Trading Cultural Goods in the Era of Digital Piracy

The issue of digital piracy as violation of intellectual property rights is a hot button among many governments around the world. Until now, nor legislation or its enforcement have managed to keep up with the most recent technologies facilitating piracy. Piracy rates may significantly affect both internal demand and international trade of cultural goods. This paper aims to empirically assess the effect of digital piracy on bilateral trade in cultural goods. We focus on trade in music and media. Analysing an 11-year panel of 25 countries, we find that piracy does affect negatively bilateral trade, although to a varying extent.trade; cultural goods; piracy; spatial filtering; network autocorrelation

The Influence of Role Models on Immigrant Self-Employment: A Spatial Analysis for Switzerland

Theoretical and empirical research suggests a connection between the presence of role models and the emergence of entrepreneurs. Existing entrepreneurs may act as role models for self-employment candidates by providing successful examples. By explicitly considering the self-employment rates of the natives, which may influence locally the decisions of immigrants towards entrepreneurship, we develop a simple model that explains immigrant self-employment rates for a sample of 2,490 Swiss municipalities. In addition, we accommodate for the presence of spatial spillovers in the distribution of rates, and test a spatial autoregressive model which takes into account the average self-employment rates of immigrants living in nearby municipalities. Our evidence shows a significant (positive) effect of such spatial network effects, which are characterized by a quick distance decay, suggesting spatial spillovers at the household and social network level. Additionally, we show that local conditions and immigrant pool characteristics differ, with respect to self-employment choices, when examining separately urban and rural contexts.immigrants, self-employment, role models, Switzerland, spatial lag

New empirical evidence on local financial development and growth

In this paper, we show that the regional finance-growth nexus in Italy is robust to a series of innovations with respect to the existing literature on the topic. We use finer measures of economic and financial development, as well as instruments with a deeper economic content. We rely on state-of-the-art cross-sectional and panel estimation methods, and we offer a thorough investigation of the nonlinearities in the relation between finance and growth. Our results show that, while local financial development is a key factor for economic growth, in regions with inefficient courts more credit might translate into reduced growth due to opportunistic behaviour and the consequent misallocation of funds.Finance, Growth, Regions, Italy, Cross-Section Analysis, Panel Data Analysis

The Influence of Role Models on Immigrant Self-Employment: A Spatial Analysis for Switzerland

Theoretical and empirical research suggests a connection between the presence of role models and the emergence of entrepreneurs. Existing entrepreneurs may act as role models for self-employment candidates by providing successful examples. By explicitly considering the self-employment rates of the natives, which may influence locally the decisions of immigrants towards entrepreneurship, we develop a simple model that explains immigrant self-employment rates for a sample of 2,490 Swiss municipalities. In addition, we accommodate for the presence of spatial spillovers in the distribution of rates, and test a spatial autoregressive model which takes into account the average self-employment rates of immigrants living in nearby municipalities. Our evidence shows a significant (positive) effect of such spatial network effects, which are characterized by a quick distance decay, suggesting spatial spillovers at the household and social network level. Additionally, we show that local conditions and immigrant pool characteristics differ, with respect to self-employment choices, when examining separately urban and rural contexts.immigrants, self-employment, role models, Switzerland, spatial lag

Trading Cultural Goods in the Era of Digital Piracy

The issue of digital piracy is a hot button among governments around the world. Piracy rates may significantly affect both internal and international trade of cultural goods. This paper aims to empirically assess the effect of digital piracy on bilateral trade in cultural goods. We focus on trade in music, films and media. Analysing an 11-year panel of 25 countries, we find that piracy does affect bilateral trade, but to varying extents.trade; trade; cultural goods; piracy; spatial filtering; network autocorrelation

Knowledge Production in Nanomaterials: An Application of Spatial Filtering to Regional Systems of Innovation

