Following the growing interest towards the role of the knowledge in the modern economies the economic literature has focused a lot of studies into the role of the producers of new knowledge, e.g. universities and public research institutions. The relations between these bodies and the firms, the...

The Italian and European regulatory framework for patents would benefit from further improvements in order to foster dynamic competition between Italian firms. At the national level the exclusive allocation of the right to patent inventions to universities, rather than to researchers, would...

This paper will discuss two fundamental concepts of industrial policy devel-oped by Sebastiano Brusco: the role of real services to support district firms and the role of real services needed to transform groups of isolated firms into systems of firms; and the promotion of widespread changes at...

Recent developments in innovation theory and policy have led policymakers to assign particular importance to supporting networks of cooperation among heterogeneous economic actors, especially in production systems composed of small and medium enterprises. Such innovative policies call for...

We discuss how the outcomes of policy evaluation processes can provide valuable feedback in order to design more effective policy interventions. We address our analysis to policies directed at promoting innovation by fostering generative relationships among heterogeneous organizations. The...

This research proposes an investigation into the creation and the later development, in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, of a private company called CRIT Srl, constituted by a group of large and medium-sized mechanical firms. The purpose of CRIT is not only to act as a technology broker,...

This study analyses, through cross-section estimation methods, the influence of spatial effects in productivity (product per worker), at economic sectors level of the NUTs III of mainland Portugal, from 1995 to 1999 and from 2000 to 2005 (taking in count the data availability and the Portuguese...

Italian Abstract: Il lavoro esamina le caratteristiche delle imprese multinazionali italiane e ne confronta la performance con quella delle altre imprese nei quattro anni successivi alla crisi del 2008. La quota di imprese industriali con almeno 20 addetti che operano anche all’estero è in...

We study the effects of the world economic crisis which began in 2007 on the Italian productive system. National accounts data are supplemented with information gathered in spring 2009 from the Bank of Italy�s survey on industrial and service firms, and from interviews with about 70 of...