Air connectivity and foreign direct investments: economic effects of the introduction of new routes

Purpose The key research question for this study was whether the spatial network structure offered by the global airline system contributes to the development of Italian inward Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs). We argue that the introduction of a new route, by reducing firm's transport costs and facilitating tacit and complex knowledge flow, should increase the likelihood of FDI exchange between newly connected regions. Methods We employed a comparison group design considering both small and medium enterprises and large companies at the municipality level. Results The results showed that FDIs increased overall by 33.7% in the two years after opening of the new routes while FDIs in the control group decreased by 16.6%. Similar results were obtained using different measures of FDI (i.e. the number of generated employees) and by weighting the routes by their frequencies. Conclusions Given the substantial benefits that urban areas can obtain from attracting multinational firms, our results provide new evidence of the contribution of transport infrastructures to local development. From a policymaker perspective, regional policies aimed at attracting FDIs must contextually promote the development of transport infrastructure and in particular international airports. Investments to improve air transport capacity, strategies to attract both traditional and low-cost airlines, providing legal authorization or financing ground transport are all critical aspects for the success of such policies

Theatre teaches

[EN] Theatre teaches is a new experiment carried out at the University of Brescia. The growing importance of transversal competences i.e. those skills that essentially concern attitudes in the workplace and interpersonal relationships such as team work, language and communication skills, gave us the idea to develop an educational innovation to help students bring out these skills. We asked students to wrote a play using topics seen in class. So, they tried to wrap their mind around it and worked in team to write a script and get him to scene. Not to be confused to business theatre, this method is applicable in any framework. The assessment results reveal that students appreciate this method because this work helps them to express theirself better and, in general terms, they could improve their non techniocal skills. In conclusion, we can say that this experiment has been a success and gave the students the opportunity to show transversal competences. The ability to communicate, to teamworking, to manage conflicts, to speak in public, to problem solving, creativity, imagination, the ability to manage unforeseen situations and tolerate pressure and stress, leadership skills, negotiation skills and the ability to motivate are just few of the emergent competences.http://ocs.editorial.upv.es/index.php/HEAD/HEAD18Banno, M.; Albertini, A.; Bendar, A.; Bodini, I.; Trento, S.; Villa, V. (2018). Theatre teaches. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 1-9. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD18.2018.8098OCS1855986

The evaluation of public incentive programmes for outward internationalization

Public incentives have often been criticized for being ineffective, but there is still a lack of specific, rigorous analyses to either support or debunk that claim. In fact, no evidence has been provided so far on the role and effectiveness of financial incentives for outward internationalization. The paper aims to close that gap by evaluating the effects of such incentives on firm performance. We develop an empirical analysis using information on the population of Italian firms that received at least an incentive for international growth in the 1996-2008 period. The results of our analysis, after checking for selection bias and causality, show that financial incentives do help younger and smaller companies to increase their productivity, but are less effective in influencing their dimensional growth

Propensity to patent by family firms

This paper provides new evidence of innovation processes in family firms by investigating their attitude toward the protection of innovation outputs. More specifically, the main objective is to understand, through the SEW (Socioemotional Wealth) lens, whether innovative family firms tend to use patents as a tool for protecting intellectual property. Based on a sample of 229 Italian companies that make R&D investments, our analysis highlights that degree of alignment with the family business model is a significant predictor of a firm's attitude toward protecting innovation with patents, even though not all of the dimensions of a family business have the same effect. When disentangling the effect of three different indicators (i.e., family ownership, family governance and the presence of young successors), family involvement in the board of directors is a negative significant driver, the presence of young successors is a positive driver, and ownership has no effect