Suchergebnisse

- The recent economic downturn is putting increasing pressure on governments to improve the quality of their public finances. Using macro-economic data on R&D expenditures and patents, this paper aims to determine whether business and government R&D spending has become more efficient over time and in comparison to other EU countries. Descriptive evidence is coupled with empirical estimates of cross-country efficiency of R&D expenditure calculated by the Stochastic Frontier Analysis. .
Keywords: R&D, patents, efficiency, public finance
Parole chiave: R&S, brevetti, efficienza, finanza pubblica.
Jel Classification: O33 - H50 - C23

The conference of the Italian Regional Science Association (AISRe), held in September 2022 in Milan, provided a great opportunity to reflect on the local responses to the important challenges that European territories are facing, with a main focus on local and regional economic systems. It highlights some of the ways in which cities and regions are grappling with the transformative processes imposed by disruptive challenges, such as shifts in labour markets and working conditions, the increasing urgency of environmental concerns and the push for resource-efficiency and decarbonization. [Publisher's text]

This paper discusses the occurrence of Skill-Enhancing Technology Import (SETI), namely the relationship between imports of embodied technology and widening skill-based employment differentials in a sample of low and middle income countries (LMICs). In doing so, this paper provides a direct measure of technology transfer at the sector level from high income countries (HICs), namely those economies which have already experienced the occurrence of skill-biased technological change, to LMICs. GMM techniques are applied to an original panel dataset comprising 28 manufacturing sectors for 23 countries over a decade. Econometric results provide robust evidence of the determinants of widening employment differentials in LMICs. In particular, capital-skill complementarity represents a source of relative skill-bias while SETI provides an absolute skill-bias effect on the employment trends of skilled and unskilled workers witnessed in these countries.

The paper investigates the ability of Cohesion Policy programmes to define accurate policy outputs and to reliably monitor their own performance through accurate indicators. Specifically, the analysis explores the extent to which indicators and output targets set by ERDF programmes for monitoring and evaluation purposes are revised over time, seeking to identify specific patterns related to different areas such as spending categories, typology of regions, etc. Our findings highlight significant challenges faced by programmes in establishing realistic targets, as frequent and substantial changes are introduced to a vast majority of them. However, we also observe that only a small proportion of indicators is modified over time, suggesting relative stability in the overall objectives of programmes. The paper provides useful evidence for the ongoing debate on whether adopting a fully-performance based model, where access to funds is contingent upon achieving results/outputs, would enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of Cohesion Policy.

The European cohesion policy is the EU's main investment policy and targets all regions and cities across the EU to support job creation, business competitiveness, economic growth, and sustainable development. In the 2014-2020 programming period, one third of the EU budget has been allocated to the projects under this policy. This report contains a macroeconomic impact assessment of the European cohesion policy with a focus on Polish regions. The analysis deals in particular with the spillover effects arising from the policy intervention resulting from indirect trade effects and other inter-regional interdependencies and interactions. The analysis shows that the policy has a positive long-run impact, lasting years after the end of the programmes. This reflects the fact that cohesion policy supports investments in key engines of growth improving the structure of the Polish economy.

This Technical Report describes the features of the RHOMOLO-IO model and demonstrates its flexibility by showing a number of recent policy-relevant applications for which it has been used. Such applications include, for instance, the study of the European Globalisation Fund, of four TEN-T investment projects, of the European research and innovation regional funds, and of regulatory proposals on the energy union in the EU. The paper contains traditional input-output multipliers analyses applied to output, GDP, and employment, as well as consumption redistribution and trade analyses. The flexibility of the RHOMOLO-IO framework makes it useful for a wide range of policy-relevant studies and makes it a perfect complement to the spatial computable general equilibrium RHOMOLO.

AbstractUsing data from the execution of 2014–2020 cohesion policy, this article presents a novel indicator to measure how fast European territories were able to spend their allocated budget and then explores the drivers of such financial performance. This analysis aims to fill a gap in scientific literature as most existing studies tend to focus solely on the total absorption at the end of the period without looking at the average financial performance over time. The article also explores the influence on financial absorption of the governance model (nationally or regionally managed programmes) and the thematic structure of the funds, which has never been done before. The determinants of the speed of financial absorption are investigated through a Tobit model. Results show that both programme‐specific and territorial characteristics are relevant factors in explaining the varying levels of fund absorption. This suggests that increased flexibility in spending rules and the adoption of more tailored strategies could be instrumental in improving fund absorption.

The paper illustrates the effect of a permanent demand-side shock in the perturbed regions and the associated spillover effects in the non-perturbed regions using the RHOMOLO spatial-numerical general equilibrium model of the EU economy. We test to what extent gradual upward pressure on wages generated by a domestic increase in demand alters the magnitude of the economic impacts in the long-run and the degree to which this could result in changes in trade patterns. We also assess the size and the direction of the effects with varying trade substitution elasticities and under both perfectly and imperfectly competitive product markets.