Qualitative flood risk assessment for road and railway infrastructures: the experience of the MOVIDA project

The Po River District Authority promoted the MOVIDA project with the aim to define appropriate methodologies for flood risk assessment and being compliant with the European Floods Directive (Directive 2007/60/EC). A dedicated Open Source Geographic Information System (i.e. QGIS geoprocessing modules) has been developed for mapping the expected damages in all areas at significant risk in the Po District (Northern Italy), considering five categories of exposed elements (population, infrastructures, economic activities, environmental and cultural heritage, and na-tech sites). Focusing on road and railway infrastructures, the methodology proposed within the project adopts information coming from different data sources (Regional Geoportals, Open Street Map, etc.) and allows to qualitatively estimate the potential risk associated with a flood event. Different risk classes (High, Medium, Low and Null) are assigned in relation to roads category (i.e., Highways, Main, Secondary, Service, Other) or railways type (High-Speed train or not), thus considering both the relevance of the infrastructure itself (as well as its topographical characteristics: e.g. tunnel, bridge, etc.) and the magnitude of the expected event (i.e., hazard). The definition of the risk matrix led to the estimation of the lengths of the sections exposed to different risk levels, which is useful to support the definition of potential mitigation measures and support the competent bodies in the organization of the rescue.</p

Are firms exporting to China and India different from other exporters?

This chapter asks if and why advanced countries differ in their ability to export to China and India. To this end we exploit a newly collected, comparable cross-country dataset (EFIGE) obtained from a survey of 15,000 manufacturing firms in Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. The EFIGE dataset contains detailed information on firms’ international activities as well as firm characteristics such as size and productivity, governance and management structure, workforce, innovation and research activity. We study both the extensive and intensive margins of exports and identify firm characteristics that are positively or negatively correlated wiThexporting activity tout court and wiThexporting to China and India conditional on being an exporter. We confirm previous rich evidence and show that larger, more productive, and more innovative firms are more likely to become exporters and export more. We also provide some new evidence on the role of governance and management: while there does not seem to be a strong negative effect of family ownership, we find that a higher percentage of family management reduces a firm’s export propensity and export volumes. When we turn to exports to China and India, we find that firms exporting there must be on average larger, more productive, and more innovative than firms exporting elsewhere

Determinants of Export Behaviour of German Business Services Companies

The determinants of export behaviour at firm level have been widely investigated for manufacturing companies. By contrast, what has remained largely neglected is a detailed investigation in the service sector. As aggregate statistics show, international trade in services has grown significantly over the last few years. However, it is unclear why some companies export and others do not. This paper presents some initial results about the German business services sector at firm level. Using a unique panel dataset of enterprises from the business services sector (transport, storage and communication, real estate, renting and business activities) for the years 2003 to 2005, we analysed the impact of several firm-specific characteristics such as size, productivity, human capital, experience on the national market in Germany, etc. on the firms' export performance. Further, we used the pooled fractional probit estimator, recently introduced by Papke & Wooldridge, an approach that considers both the special nature of the export intensity variable and in addition unobserved time-invariant characteristics. When there is no control for fixed enterprise effects the overall results are in line with previous studies. When there is a control for unobserved heterogeneity, the positive effects of productivity and human capital disappear, indicating that these ariables are not per se positively related to export performance, but rather to time-constant characteristics that are unobserved. Size and product diversification still have a positive and significant effect