A taxonomy of multi-industry labour force skills

This paper proposes an empirical study of the skill repertoires of 290 sectors in the United States over the period 2002–2011. We use information on employment structures and job content of occupations to flesh out structural characteristics of industry-specific know-how. The exercise of mapping the skills structures embedded in the workforce yields a taxonomy that discloses novel nuances on the organization of industry. In so doing we also take an initial step towards the integration of labour and employment in the area of innovation studies

An analysis of the adoption of OSS by local public administrations: Evidence from the Emilia-Romagna Region of Italy

The wide diffusion of open source software (OSS) is driving discussion among scholars on a set of issues, including its adoption by public administrations (PA). Previous works only discussed one or a few factors that drive the decision to adopt OSS and did not addressed the potential benefits in terms of e-government that OSS may bring to PA. Our paper attempts to fill these gaps. The analysis is based on the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy and studies the adoption of software (both proprietary and open source) by local PA. The results show there is increased adoption of OSS in several different domains of application, both servers and desktop clients. Among the motivations to adopt OSS, only dependence on software suppliers seems to be important. Its adoption also positively affects the variety and extent of interactivity of local public e-services.open source software; public administration; online public services; empirical research

Counteracting cocaine production. An analysis based on a novel dataset

he debate about the effectiveness of the counteracting policies against the supply of drugs, in particular of cocaine, is very lively and intense. Indeed, since many opinions are based on certain measures rather than others, the construction of reliable indicators is one of the preconditions for a correct and concerted assessment of drug supply. The lack of reliable data on drug provision derives, on the one side, from the objective difficulties encountered in assessing the quantitative elements of drug production and drug trafficking due to its illegal nature, and, on the other side, from the lack of a standard methodological approach to the issue. This paper tries to contribute to the topic by proposing a new dataset, based on a completely new approach to the problem of measuring drug supply. We put forward a unique dataset covering cocaine related seizures in Colombia for the whole of year 2008. Data have been collected on a daily basis from the websites of the main organizations fighting against drug traffickers (Army, Air Force, National Police, Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, Armada Nacional, Fiscalia), detailing each single seizure of laboratories for the production of both basic paste and cocaine hydrochloride. By means of this dataset, we offer some accounts of the main numbers on drug supply and on drug seizures, suggesting some policy options, and arriving to an estimate of cocaine production.

You Won the Battle. What about the War? A Model of Competition between Proprietary and Open Source Software

Although open source software has recently attracted a relevant body of economic literature, a formal treatment of the process of com- petition with its proprietary counterpart is still missing. Starting from an epidemic model of innovation di?usion, we try to ?ll this gap. We propose a model where the two competing technologies depend on dif- ferent factors, each one speci?c to its own mode of production (prof- its and developers’ motivations respectively), together with network e?ects and switching costs. As the speed of di?usion of these tech- nologies is crucial for the ?nal outcome, we endogenize the parame- ter in?uencing it across the population of adopters. We ?nd that an asymptotically stable equilibrium where both technologies coexist can always be present and, when the propagation coe?cient is endogenous, it coexists with winner–take–all solutions. Furthermore, an increase in the level of the switching costs for one technology increases the num- ber of its adopters, while reducing the number of the other one. If the negative network e?ects increase for one of the two technologies, then the equilibrium level of users of that technology decrease.Increasing returns; Open-source software; Technological competition; Technology di?usion

An agent-based model of product competition: network structure and coexistence under different information regimes

The paper analyzes how the structure of interaction networks affects the diffusion patterns and market shares of different products in case of local network externalities and imperfect information. The diffusion of the different products/technologies in the market is modelled as the result of two (only partly) interrelated dynamics: i) the interaction between idiosyncratic individual thresholds and local network externalities; ii) the diffusion of the information about the product (via broadcast diffusion and word-of-mouth). The average clustering coefficient affects the overall outcome and the actual possibility that one product corners the market. Moreover, in case of small-world networks, despite the high clustering coefficient which increases the probability of an outcome with coexistence, the increase in the speed of diffusion impinges on the actual realization of such an outcome in case of sequential entry of the different technologies and/or imperfect information.Agent-based model, innovation diusion, network eects,social networks, small-world

Is Open Source about innovation? How interactions with the Open Source community impact on the innovative performances of entrepreneurial ventures

