Land Use Change Impacts of Biofuels: Near-VAR Evidence from the US

The present paper studies the land use change impacts of fuels and biofuels. We test the theoretical hypothesis, which says that changes in fuel prices cause changes in land use both directly and indirectly and, because of price inter-dependencies, biofuels reinforce the land use change impacts. Our data consists of yearly observations extending from 1950 to 2007 for the US, to which we apply time-series analytical mechanisms of five major traded agricultural commodities, the area of cultivated agricultural land and crude oil price. The empirical findings confirm that markets for crude oil and cultivated agricultural land are interdependent: an increase in oil price by 1 dollar/barrel increases land use between 54 and 68 thousand hectares. We also find that the rise of bioenergy sector accelerates land use change in the US.Near-VAR, energy, bioenergy, prices, land use, biofuel support policies.

Human Capital, R&D and Productivity Convergence of European Regions. A spatial analysis of RHOMOLO's semi endogenous growth approach.

The aim of the paper is to test the Benhabib and Spiegel (2005) productivity (TFP) catch-up framework on European regions. Differences in the stock of human capital across regions are hypothesized to be the cause of differences in the speed by which follower regions converge and catch-up with the technology frontier. We find robust empirical evidence for this hypothesis. Also, we find evidence of complementarities between R&D expenditures and human capital accumulation for which R&D impacts TFP growth as long as a critical mass for the stock of human capital is reached. The results are robust to sectoral disaggregations and to the choice of a country or sectoral specific leader in the TFP gap computation and to control for spatial dependence across European regions

Land Use Change Impacts of Biofuels: Near-VAR Evidence from the US

The present paper studies the land use change impacts of fuels and biofuels. We test the theoretical hypothesis, which says that changes in fuel prices cause changes in land use both directly and indirectly and, because of price inter-dependencies, biofuels reinforce the land use change impacts. Our data consists of yearly observations extending from 1950 to 2007 for the US, to which we apply time-series analytical mechanisms of five major traded agricultural commodities, the area of cultivated agricultural land and crude oil price. The empirical findings confirm that markets for crude oil and cultivated agricultural land are interdependent: an increase in oil price by 1 dollar/barrel increases land use between 54 and 68 thousand hectares. We also find that the rise of bioenergy sector accelerates land use change in the US

Macroeconomic Dynamics in Four Selected New Member States of the EU

In this paper, we employ a block structured near-vector autoregression in order to compare the reactions to euro-area shocks in four New Member States (Bulgaria, Hungary, Czech Republic and Romania) and in the Old Member State of the EU. Thanks to the methodology adopted we also study the effects of national economic policies and their reactions to national shocks in each New Member State. Our analysis highlights that possible asymmetric effects of the ECB's monetary policy cannot be excluded and that the potential accession of the New Member States may increase the level of fiscal indiscipline in the eurozone

Direct and indirect effects of R&D cooperation on the innovation of Italian firms

Firm innovation capacity depends not only on internal capabilities, but also on external expertise and knowledge acquired through cooperation. This paper analyzes direct and indirect effect of R&D cooperation on the innovation of Italian firms. Using a multivariate probit model to account for the complementarity of four different types of innovation activity and the heterogeneity in the choice of cooperation partners, we find strong and positive direct effects of collaborations with some non-competitive partners (suppliers, clients, private research institutes and consultants). Also R&D cooperation with competitors shows a relevant direct effect on firm innovation. On the contrary, collaborations with university have weaker effects; this could perhaps be due to the short-term perspective adopted in the study. These findings suggest that it is important to look at the specific type of R&D collaborations because they have a different impact on the success of innovative activities. On the other hand, indirect effects are scant and restricted to cooperation with some non-competitive partners. Such a result suggests that absorptive capacity of firms and R&D spillovers are quite weak in Italian context. Lastly, firm size and sector-specific features also affect innovation propensity

Innovation Radar: Identifying Innovations and Innovators with High Potential in ICT FP7, CIP & H2020 Projects

The European Commission's Framework Programme constitutes an important share in R&D expenditures in Europe. A number of FP7 projects certainly produce cutting-edge technologies and a significant percentage of these technologies could be commercialized. However, there is a general feeling that not all these technologies and innovations with commercial potential reach the market. The question is why? The Innovation Radar (IR) is a support initiative that focuses on the identification of high-potential innovations in the ICT FP7, CIP and H2020 projects and the key organization in delivering these innovations to the market. The current report documents the details of the IR methodology and the results of its first application. The results of the pilot exercise show that ICT FP7 projects deliver a substantial number of innovations. On average, there are nearly two new or substantially improved products or services developed within each ICT FP7 project. However, further nurturing is needed to bring them to the market and exploit their commercial potential.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

Public Capital in the Private Sector of Italian Economy

This paper investigates how the services of public capital affect the different sectors of private economy in Italy. For this purpose, we use a trans-logarithmic cost function which includes infrastructure’s services as a quasi-fixed free input. This approach allows to measure the effects of public capital in terms of cost reduction, productivity and distortion in the use of private inputs of production. We find that that the effects vary across industries and that major benefits are observed in Manufacturing and Energy. The sectors that obtain less benefits are Trade and Transport

From a rise in B to a fall in C? Environmental impact of biofuels

This is the first paper that econometrically estimates the impact of the rising Bioenergy production on the global CO2 emissions. We apply a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) approach to time series with annual observation for the world biofuel production and global CO2 emissions from 1961 to 2009. We find that in the medium- to long-run biofuels significantly reduce global CO2 emissions: the CO2 emission elasticities with respect to biofuels range between -0.57 and -0.80. In the short-run, however, biofuels may increase CO2 emissions temporarily (elasticity 0.57). Our findings complement those of life-cycle assessment and simulation models. However, by employing a more holistic approach and obtaining more robust estimates of environmental impact of biofuels, our results are particularly valuable for policy makers

Two-Year clinical outcomes after coronary bifurcation stenting in older patients from Korea and Italy

BackgroundOlder patients who treated by percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) are at a higher risk of adverse cardiac outcomes. We sought to investigate the clinical impact of bifurcation PCI in older patients from Korea and Italy.MethodsWe selected 5,537 patients who underwent bifurcation PCI from the BIFURCAT (comBined Insights from the Unified RAIN and COBIS bifurcAtion regisTries) database. The primary outcome was a composite of target vessel myocardial infarction, clinically driven target lesion revascularization, and stent thrombosis at two years.ResultsIn patients aged ≥75 years, the mean age was 80.1 ± 4.0 years, 65.2% were men, and 33.7% had diabetes. Older patients more frequently presented with chronic kidney disease (CKD), severe coronary calcification, and left main coronary artery disease (LMCA). During a median follow-up of 2.1 years, older patients showed similar adverse clinical outcomes compared to younger patients (the primary outcome, 5.7% vs. 4.5%; p = 0.21). Advanced age was not an independent predictor of the primary outcome (p = 0.93) in overall patients. Both CKD and LMCA were independent predictors regardless of age group.ConclusionsOlder patients (≥75 years) showed similar clinical outcomes to those of younger patients after bifurcation PCI. Advanced age alone should not deter physicians from performing complex PCIs for bifurcation disease