We study the relationship between suicide rates and socioeconomic factors by using a panel data at Italian province level in the time span 1996–2005. Our analysis focuses on the impact of social norms on suicidal behaviors. In particular, beyond the usual social correlates of suicide rates, we...

We use national panel data at provincial level to investigate the relationship between suicide rates and socio-economic factors in Italy. The role of family, alcohol consumption, social conformism and population density are the main factors in explaining the suicide rate in Italy. Notably, the...

This paper studies the nature, sources and determinants of international patenting activity in Latin American countries (LACs) and examines the extent to which LACs benefit from R&D that is performed in the G-5 countries (France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, and United States). By using...

This paper deals with an issue which is particularly relevant in the literature on IPR and university-industry knowledge transfer: is the ownership structure of academic inventions relevant for patent quality and the efficiency of the knowledge transfer process? This question is also...

We analyze the role of social capital in academic careers. We distinguish between ties with reputed scientists and laboratories (scientific and technical human capital) and ties with influential actors with respect to recruitment/promotion decisions (political capital). We use institution-wise...

Although in most countries, professors are legally obligated to disclose their inventions to their university\'s technology transfer office, the latter often does not have the real authority to enforce this rule. We here introduce a model that endogenizes a professor\'s decision of a form of...

International technological collaborations (ITCs) and face-to-face interactions are an important vehicle of knowledge diffusion. This paper analyzes ITCs among USPTO patents’ inventors in eleven emerging economies and seven advanced countries (1990–2004) and a novel database on companies’...

The relationship between ownership structure and the quality of academic inventions has not been deeply analysed, despite its relevance for the literature on IPR and university–industry knowledge transfer. This paper fills the gap by using a novel dataset of academic patents in the UK, both...

It has been long recognised that the role and effects of patents vary considerably across industries. This observation raises immediately to important sets of questions. First, can we document systematically this heterogeneity and can we provide a conceptual framework for explaining this...