Practitioners generally assert that collaboration with the Open Source software (OSS) community enables young software firms to achieve superior innovation performance. Nonetheless, to the best of our knowledge, scholars have never extensively speculated about this assertion or rigorously tested it. In this paper, we attempt to do so. First, we root on the entrepreneurship literature and on the OSS research stream to discuss and empirically investigate whether entrepreneurial ventures collaborating with the OSS community (OSS EVs) achieve innovation performance superior to that of their non-collaborating peers. Then, we refer to the concept of absorptive capacity to determine which factors make OSS EVs better able to leverage their collaboration with the OSS community for innovation purposes. Our econometric estimates use a sample of 230 firms and indicate that OSS EVs collaborating with the OSS community achieve superior innovation. At the same time, the impact of community collaborations on innovation is stronger for EVs that are endowed with more skilled human capital, have experience with firm- OSS community collaboration, and actively contribute to the community.Entrepreneurial ventures, Open Source, firm-community collaboration, innovation performance

Lowering barriers to engage in innovation: evidence from the Spanish innovation survey

The literature on innovation studies has extensively examined the main drivers of innovation activity, while putting less attention on factors that are crucial in order to foster competition dynamics, as well as to attenuate systemic failures to innovation. This paper aims to filling this gap by distinguishing between firms facing deterring barriers to innovation (i.e. those barriers that deter firms from engaging in innovation activities) and firms confronting revealed barriers (i.e. those barriers that are experienced by firms alongside their engagement in innovative activities). Drawing upon the literature on innovation studies, we propose a set of hypotheses on which factors are likely to attenuate deterring and/or revealed barriers to innovation (e.g. firm size, firm age, human capital, etc.). We built a longitudinal dataset derived from four waves of the Spanish Innovation Survey (2004-2007) in order to examine the impact of the proposed factors on three types of obstacles to innovation: cost, knowledge and market barriers. Results reveal that: first, knowledge and market related obstacles play a much stronger role as deterring barriers than cost-related obstacles; second, firm size and human capital available at firms play a significant role in attenuating deterring barriers to innovation, though only the former has a significant impact on alleviating revealed barriers.

Counteracting cocaine production: an analysis based on a novel dataset

he debate about the effectiveness of the counteracting policies against the supply of drugs, in particular of cocaine, is very lively and intense. Indeed, since many opinions are based on certain measures rather than others, the construction of reliable indicators is one of the preconditions for a correct and concerted assessment of drug supply. The lack of reliable data on drug provision derives, on the one side, from the objective difficulties encountered in assessing the quantitative elements of drug production and drug trafficking due to its illegal nature, and, on the other side, from the lack of a standard methodological approach to the issue. This paper tries to contribute to the topic by proposing a new dataset, based on a completely new approach to the problem of measuring drug supply. We put forward a unique dataset covering cocaine related seizures in Colombia for the whole of year 2008. Data have been collected on a daily basis from the websites of the main organizations fighting against drug traffickers (Army, Air Force, National Police, Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, Armada Nacional, Fiscalia), detailing each single seizure of laboratories for the production of both basic paste and cocaine hydrochloride. By means of this dataset, we offer some accounts of the main numbers on drug supply and on drug seizures, suggesting some policy options, and arriving to an estimate of cocaine production

Exploring and yet failing less: The role of exploitation and human capital to foster learning from exploration

Trabajo presentado a la DRUID Society Conference on "Entrepreneurship - Organization - Innovation" celebrada en Copenahgue (Dinamarca) del 16 al 18 de junio de 2014.Exploration is both a risky activity and a key ingredient in the strategy of firms that strive for radical innovations. In this paper we analyse how firms? investment in exploration activities affects their exposure to innovation failure. Our baseline results point to an inverted U-shaped relation: while investment in exploratory activities initially increases the rate of failure in innovation, firms that overcome an experience threshold in exploration exhibit decreasing rates of innovation failure. We also show that firm?s commitments to product and process development and the availability of human capital act as relevant moderators: they contribute to speed the organisational learning process enhanced by exploration and result in lowering the probability of innovation failure. We investigate these issues drawing on a sample of 2,954 Spanish manufacturing companies for the period 2008-2010.Peer Reviewe

Simultaneous embeddedness in different networks and its effect on scientific knowledge generation: evidence from Spanish scientists

Trabajo presentado a la EU-SPRI Conference: "Science and Innovation Policy: Dynamics, Challenges, Responsibility and Practice", celebrada en Manchester (UK) del 18 al 20 de junio de 2014.Introduction: research topic Interactions between Public Research Organisations (PROs henceforth) and Industry are at the forefront of policy agendas world-wide as they are instrumental to foster technological development and economic competitiveness. Interactions between PROs and industry can also help attenuate the pressures that the current global economic crisis place on public sector research budgets - especially in countries with high levels of debt -by providing external private funding, directly oriented to the generation of marketable innovations. The scope of this paper is to deepen the understanding of PROs-Industry links with reference to the antecedents of their formation and the impact of these links on the world of scientific knowledge production. In broad terms this endeavour involves the analysis of the process through which knowledge producers (i.e. scientists) both organize within their own community and interact with industry to generate scientific knowledge.Peer Reviewe