Network management as a contingent activity. A configurational analysis of managerial behaviors in different network settings

ABSTRACTNetwork managers engage in several day-to-day activities, including bridging, networking, and stabilizing relationships. Still, when should they opt for one activity or another? Our study s..

Feasibility Study on Measuring the Causal Impact of Erasmus+ Actions

Erasmus+ is a major and emblematic EU policy. It aims among others to contribute to the achievements of the Europe 2020 Strategy and the Strategic Framework for European Cooperation in Education and Training. A variety of studies exist aiming to evaluate Erasmus+ and its predecessor programs. However, the predominant part of existing research does not focus on the causal link of Erasmus+ and its expected outcomes. Therefore, the Directorate-General Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (DG EAC) approached the Competence Centre on Microeconomic Evaluation (CC-ME) to produce a feasibility report. This report answers to the request and the following questions: given the data requirements needed, how can the causal impact of Erasmus+ be evaluated? The report examines what could be done in the short and long term and which parts of Erasmus+ would be quite difficult to measure with counterfactual impact evaluation. The authors also provide a judgment on the value added of any counterfactual impact analysis for different Erasmus+ actions taking existing literature and policy characteristics (like duration, homogeneity of intervention and measures of objectives) into account.JRC.I.1-Modelling, Indicators and Impact Evaluatio

Incentives and Careers in Academia: Theory and Empirical Analysis

We study career concerns in Italian academia. We mould our empirical analysis on the standard model of contests, formalised in the multi-unit all-pay auction. The number of posts, the number of applicants, and the relative importance of the criteria for promotion determine academics' effort and output. In Italian universities incentives operate only through promotion, and all appointment panels are drawn from strictly separated and relatively narrow scientific sectors: thus the parameters affecting payoffs can be measured quite precisely, and we take the model to a newly constructed dataset which collects the journal publications of all Italian university professors. Our identification strategy is based on a reform introduced in 1999, parts of which affected different academics differently. We find that individual researchers respond to incentives in the manner described by the theoretical model: roughly, more capable researchers respond to increases in the importance of the publications for promotion and in the competitiveness of the scientific sector by exerting more effort; less able researchers are discouraged by competition and do the opposite

Publish or Perish? Incentives and Careers in Italian Academia

We derive a theoretical model of effort in the presence of career concern based on the multi-unit all-pay auction, and closely inspired by the Italian academic market. In this model, the number of applicants, the number of new posts, and the relative importance of the determinants of promotion determine academics' effort. Because of the specific characteristics of Italian universities, where incentives operate only through promotion, and where all appointment panels are drawn from strictly separated and relatively narrow scientific sectors, the model fits well Italian academia, and we test it in a newly constructed dataset which collects the journal publications of all Italian academics working in universities. We find that individual researchers respond to incentives in the manner predicted by the theoretical model: more capable researchers respond to increases in the importance of the measurable determinants of promotion and in the competitiveness of the scientific sector by exerting more effort; less able researchers do the opposite

selections from ordered sets

Abstract We study the problem of evaluating whether the selection from a set is close to the ordering of the set determined by an exogenously given measure. Our main result is that three axioms, two naturally capturing "dominance", and a stronger one imposing a form of symmetry in the comparison of selections, are sufficient to evaluate how close any selection from any set is to the given ordering of the set. This closeness is given by a very simple index, which is a linear function of the sum of the ranks of the selected elements. The paper ends by relating this index to the existing literature on distance between orderings, and also offers a practical application of the index

