The aim of this paper is to provide firm-level evidence on the short-run link between outsourcing and labor productivity using an original dataset of Italian manufacturing firms, and applying a two-stage probit least squares estimator. We find a positive effect on productivity from outsourcing...

Aim of this paper is to study whether and how the firm’s decision to outsource production activities affects its technological performance. In particular, we look at how the alignment between the firm’s governance strategy and the underlying attributes of the transactions affects the...

This paper discusses a framework for analyzing robust institutions for water markets drawn on the new institutional economics school of thoughts which is based on Williamson, North, Coase and Ostrom theories on transaction cost economics, property rights and collective actions. Based on these...

We characterize how the size distribution of plants, within narrowly defined industries, changed in Italy over a ten-year time span, and relate this to the stock of civic capital at the provincial level. Data on plant size come from the 1991 and 2001 Italian censuses. Civic capital turns out to...

We explore the nature of Business Groups, that is network-like forms of hierarchical organization between legally autonomous firms spanning both within and across national borders. Exploiting a unique dataset of 270,474 headquarters controlling more than 1,500,000 (domestic and foreign)...

The paper focuses in the calculation of the oil capital value in a small open economy depending on oil rents. The Venezuelan case is used as an example. In valuing the oil capital, two issues are recalled and discussed: how should the exploration costs and the capital gains be treated? It is...

The paper addresses the relevancy of networking activities and R&D as main drivers of productivity performance and ouput innovation, for small and medium enterprises (SME) playing in a local economic system. Given the intangible nature of many techno organisational innovation and networking...

In order to regulate the proliferated bioprospecting and protect the biological diversity in the source countries, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) established a legal framework for the reciprocal transfer of biological materials between the interested parties in bioprospecting...

This paper explores the use of a micro-economic model to analyse the provisions and parties of bioprospecting contracts. It focuses on the pharmaceutical industry as the representative biodiversity buyer, presenting an original theoretical framework that explains the main contract...

We study the effect of the intellectual property rights (IPR) regime of a host country (South) on a multinational's decision between serving a market via greenfield foreign direct investment to avoid the exposure of its technology or entering a joint venture (JV) with a local firm, which allows...