360 research outputs found
Evaluating the Effect of Public Subsidies on firm R&D activity: an Application to Italy Using the Community Innovation Survey
WP 09/2008; The aim of the paper is twofold: to verify a full policy failure of public support on private R&D effort, when in presence of a potential plurality of public incentives; to compare the most recent econometric methods used for the analysis of the input additionality. Compared to previous studies our work wants to trace out an advance in two directions: adding more robustness by comparing results from various econometric techniques and providing an analysis of the R&D policy effect behind the average results. A by-product of the paper is a taxonomy of the econometric methods used in the literature, according to the structure of the models, the type of dataset and the available policy information. We exploit the third wave of the Community Innovation Survey for Italy (1998-2000) with a sample size of 1,221 supported and 1,319 non-supported firms. Given the used type of data, the article presents two main limits: first, we do not know the level of the subsidy, so that we can control only for the presence of a total crowding-out; second, we can check only the short-run effect of the supporting policy, while an increase in the private R&D effort could be more likely in the medium term. Our results suggest that: 1. the main factors influencing the probability to participate to the incentive policy are R&D experience, human skills, liquidity constraints, but also foreign capital ownership; 2. on average, the total substitution of private funding by the public one is excluded for Italy as a whole, although some cases of total crowding-out are found: low knowledge intensive services, very small firms (10-19 employees) and the auto-vehicle industry. We get, on average, 885 additional thousand Euros of R&D expenditure per firm with a ratio equal to 4.62: it means that if a generic control unit does 1 thousand Euros of R&D expenditure a matched treated does 4.62 thousand Euros. The additionality for the R&D intensity is about 0.014 with a ratio of about 2.67
Measuring Intersectoral Knowledge Spillovers: an Application of Sensitivity Analysis to Italy
R&D spillovers are unanimously considered as one of the main driving forces of technical change, innovation and economic growth. This paper aims at measuring inter-industrial R&D spillovers, as a useful information for policy-makers. We apply an āuncertainty-sensitivity analysisā to the Italian input-output table of intermediate goods split into 31 economic sectors for the year 2000. The value added of using this methodology is the opportunity of distinguishing (separately) between spillover effects induced by productive linkages (the Leontiev forward multipliers) and those activated by R&D investments, capturing also the uncertain and non-linear nature of the relations between spillovers and factors affecting them.R&D spillovers, Input-output models, Sensitivity analysis, Monte Carlo simulations
Government R&D funding: new approaches in the allocation policies for public and private beneficiaries
The objective of this paper is to perform a first experiment of quantitative assessment on changes in allocation mechanisms and in their underlying delegation models, using the quantitative information and the descriptions of national funding systems produced in the PRIME project funding activity. Delegation has been explored through changes in instrument portfolios and in evaluation modes, as proofs of an evolution in research governance. Some common trends can be identified: the reinforcing of both priority setting and peer review processes. The general result of our analysis is that some change in delegation modes took place, but there is not a simple transition from one delegation regime to another, while a "contract" delegation model (the NPM reform) is not detectable through project funding analysis.R/D funding, allocation policy, project funding, research governance, evaluation modes, delegation models
Heterogeneity of innovation strategies and firmsā performance
This work deals with two main issues: first, the possibility of identifying differences in firm economic returns (operating profit margins) for different groups of innovation strategy and second, the possibility of checking for factors explaining the probability of being within the best performers for each group of innovation strategy. It is an empirically based analysis using descriptive statistics (first part) and a probit econometric analysis (second part) where data are collected at firm level from two CIS surveys matched with economic accountability data for 902 Italian manufacturing firms for the period 1998-2000. The distribution analysis of profit margins by different populations of firms shows a better economic performance for groups characterized by more complex innovation strategies. Unexpectedly, the risk associated to economic returns is lower for groups where returnsā mean is higher. In this case skewness is higher too suggesting that reaching āexcellenceā is more difficult. The probit regressions account for the role played by different (market and firm) factors on the probability of being the best positioned for each firm population. This work gives two main messages: first, when studying the impact of R&D activity (both on firm productivity or competitiveness) it is worth to distinguish among different kinds of innovation strategy rather than limiting the analysis to aggregated results and second, it appears quite clear that competition awards more complex innovation strategies than simple R&D intra-muros activity.profitability, strategic heterogeneity, R&D and innovation, probit regression
The role of R/D expenditure: a critical comparison of the two (R&S and CIS) sources of data
