Institutions and Economic Change

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following paper: Francesca Gagliardi,, 'Institutions and economic change' Special issue editorial, Journal of Comparative Economics, Vol. 45(1): 213-215, February 2017, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2016.04.003. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. © 2016 Association for Comparative Economic Studies. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Institutional Complementarities in Comparative Capitalism: A Bibliometric Account

© 2021 The Author. This is the accepted manuscript version of a book chapter which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50888-3_34Institutional complementarities help to explain how interdependent institutions not only account for the institutional diversity that can be observed across and within socio-economic systems, but also affect economic performance. This chapter presents the results of a bibliometric review of the journal literature that looks at institutional complementarities in comparative capitalism. Conducted on 177 journal articles published during the period 2000-2019, the study aims to map this field of inquiry through a comprehensive assessment of the research themes covered and the methods used, as well as the key authors and the main outlets in which the discussion takes place. The chapter offers insights into the evolution of the field that may help scholars working in this area of inquiry shape future research priorities and dissemination strategies.Peer reviewe

Institutions and Evolution of Capitalism in Geoff Hodgson’s Work

This article is the introductory chapter to a festschrift in honour of Geoff Hodgson. In work spanning four decades, Geoff Hodgson has made many path-breaking contributions to institutional economics, evolutionary economics, economic methodology, the history of economic thought and social theory more broadly. Hodgson’s reputation as a prolific and important writer, whose work transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries, is matched by his credentials as an academic entrepreneur, whose involvement in the formation of two international scholarly societies and the foundation of the Journal of Institutional Economics has expanded the opportunities for constructive dialogue among social scientists. To celebrate Hodgon’s fantastic career, this volume brings together 19 original contributions by world-leading scholars in specific areas that have played a significant role in influencing Hodgson’s thinking or represent key debates to which he has contributed. The chapter introduces these contributions, and summarizes a conversation with Hodgson that is also included in the volume

Social Investment and youth labour market participation: a EU regional analysis

In this paper, we first rely on small area techniques to derive from EU-SILC survey new indicators of compensatory and investment policies at regional level. While compensatory policies have mainly the goal of protecting individuals from \u201cold\u201d risks (e.g. old-age), investment-related social policies tend to focus more on \u201cnew social risks\u201d (i.e. skill deficits). We rely on these new indicators to perform a data-driven SVAR analysis to investigate the casual relationships between youth labour market outcomes and these two types of spending. Our results support the view that investment policies are more effective for tackling new social challenges

Historical Institutional Determinants of Financial System Development in Africa

This article has been published in a revised form in Journal of Institutional Economics, http://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137417000042. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution, re-sale or use in derivative works. © Millennium Economics Ltd 2017.The literature on the determinants of cross-country variation in financial system development identifies historical institutional factors, mostly rooted in colonial effects, as key causes. Using a sample of 39 African former European colonies for 2006-11, this paper investigates the extent to which the historical institutional determinants identified by legal origins, disease endowment, religion-based and ethnic fractionalisation theories explain current differences in financial system development across Africa. While most existing research focuses only on one financial system development dimension, namely financial system depth, this article considers also financial system access. The results do not support any of the above theories when depth measures are used, while three of them (legal origins, disease endowment and ethnic fractionalisation theories) are validated when using access measures. This suggests that in Africa financial system depth and access do not have common historical institutional determinants, pointing to the need for greater fine tuning of prevalent theories and empirical measures.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

The future of the Mediterranean agri-food systems: trends and perspectives from a Delphi survey

The Mediterranean region is widely acknowledged as one of the most exposed in the world to the effects of climate change, water scarcity, biodiversity loss and land degradation, coupled with a nutrition transition of its populations. In such a context, to explore the evolution of the region is of both political and theoretical interest. This study presents the result of a scenario-building exercise, based on a Delphi method – an interactive forecasting technique – relying upon about 60 practitioners, experts and academics representing 19 Mediterranean countries and a wide range of disciplines and expertise. The present article has three main purposes. First, to identify the main challenges, trends and driving forces that influence the agri-food systems in the Mediterranean over a short (2020) and medium (2030) term. Second, to discuss the alternative policy responses to the challenges that the region will face in terms of water resource management, farming systems and agri-food value chains in terms of desirability and feasibility. Thirdly, to provide informed, evidence-based recommendations that might help different stakeholders to take action in the region’s agri-food sector. Based on this Delphi’s results, the study suggests that the gap between the countries in the South and the North of the Mediterranean in terms of challenges posed in water management, farming systems and the agri-food value chain is expected to grow. Experts agree that climate change is going to play a key role in the future of both sides of the Mediterranean, but with a differential impact in the sub-two regions. Nutrition-related challenges will exert a growing pressure especially in the Southern Mediterranean countries. A set of desirable and feasible policy option for addressing the Mediterranean food-related challenges are discussed

Fuzzy Measures of Multidimensional Poverty in the Mediterranean Area: a Focus on Financial Dimension

The main scope of the paper is to adopt a fuzzy sets approach for the measurement of multidimensional poverty over a period of eight years, from 2007 to 2015, which takes into account the effect of the 2008 economic and financial crisis. In particular, the focus is on the financial dimension of poverty, and its effects on citizens in the EU Mediterranean Area. The empirical analysis, based on the European Union - Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey (EU-SILC), covers eight Mediterranean Countries

VTOL Search and Rescue

This project focuses on the design of a hybrid vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft that, by using separate propulsion systems, transitions from a quadcopter into horizontal flight. It was designed for use in search and rescue (SAR) missions in national parks due to their high costs, long search times, and the volume of these missions. The aircraft can be easily deployed in less than a couple minutes reducing search time, costs only $2000 saving SAR teams money, and allows for camera integration for hiker location. The aircraft used a pre-built airframe with added modifications, and a specifically designed avionic system to have vertical and horizontal flight capabilities. The propulsion system was tested individually in the vertical and horizontal flight modes. The quadcopter system ran in an altitude hold mode for approximately 8 minutes while the forward flight system ran for over triple that, approximately 25 minutes. This proved our VTOL aircraft’s main objective of increased fixed-wing flight efficiency. The modified airframe structure was proved not to fail under vibrational and static loading using FEA. The total weight of the aircraft is 1.9 kg, meaning we need approximately 18.6 N to fly. By performing CFD analysis on the aircraft, at a speed of 15 m/s, it was found that 28.5 N of lift were produced, allowing for successful horizontal flight

IMAGACT: Deriving an Action Ontology from Spoken Corpora

This paper presents the IMAGACT annotation infrastructure which uses both corpus - based and competence - based methods for the simultaneous extraction of a language independent Action ontology from English and Italian spontaneous speech corpora. The infrastructure relies on an innovative methodology based on images of prototypical scenes and will identify high frequency action concepts in everyday life, suitable for the implementation of an open set of languages