Nanomaterials are seen as a key technology for the 21st Century, and much is expected of them in terms of innovation and economic growth. They could open the way to many radically new applications, which would form the basis of innovative products. In this context, it seems all the more important for regions to put their own innovation systems in place, and to ensure that they offer a suitable location for such activities in order to benefit from the expected growth. Many regions have already done so by establishing ?science parks? and ?nanoclusters?. As nanomaterials are still in their infancy, both public research institutes and private businesses could play a vital role in the process. This paper investigates what conditions and configurations allow a regional innovation system to be competitive in a cutting-edge technology like nanomaterials. We analyse European Patent Office data at the German district level (NUTS-3) on applications for nanomaterial patents, in order to chart the effects of localised research and development (R&D) in the public and private sector. We estimate two negative binomial models in a knowledge production function framework and include a spatial filtering approach to adjust for spatial effects. Our results indicate that there is a significant positive effect of both public and private R&D on the production of nanomaterial patents. Moreover, we find a positive interaction between them which hints at the importance of their co-location for realising the full potential of an emerging technology like nanomaterials. --nanotechnology,innovation,patents,Germany,spatial autocorrelation,spatial filtering

The German East-West Divide in Knowledge Production: An Application to Nanomaterial Patenting

Research and development (R&D) in the field of nanomaterials is expected to be a major driver of innovation and economic growth. In this respect, many countries, as national systems of innovation, have established support programs offering subsidies for industry- and government-funded R&D. Consequently, it is of great interest to understand which factors facilitate the creation of new technological knowledge. The existing literature has typically addressed this question by employing a knowledge production function based on firm-, regional- or even country-level data. Estimating the effects for the entire national system of innovation, however, implicitly assumes poolability of regional data. We apply our reasoning to Germany, which has well-known – and wide – regional disparities, for example between the East and the West. Based on analyses at the level of NUTS-3 regions, we find different knowledge production functions for the East and the West. Moreover, we investigate how our results are affected by the adoption of alternative aggregation levels. Our findings have implications for further research in the field, that is, a careful evaluation of poolability and aggregation is required before estimating knowledge production functions at the regional level. Policy considerations are offered as well.nanotechnology, patents, poolability, Germany, spatial autocorrelation

Abnormal Returns of Soccer Teams: Reassessing the Informational Value of Betting Odds

We analyse the links between soccer match results, bets and stock returns of all listed European soccer teams. Using an event study approach, we measure abnormal returns following wins, ties and losses. Wins are associated with positive abnormal returns, and ties and losses with negative abnormal returns. Additionally, we analyse the role of bets in shaping market reactions to unexpected results, which we find to be non-significant. We propose an alternative econometric approach, using seemingly unrelated regression models, to take into account the problem of overlapping events. While our results concerning match results are confirmed, abnormal returns following unexpected results are found to be statistically significant and to magnify the positive (negative) effects of wins (losses).Soccer and Bets; Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Event Clustering; Seemingly Unrelated Regression Equation (SUR)

Spatial Panel Data Forecasting over Different Horizons, Cross-Sectional and Temporal Dimensions

Empirical assessments of the forecasting power of spatial panel data econometric models are still scarcely available. Moreover, several methodological contributions rely on simulated data to showcase the potential of proposed methods. While simulations may be useful to evaluate the properties of a single estimator, the empirical set-ups of simulation studies are often based on strong assumptions regarding the shape and regularity of the statistical distribution of the variables involved. It is then valuable to have, next to simulation studies, empirical assessments of competing econometric models based on real data. In this paper, we evaluate competing spatial (dynamic) panel methods, selecting a number of data sets characterized by a range of different cross-sectional and temporal dimensions, as well as different levels of spatial auto-correlation. We carry out our empirical exercise on regional unemployment data for France, Spain and Switzerland. Additionally, we test different forecasting horizons, in order to investigate the speed of deterioration of forecasting quality. We compare two classes of methods: spatial vector autoregressive (SVAR) models and dynamic panel models making use of eigenvector spatial filtering (SF). We find that, as it could be expected, the unbalance between the temporal and cross-sectional dimension (T>>n) does play in favour of the SVAR model. On the other hand, the advantage of the SVAR model over the SF model appears to diminish as the forecasting horizon widens, eventually leading the SF model to being preferred for more distant forecasts