The FTAA After The Emergence Of the Euro

The aim of this paper is to inquire into the possible relation between the FTAA (Free Trade Area of Americas) and the progressive interna- tionalization of the Euro. We will sustain that the actual productive situation (globalization) makes impossible to think of an FTAA with- out a kind of dollarisation of the Latin American countries (LAC). In fact we argue, helped by empirical analysis, that an economic area can use a sound currency if, and only if, it has a strong link with its issuing country. That is why we analyze, with the principal component anal- ysis, the economic situation of the LAC focusing on their dependence on the U.S. and E.U. economies. We obtain that the LAC, candi- dates for FTAA, are much more dependent from E.U. rather than U.S.; moreover, the future evolution of the banking assets, in relation to external and internal debt, could strengthen this dependence. For these reasons we conclude that the FTAA process could meet some difficulties in the next years, because the LAC economies could prefer to use the Euro as the reference currency for international trade.Latin America; Principal Component Analysis; Globalization; Currency Areas

Citations Profile and the Complexity of Innovation

Patent or article citations reflect the consequences of a published idea on the discovery of new ideas. We draw a simple theoretical model predicting that the shape of the future citations of an idea can reveal the complexity of its innovative research spillover. We apply this method to the patent forward citations in the US industries.Patent Forward Citations, Technological Complexity, Skewness.

Child Malnutrition and Mortality in Developing Countries: Evidence from a Cross-Country Analysis

In this paper we propose and test an interpretative framework on the social and economic determinants of child malnutrition and child mortality, two key human development indicators. The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 illustrates the main economic and social factors causing child malnutrition and mortality. Section 2 identifies the main clusters of food insecure and vulnerable households and briefly describes their livelihood profiles. Section 3 exposes our cross-country estimation methodology. Section 4 reports and discusses the results. Section 5 concludes.Malnutrition; Mortality; Cross-Country Analysis; Millenium Development Goals; Food Insecurity

Determinants of patent withdrawals: evidence from a sample of Italian applications with the EPO

This paper analyses the propensity to withdraw European patent applications within a regional sample of Italian applicants. The procedure for obtaining a granted patent from the EPO is composed of a series of sequential and selective steps imposing additional costs to the applicants. Accordingly, we argue that early withdrawals - i.e. those occurring before the proper examination process begins - should be treated separately from late withdrawals. Our findings show the probability of an early withdrawal is higher for applicants with lower resources and competencies and rises with the number of backward citations added by EPO examiners to the original application. Late withdrawals, instead, are negatively affected by one factor only: the size of patent family, which approximates the sunk costs born by applicants in order to extend the geographical scope of patent protection. Such a limited explanation suggests that the (unobserved) interventions of EPO examiners are likely to play a significant role in inducing late withdrawals.Patent withdrawals; Applicants’ features; Patent quality; Patent examination

An empirical analysis of endogenous growth without scale effect

The aim of this paper is to empirically examine the endogenous growth without scale effect as in Segestrom (1998). We firstly build a concordance table between the 1972 Standard Industrial Classification System (SIC) and USPCS (as of December, 31 2002) industrial codes using the USPTO concordance new file. Then we approach the analysis of the difficulty index of each industry starting from the NBER patent data set (63_99) using the mean forward citations lag data as the fundamental variable of our analysis. In fact we follow the idea that each patent number of citations grows untill a point from which it starts to decade. We explain that point as the moment that draws the obsolescence of the invention. Once we have eliminated by that way the lag truncations problem we obtain the difficult index serie of each industrial sector. Finally we describe the relationship between the growth of the difficulty index and the number of scientists and engeneers. Our investigation concludes showing a difference between traditional and new sectors where in the latters the absence of the scale effect is more clear than in the others.Patents, Endogenous Growth, Scale effect

The Value of the Substance

The aim of the paper is to find the reason of the commodoties exchange. That is why our analysis inquires on the substance of the commodities value as Marx did on ``The Capital'' first pages using the dialectic method. Our different approach is analytic although we apply the fundamentals of the hegelian method. We use the concept of the labour centrality in the social production as an axiom, and we consider it as the natural starting point of the investigation. The historical materialism gives us the way to observe the conceptual dominion of the (exchange) value on the use value and then we are able to analyze its substance, our primary aim. Using the hegelian categories of quality and quantity we obtain that the only common quality of any commodity is the labour that, conseqently, is the substance of the value. This element, in fact, is basical to measure and, then, to compare any commodity. We conclude deriving that any study on the so called trasformation problem of Marx is unconsistent without a necessary deep analysis of the substance of the value.Value theory, Marx, Hegelian approach

Money and Overseas Investments in the Relative Fall of British Empire

Investigating on the reasons of British overseas investments (1850-1913) we analyze two different approaches on data and we conclude that they are not different from a stochastic view. Inquiring on ‘push’ approach, we find that exists a negative correlation between GDP and overseas investments where the former cause the latter. The link between monetary events and colonialism highlights India’s role as a reserve of bullions. In this way, British capital was able to complete its natural cycle, draining money for future foreign investments. This improve the theory by introducing the monetary element in ‘push’ and ‘pull’ hypothesis as well.overseas Investments, Bimetallism, Gold Standard