The paper explores the relation between two data sources (R&D and CIS surveys) in the aim of better representing the roles of R/D activity in relation with innovation processes. This paper starts with controlling the relation between the R/D expenditure in the two surveys (R&D and CIS) for a same group of firms and for the same year (2000) and deals with the question of how much we know at present of the different components of the industrial R/D activity and how we can use the frame of the two surveys for arriving to gain this knowledge. The final aim is that of getting finest grained indicators for studies on the impact of industrial investment on R/D.Industrial R/D, R/D survey, CIS survey
Coherent 100G Nonlinear Compensation with Single-Step Digital Backpropagation
Enhanced-SSFM digital backpropagation (DBP) is experimentally demonstrated
and compared to conventional DBP. A 112 Gb/s PM-QPSK signal is transmitted over
a 3200 km dispersion-unmanaged link. The intradyne coherent receiver includes
single-step digital backpropagation based on the enhanced-SSFM algorithm. In
comparison, conventional DBP requires twenty steps to achieve the same
performance. An analysis of the computational complexity and structure of the
two algorithms reveals that the overall complexity and power consumption of DBP
are reduced by a factor of 16 with respect to a conventional implementation,
while the computation time is reduced by a factor of 20. As a result, the
proposed algorithm enables a practical and effective implementation of DBP in
real-time optical receivers, with only a moderate increase of the computational
complexity, power consumption, and latency with respect to a simple
feed-forward equalizer for dispersion compensation.Comment: This work has been presented at Optical Networks Design & Modeling
(ONDM) 2015, Pisa, Italy, May 11-14, 201
Predictability and 'good deals' in currency markets
In this paper, we study predictability in currency markets over the period 1972-2012. To assess the economic significance of this predictability, we construct an upper bound on the explanatory power of predictive regressions of currency returns. The bound is motivated by "no good-deal" restrictions that, in efficient markets, rule out unduly attractive investment opportunities. We find that currency predictability exceeds this bound during recurring albeit short-lived episodes. Excess-predictability is highest in the 1970s and tends to decrease over time, but is still present in the final part of the sample period. Moreover, periods of high and low predictability tend to alternate. These stylized facts pose a challenge to Fama's (1970) Efficient Market Hypothesis but are consistent with Lo's (2004) Adaptive Market Hypothesis, coupled with a slow convergence towards efficient markets. Transaction costs can explain much of the daily excess-predictability, but not the monthly excess-predictability
Persistent fast growth and profitability
Working Paper Ircres-CNR 10/2020. Fast growth firms are a recent political objective given their impact on economic dynamics. Notwithstanding this, there is no unanimity in the literature on their determinants and impact and many aspects remain open questions. Several analyses consider growth and fast growth a random event, without possibility of prediction and policy action. This paper intends to contribute to the current large debate, looking at the characters of growth episodes (spell), type and persistence, and how they impact on firmsā profitability. We focus on a sample of medium-sized firms included in CHEETAH database, whose main characteristics is to have experienced at least one episode of fast growth, according to the OECD definition, in at least one of the cohorts of three years considered of 2008-2011, 2009-2012 and 2010-2013. We develop a descriptive analysis of how firms evolve over time from their starting level of turnover growth and the estimation of how different trajectories of growth (more persistent versus episodic) influence firmās profitability through a panel regression. Our hypothesis that fast growth persistence makes a positive difference in terms of firmsā profitability is confirmed
Optical Time-Frequency Packing: Principles, Design, Implementation, and Experimental Demonstration
Time-frequency packing (TFP) transmission provides the highest achievable
spectral efficiency with a constrained symbol alphabet and detector complexity.
In this work, the application of the TFP technique to fiber-optic systems is
investigated and experimentally demonstrated. The main theoretical aspects,
design guidelines, and implementation issues are discussed, focusing on those
aspects which are peculiar to TFP systems. In particular, adaptive compensation
of propagation impairments, matched filtering, and maximum a posteriori
probability detection are obtained by a combination of a butterfly equalizer
and four 8-state parallel Bahl-Cocke-Jelinek-Raviv (BCJR) detectors. A novel
algorithm that ensures adaptive equalization, channel estimation, and a proper
distribution of tasks between the equalizer and BCJR detectors is proposed. A
set of irregular low-density parity-check codes with different rates is
designed to operate at low error rates and approach the spectral efficiency
limit achievable by TFP at different signal-to-noise ratios. An experimental
demonstration of the designed system is finally provided with five
dual-polarization QPSK-modulated optical carriers, densely packed in a 100 GHz
bandwidth, employing a recirculating loop to test the performance of the system
at different transmission distances.Comment: This paper has been accepted for publication in the IEEE/OSA Journal
of Lightwave Technolog
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