The MapReduce framework, originally proposed by Google, and its open source implementation, Hadoop, are nowadays considered the standard frameworks, both in industry and academia, to deal with petabyte scale datasets. In this paper we describe a two-rounds MapReduce approach to biconnectivity in...

This paper presents the first assessment of the efficiency of the technology transfer operated by the French university system and its main determinants. The analysis is based on a detailed and original database of 51 TTOs, categorized by type of university they belong to, over the period...

This paper proposes a self-contained reference for both policy makers and scholars who want to address the problem of efficiency and effectiveness of Local Public Transport (LPT) in a sound empirical way. Framing economic efficiency studies into a transport planning perspective, it offers a...

University rankings are the subject of a paradox: the more they are criticized by social scientists and experts on methodological grounds, the more they receive attention in policy making and the media. In this paper we attempt to give a contribution to the birth of a new generation of rankings,...

In efficiency analysis the assessment of the performance of Decision Making Units (DMUs) relays on the selection of the direction along which the distance from the efficient frontier is measured. Directional Distance Functions (DDFs) represent a flexible way to gauge the inefficiency of DMUs....

This paper provides new empirical evidence on the efficiency of Italian airports. Analysing data on 2010 trough conditional e?ciency measures, we find that competition affects mostly the frontier of best performers, whilst airports that are lagging behind are less influenced by it. By applying a...