framework is similar to one previously developed for Sweden, allowing for (partial) comparability. Offshoring is positively related to productivity, although the significance of intensity variables depends on employment size and industry. The same occurs for some variables of IT maturity (workers using PCs and a composite indicator), and for human resources as proxied by cost of labour (i.e. wage levels). These variables also show a positive impact on profitability, although limited to productions which are easy to outsource. Offshoring decisions and IT maturity, instead, do not present any strong mutual relation. The key issue of the direction of causality between IT maturity, offshoring and productivity is also tentatively addressed: lagged offshoring appears to weakly impact productivity, while lagged IT maturity does not, and a reverse causality from productivity to IT maturity is revealed. This first evidence, albeit limited, challenges some commonplaces, suggesting the coexistence of different business models. A richer information set should allow for a more appropriate treatment of these issues, as well as for extending the analysis to other, crucial determinants of performance

Composite and decomposable indicators for evaluating RIA systems in practice: proposals for discussion and testing

This paper proposes a first attempt for the development of a statistical tool where basic measures and/or tests (i.e. individual indicators) are organised and grouped in composite indices addressing different dimensions within Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA). The latter can be variously combined, resulting also in more general, synthetic indicators, preserving the components’ constituent elements. Due to current limitations in information availability, weights for aggregation are left undetermined in practice; the same reason impacts on selection of elementary indicators and the shape of composites, so that appropriate methodologies ought to be applied to get to a fully operational stage. A derived frame is also proposed, limited to a monetary perspective on the overall performance of RIA national systems, by means of a handful of key indicators which are less dependent on issues of aggregatio

Composite and decomposable indicators for evaluating RIA systems in practice: proposals for discussion and testing

This paper proposes a first attempt for the development of a statistical tool where basic measures and/or tests (i.e. individual indicators) are organised and grouped in composite indices addressing different dimensions within Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA). The latter can be variously combined, resulting also in more general, synthetic indicators, preserving the components’ constituent elements. Due to current limitations in information availability, weights for aggregation are left undetermined in practice; the same reason impacts on selection of elementary indicators and the shape of composites, so that appropriate methodologies ought to be applied to get to a fully operational stage. A derived frame is also proposed, limited to a monetary perspective on the overall performance of RIA national systems, by means of a handful of key indicators which are less dependent on issues of aggregatio

An Optimal Control Approach to Learning in SIDARTHE Epidemic model

The COVID-19 outbreak has stimulated the interest in the proposal of novel epidemiological models to predict the course of the epidemic so as to help planning effective control strategies. In particular, in order to properly interpret the available data, it has become clear that one must go beyond most classic epidemiological models and consider models that, like the recently proposed SIDARTHE, offer a richer description of the stages of infection. The problem of learning the parameters of these models is of crucial importance especially when assuming that they are time-variant, which further enriches their effectiveness. In this paper we propose a general approach for learning time-variant parameters of dynamic compartmental models from epidemic data. We formulate the problem in terms of a functional risk that depends on the learning variables through the solutions of a dynamic system. The resulting variational problem is then solved by using a gradient flow on a suitable, regularized functional. We forecast the epidemic evolution in Italy and France. Results indicate that the model provides reliable and challenging predictions over all available data as well as the fundamental role of the chosen strategy on the time-variant parameters.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure