FINANZIAMENTI ESTERNI E PRODUTTIVITÀ TOTALE DEI FATTORI NEL SETTORE DELLA RICERCA: IL CASO DEL CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHE
[Scientific productivity and external funding, the case of CNR institutes]
Alessandro Manello
Università di Bergamo
Cnr-Ceris
Ceris - Institute for Economic Research
on Firms and Growth
Collegio Carlo Alberto
Via Real Collegio, 30
10024 Moncalieri (To)
Tel. 011-6824946
Cell. 348-7340890
e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
ABSTRACT: The recent reform of the Italian CNR has increased the focus on external collaboration and decreased the amount of government funds. That process bring research institutes to operate on the market in order to obtain the necessary resources, but causes also a re-allocation of efforts among different research products. This paper present an application of the Directional Distance Function (DDF) model to build productivity indicators able to consider two different kinds of scientific outputs: someone more important than others from a scientific view point. Financial constraints do not allow institutes to freely dispose of their output portfolio and less important outputs have to be produced in order to obtain external funds. In a regime of limited human and temporal resources a substitution process cannot be avoided, then a cost in term of desirable scientific outputs is imposed. An estimate of that opportunity cost is here proposed, also with a comparison of standard efficiency measures.
An evidence of the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) trend during the 2004-2007 period is provided by applying Malmquist-Luenberger indexes and standard indicators. From a comparison of the two set of results some different conclusions on the 2003 Reform can be drawn.
Keywords: Directional Distance Function, Scientific Productivity, Malmquist-Luenberger
indexes, TFP growth
JEL Codes: I23, D24
Finardi Ugo*
(Turin University and National Research Council, Ceris-Cnr)
Università di Torino - Dipartimento di Chimica I.F.M.
and NIS - Centre of Excellence
via P. Giuria, 7 - 10125 Torino (Italy)
Tel. +39/011.670 83 85 -Fax +39/011.670 78 55
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
ABSTRACT. Nanosciences and nanotechnologies (NST) are a developing scientifictechnological area in full expansion and evolution. Their character of General Purpose Technology has been assessed. Asian countries play a relevant role in the evolutionary path and growth of NST, as in some cases they present a rapid growth of scientific production. This work analyzes the performance of three of such countries – People’s Republic of China, Japan, South Korea – emphasizing several aspects of their performance in scientific production and putting in reciprocal relations these aspects. Results show a different behaviour of Japan – which starting from a dominant position is loosing ground with respect to its competitors – and of the other two countries which are catching up. Insights on the internal organization and on the mutual relations are also offered, together with a comparison of the relation with other important areas of NST
scientific production.
KEYWORDS: nanotechnologies, nanosciences, evolutionary trends, People’s Republic of China, Japan, South Korea
JEL CODES: L6; O31; O33
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. The author acknowledges the help and spur of Prof. S. Coluccia and of Prof. L. Battezzati of Dipartimento di Chimica I.F.M. and NIS-Centre of Excellence of the Università degli Studi di Torino, and the collaboration of Prof. S. Rolfo, of Dr. M. Coccia and of Dr. G. Vitali of CERIS-CNR. M. Zittino and E. Viarisio provided meticulous editing. The usual disclaimers apply.
*Ugo Finardi holds an MSc in Industrial Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Materials Sciences and Technology. He is at present Research Assistant at the Department of Inorganic, Physical and Materials Chemistry at the University of Torino and Fellow of Ceris-CNR. He performs research in the fields of Innovation Studies, with a focus on nanotechnologies, research and industrialization of new materials, technology transfer, regional systems of innovation and management of research.