The long-term causal effects of winning an ERC grant

El objetivo de este documento es investigar los efectos causales a largo plazo de la concesión de una beca del Consejo Europeo de Investigación (ERC, por sus siglas en inglés) en la productividad de los investigadores, en la excelencia de su trabajo y en su capacidad para obtener nuevas becas hasta nueve años después de la concesión de la beca. Nuestro análisis se basa en datos sobre el universo de solicitantes de becas del ERC entre 2007 y 2023, así como en información acerca de su historial completo de publicaciones disponible en la base de datos Scopus. Para identificar el efecto causal, primero utilizamos la regla de asignación de becas basada en la clasificación de los solicitantes, y comparamos las variables de resultados de los solicitantes que obtienen una beca con los de los solicitantes que no la obtienen utilizando un diseño de regresión en discontinuidad (RDD, por sus siglas en inglés). En el marco de esta metodología, el análisis encuentra efectos estadísticamente significativos en la productividad de los investigadores y en la calidad de la investigación, lo que sugiere que la obtención de una beca del ERC no constituye una diferencia en términos de impacto científico para los investigadores en una posición cercana al umbral en la clasificación. Dado que los diseños RDD contribuyen a identificar un efecto local, también realizamos un análisis de diferencias en diferencias (DID, por sus siglas en inglés) utilizando la serie temporal de los indicadores bibliométricos disponibles, lo que nos permite estimar el efecto en una población más amplia de solicitantes que obtienen la beca y de solicitantes a los que se les deniega. En contraposición a los resultados obtenidos del RDD, las estimaciones del DID muestran que la obtención de una beca del ERC genera efectos positivos a largo plazo en la productividad científica, en el impacto y en la capacidad de atraer otras fuentes de financiación de la Unión Europea en las áreas de química, ciencias del universo y de la tierra, instituciones y comportamientos, estudios de la mente humana y medicina. Un análisis adicional de los efectos heterogéneos nos lleva a concluir que los resultados positivos del DID parecen estar determinados por los solicitantes que ocupan las primeras posiciones en la clasificación en estas áreas.This paper investigates the long-term causal effects of receiving an ERC grant on researcher productivity, excellence and the ability to obtain additional research funding up to nine years after grant assignment. We use data on the universe of ERC applicants between 2007 and 2013 and information on their complete publication histories from the Scopus database. For identification, we first exploit the assignment rule based on rankings, comparing the outcomes of the winning and non-winning applicants in a regression discontinuity design (RDD). We fail to find any statistically significant effect on research productivity and quality, which suggests that receiving an ERC grant does not make a difference in terms of scientific impact for researchers with a ranking position close to the threshold. Since RDDs help identify a local effect, we also conduct a difference-in-differences (DID) analysis using the time series of bibliometric indicators available, which allows us to estimate the effect on a wider population of winning and non-winning applicants. By contrast with the RDD results, DID estimates show that obtaining an ERC grant leads to positive long-term effects on scientific productivity, impact and the capacity to attract other EU funds in the fields of Chemistry, Universe and Earth Sciences, Institutions and Behaviours, Human Mind Studies and Medicine. Further analysis of heterogeneous effects leads us conclude that the positive results obtained with DID seem to be driven by the top-ranked applicants in these fields

Impact of interventions regulating Endocrine Disruptors on trade dynamics for EU Member States

The report aims at shedding light on the unintended consequences on trade dynamics brought about by the implementation of regulatory interventions tackling the presence of dangerous chemicals in certain products. In particular, the analysis explores the possibility that these interventions could have hampered European Union capacity to export.JRC.I.1-Monitoring, Indicators & Impact Evaluatio

Real Time Forecasting of Covid-19 Intensive Care Units demand

Response management to the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak requires to answer several forecasting tasks. For hospital managers, a major one is to anticipate the likely needs of beds in intensive care in a given catchment area one or two weeks ahead, starting as early as possible in the evolution of the epidemic. This paper proposes to use a bivariate Error Correction model to forecast the needs of beds in intensive care, jointly with the number of patients hospitalised with Covid-19 symptoms. Error Correction models are found to provide reliable forecasts that are tailored to the local characteristics both of epidemic dynamics and of hospital practice for various regions in Europe in Italy, France and Scotland, both at the onset and at later stages of the spread of the disease. This reasonable forecast performance suggests that the present approach may be useful also beyond the set of analysed regions.JRC.I.1-Monitoring, Indicators & Impact Evaluatio

Have you Read This? An Empirical Comparison of the British REF Peer Review and the Italian VQR Bibliometric Algorithm

This paper determines the assessment of the publications submitted to the UK research evaluation carried out in 2014, the REF, which would have resulted if they had been assessed with the bibliometric algorithm used by the Italian evaluation agency, ANVUR, for its evaluation of the research of Italian universities. We find extremely high correlations between the two assessment approaches