Air Connectivity and Foreign Direct Investments The economic effects of the introduction of new routes

By integrating the theoretical perspective of international business, economic geography and transportation science, we develop a novel framework to investigate the relationship between the localization of foreign direct investments (FDI) and air connectivity. In particular the key research question for this study is whether and in which ways the spatial network structure offered by the global airline system contributes to the development of both outward and inward FDI. Due to the widespread diffusion of multinationals, air travel is often required as a mean to engage face-to-face contacts at various levels within the organization, by the board of directors, managers, entrepreneurs and staff. The introduction of a new route, by reducing transport costs, should increase the likelihood of FDI exchange between the regions newly connected. Several studies have already analyzed the linkage between air traffic and various urban or regional characteristics, among which its degree of internationalization, and have unanimously demonstrated that the geography of FDI is related to the desire of large multinational companies to easily access the main international airports. However, literature traditionally focused on larger multinational companies located in global cities. To the best of our knowledge, no study has yet considered the effect of air travel on FDI by SMEs in secondary regions. We aim to test whether the geography of FDI between Italy and Europe is related to the desire of overseas companies to directly access international airports. This paper employs an event study methodology to determine the impact of new routes on the generation of both inward and outward FDI considering both SMEs and large companies. In particular, we built an original database covering the period 1997-2010 where for each FDI between Italy and Europe we collected information about the locations of both the overseas company and the newly created subsidiaries at a municipality level. That enables us to estimate the impact of a new route to the FDI subsequently generated between the catchment areas of the connected airports. We account for the existence of a possible endogeneity bias by considering several control variables.

An Empirical Investigation on the Efficiency, Capacity Ownership of Italian Airports

In this paper we study the efficiency of Italian airports applying a DEA model to 34 airports. We find that large airports are more efficient than domestic and regional ones, i.e. small airports have spare capacity since they are more distant from the frontier than large airports. The Tobit regression on the estimated DEA scores shows that efficiency is positively related with the hub premium and with privatisation. Hence we suggest that privatisation incentives to invest in large airports (close to saturation) and development plans to improve the small airports may form the benchmarks of Italian short-run air transportation policy.

Occupancy Estimation Using Low-Cost Wi-Fi Sniffers

Real-time measurements on the occupancy status of indoor and outdoor spaces can be exploited in many scenarios (HVAC and lighting system control, building energy optimization, allocation and reservation of spaces, etc.). Traditional systems for occupancy estimation rely on environmental sensors (CO2, temperature, humidity) or video cameras. In this paper, we depart from such traditional approaches and propose a novel occupancy estimation system which is based on the capture of Wi-Fi management packets from users' devices. The system, implemented on a low-cost ESP8266 microcontroller, leverages a supervised learning model to adapt to different spaces and transmits occupancy information through the MQTT protocol to a web-based dashboard. Experimental results demonstrate the validity of the proposed solution in four different indoor university spaces.Comment: Submitted to Balkancom 201

The Impacts of Airport Centrality in the EU Network and Inter- Airport Competition on Airport Efficiency

In this paper we study the relationship between airport efficiency and two factors: an airport’s centrality in the EU network, and the intensity of competition from alternative airports in the same catchment area. We apply a two-stage econometric model based on the Simar & Wilson (2007) bootstrap procedure to a balanced sample of 57 European airports. We also design and compute our own measures of airport centrality and competition. The results show that efficiency is positively related to centrality in the European network, as measured by a weighted sum of minimal paths passing through the airport in question. The intensity of competition between airports also has a positive effect on efficiency. Our analysis suggests that air transportation policies should focus on increasing competition within important catchment areas (e.g., by investing in infrastructure facilitating access to alternative airports) and enhancing the connectivity of the EU network (e.g., by subsidizing new point-to-point connections between airports with capacity to spare).air transportation, efficiency, network centrality, inter – airports competition.

Energy Consumption Of Visual Sensor Networks: Impact Of Spatio-Temporal Coverage

Wireless visual sensor networks (VSNs) are expected to play a major role in future IEEE 802.15.4 personal area networks (PAN) under recently-established collision-free medium access control (MAC) protocols, such as the IEEE 802.15.4e-2012 MAC. In such environments, the VSN energy consumption is affected by the number of camera sensors deployed (spatial coverage), as well as the number of captured video frames out of which each node processes and transmits data (temporal coverage). In this paper, we explore this aspect for uniformly-formed VSNs, i.e., networks comprising identical wireless visual sensor nodes connected to a collection node via a balanced cluster-tree topology, with each node producing independent identically-distributed bitstream sizes after processing the video frames captured within each network activation interval. We derive analytic results for the energy-optimal spatio-temporal coverage parameters of such VSNs under a-priori known bounds for the number of frames to process per sensor and the number of nodes to deploy within each tier of the VSN. Our results are parametric to the probability density function characterizing the bitstream size produced by each node and the energy consumption rates of the system of interest. Experimental results reveal that our analytic results are always within 7% of the energy consumption measurements for a wide range of settings. In addition, results obtained via a multimedia subsystem show that the optimal spatio-temporal settings derived by the proposed framework allow for substantial reduction of energy consumption in comparison to ad-hoc settings. As such, our analytic modeling is useful for early-stage studies of possible VSN deployments under collision-free MAC protocols prior to costly and time-consuming experiments in the field.Comment: to appear in IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, 201

Air connectivity and foreign direct investments: economic effects of the introduction of new routes

Purpose The key research question for this study was whether the spatial network structure offered by the global airline system contributes to the development of Italian inward Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs). We argue that the introduction of a new route, by reducing firm's transport costs and facilitating tacit and complex knowledge flow, should increase the likelihood of FDI exchange between newly connected regions. Methods We employed a comparison group design considering both small and medium enterprises and large companies at the municipality level. Results The results showed that FDIs increased overall by 33.7% in the two years after opening of the new routes while FDIs in the control group decreased by 16.6%. Similar results were obtained using different measures of FDI (i.e. the number of generated employees) and by weighting the routes by their frequencies. Conclusions Given the substantial benefits that urban areas can obtain from attracting multinational firms, our results provide new evidence of the contribution of transport infrastructures to local development. From a policymaker perspective, regional policies aimed at attracting FDIs must contextually promote the development of transport infrastructure and in particular international airports. Investments to improve air transport capacity, strategies to attract both traditional and low-cost airlines, providing legal authorization or financing ground transport are all critical aspects for the success of such policies

Connectivity and Network Robustness of European Integrators

Abstract Although redundancy is often associated with lower efficiency, redundant networks can provide integrators with the flexibility and capacity to respond to issues in the delivery network. This study analyzes the air transportation network strategies and robustness of the four largest European integrators, estimating the loss in connectivity when a node becomes unavailable. Accordingly, we develop a robustness index that accounts for the importance of airports in the network to each of the four main integrators, in terms of connections and freight capacity. The outcomes reveal that integrators operating within a hub-and-spoke type network are less resistant to network disruptions, while robustness is higher in less concentrated networks. The results highlight that integrators develop different network strategies to manage the trade-off between network efficiency and robustness, which may vary depending on the standardized or customized services expected by clients