Alessandro Manello
University of Bergamo and Cnr-Ceris
Cnr-Ceris
Institute for Economic Research
on Firms and Growth
Via Real Collegio, 30
10024 Moncalieri (To)
Tel. 011-6824946
Cell. 348-7340890
e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
ABSTRACT: this research presents an extension of the directional distance function model to measure performances for firms which produce a large number of pollutants and operate in different industrial sectors. I use this methodology to estimate productivity indexes on a sample of Italian firms that were forced to declare their emissions to the European Pollution Release and Transfer Register in 2007. A proxy for the environmental regulation’s cost is derived and results show a significant impact in term of potential value added lost. Estimations also reveal differences in mean environmental performances among industries; furthermore, the effect of pollution control follows the same path.
Keywords: Directional distance function, Environmental regulation, Polluting industries
JEL Codes: Q50, Q52, Q56
I thank Secondo Rolfo (Director Ceris-CNR), Gianmaria Martini (University of Bergamo, Italy), Giulio Calabrese (Ceris-
CNR) and Greta Falavigna (Ceris-CNR) for valuable suggestions to study these research topics, as well as Enrico Viarisio
for excellent research assistance. This study has been financed by Piedmont Region through the project “ICT Converging on
Law: Next Generation Services for Citizens, Enterprises, Public Administration and Policymakers”, related to the announcement
“Converging Technologies 2007”. The usual disclaimer applies.”
Greta Falavigna
Cnr-Ceris researcher
Ph.D. in Economics and Technology Management
Cnr-Ceris
Via Real Collegio, 30
10024 Moncalieri (To)
Tel. 011-6824941
e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
ABSTRACT:Based on new regulations of Basel II Accord in 2004, banks and financial nstitutions have now the possibility to develop internal rating systems with the aim of correctly udging financial health status of firms. This study analyses the situation of Italian small firms
that are difficult to judge because their economic and financial data are often not available. The intend of this work is to propose a simulation framework to give a rating judgements to firms presenting poor financial information.
The model assigns a rating judgement that is a simulated counterpart of that done by Bureau van Dijk-K Finance (BvD). Assigning rating score to small firms with problem of poor availability of financial data is really problematic. Nevertheless, in Italy the majority of firms are small and there is not a law that requires to firms to deposit balance-sheet in a detailed form. For this reason the model proposed in this work is a three-layer framework that allows us to assign ating judgements to small enterprises using simple balance-sheet data.
KEYWORDS: rating judgements, artificial neural networks, feature selection
JEL CODES: C15; C45; G24
I thank Secondo Rolfo (Director Ceris-CNR), Giulio Calabrese (Ceris-CNR) and Alessandro Manello (Ceris-CNR) for percipient remarks about the present study, as well as Enrico Viarisio for the commendable research assistance. This study has been financed by Piedmont Region through the project “ICT Converging on Law: Next Generation Services for Citizens, Enterprises, Public Administration and Policymakers”, related to the announcement “Converging Technologies 2007”. The usual disclaimer applies.”
Reale Emanuela
(Cnr-Ceris)
Seeber Marco
(Cnr-Ceris and USI)
Cnr-Ceris
Ceris - Institute for Economic Research
on Firms and Growth
Via dei Taurini, 19
00185 Roma, Italy
Tel. +39 06 49937810
Fax +39 06 49937884
Corresponding author: Emanuela Reale This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
ABSTRACT: This paper focuses on policy implementation in higher education (HE) to be analysed through the evolution and transformation of the policy instruments, namely those related to the Government funding and evaluation. The research questions are: to what extent instruments can reveal the evolution of policy rationales and justifications? How instruments emerged, and become institutionalised, affecting and being affected by the characteristics of national configuration of HE systems? Whether and how they produce desired effects or evolve in unpredictable ways, generating unexpected results, playing new roles and functionalities?
The evolution of the instruments seems to be dependent on some characteristics of the context and some key features of the instruments. The development has been often inspired by NPM principles, which aimed at increasing steering capacity of the policy maker on one side, and university role and autonomy on the other. The common narrative is then declined in very different ways among countries, and instruments implementation reveals the extent to which it is adapted to the existing characters (dominant paradigm) of the HE system.
Keywords: Higher Education, Funding, Evaluation, Policy instruments, Policy implementation
JEL Codes: I23, I28