I research a vast broad of issues on economics and management of innovation and technology. I fancy advanced statistical techniques for large dataset and big data. P-value is not as sexy as machine learning. I also did some work in economics of culture and history of economic thought.
Traditional choice models perform poorly in understanding the determinants of the adoption of new... more Traditional choice models perform poorly in understanding the determinants of the adoption of new products. First, data on pioneers and early adopters are biased towards specific performance characteristics of the product and the socio-demographic characteristics of the consumers. Second, surveys on the intention to buy underperform in detecting movements of those who do not intend to buy, who are the majority in the case of new products. Probabilistic choice models try to overcome this issue. By using survey data on electric vehicles, we theoretically contribute to this stream of literature and empirically estimate the impact of specific performance improvements and price reduction on the probability of consumers switching from non-intention to buy to intention to buy. Results show that price reduction is the most important triggering factor for the diffusion of electric vehicles, as it determines more than other factors the transition of consumers from the non-intention to the intention to buy an electric vehicle. The improvement in the driving range constitutes the second most important factor for low initial values of the stated intention to buy, while the possibility of recharging at home matters significantly more for consumers with high initial values of the stated intention to buy.
This paper shows how data science can contribute to improving empirical research in economics by ... more This paper shows how data science can contribute to improving empirical research in economics by leveraging on large datasets and extracting information otherwise unsuitable for a traditional econometric approach. As a test-bed for our framework, machine learning algorithms allow us to create a new holistic measure of innovation following a 2012 Italian Law aimed at boosting new high-tech firms. We adopt this measure to analyse the impact of innovativeness on a large population of Italian firms which entered the market at the beginning of the 2008 global crisis. The methodological contribution is organised in different steps. First, we train seven supervised learning algorithms to recognise innovative firms on 2013 firmographics data and select a combination of those models with the best prediction power. Second, we apply the latter on the 2008 dataset and predict which firms would have been labelled as innovative according to the definition of the 2012 law. Finally, we adopt this new indicator as the regressor in a survival model to explain firms' ability to remain in the market after 2008. The results suggest that innovative firms are more likely to survive than the rest of the sample, but the survival premium is likely to depend on location. JEL CODES: O30, D22, C52, C55.
The paper presents the topic modeling technique known as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a for... more The paper presents the topic modeling technique known as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a form of text-mining aiming at discovering the hidden (latent) thematic structure in large archives of documents. By applying LDA to the full text of the economics articles stored in the JSTOR database, we show how to construct a map of the discipline over time, and illustrate the potentialities of the technique for the study of the shifting structure of economics in a time of (possible) fragmentation
The technology underlying the digital transformation triggered a process of concentration in seve... more The technology underlying the digital transformation triggered a process of concentration in several digital markets and few global players rose to dominate key industries by leveraging on network externalities and economies of scale. We evaluate the risk of abuse of dominant position by looking at three economic aspects stressed in the economic theory: the contestability of digital markets, the presence of price discrimination, and potential for technological improvement. All in all, we conclude that the nature of big data on the one side has been the trigger of market concentration, but, on the other side, it limits the possibility of its abuse. This claim is not an a-priori apologia of large incumbents in digital markets, which should anyway kept under surveillance by antritrust authorities as any other industry, but rather an attempt to argue that market concentration is a matter a fact and not an necessarily evil one. Nonetheless, the concentration of power in few large global players should rise other concerns linked with the supranational nature of these firms, which can easily cherry-picking locations to exploit tax competition among countries or more favorable legislation on the privacy and the fair use of data.
The main aim of this report is to provide detailed evidence on the long-term resilience of Italia... more The main aim of this report is to provide detailed evidence on the long-term resilience of Italian manufacturing, focusing, in particular, on the regions in the North-West (primary locus of Italy’s historical industrialization) and North-East (primary locus of industrialization in the 1980s and 1990s) of Italy. We study the case of Piemonte and also analyse the main trends in Lombardia, Emilia Romagna and Triveneto. Overall, this geographical macro area accounts for about 27 million people, equivalent to the population in BENELUX. The journey from Milano by train takes 45 minutes to reach Torino, 60 minutes to reach Bologna and 200 minutes to reach Venezia. Milano and Torino can be considered an urban agglomeration (e.g., the Metropolitan Statistical Area of greater Boston is about 110 km in diameter involves a mean work commute travel time of 45 minutes). We introduce and discuss a set of indicators aimed at capturing industrial resilience in the most recent years. We examine the evolution of our main indicators from the mid-1990s, the period when Italian productivity began to lag behind that of Germany, the other main European exporter.
Department of Management, Università Ca'Foscari Venezia Working Paper , 2020
Recent literature on the diffusion of robots mostly ignores the regional dimension. The contribut... more Recent literature on the diffusion of robots mostly ignores the regional dimension. The contribution of this paper at the debate on Industry 4.0 is twofold. First, IFR (2017) data on acquisitions of industrial robots in the five largest European economies are rescaled at regional levels to draw a first picture of winners and losers in the European race for advanced manufacturing. Second, using an unsupervised machine learning approach to classify regions based on their composition of industries. The paper provides novel evidence of the relationship between industry mix and the regional capability of adopting robots in the industrial processes.
Industry 4.0 may be regarded as an emerging approach to the adoption of next-generation robotics ... more Industry 4.0 may be regarded as an emerging approach to the adoption of next-generation robotics for industrial applications. Our study sheds light on the current state of robotics, with a particular focus on robots for industrial applications. The research combines publicly-available information from company press releases, news articles, peer-reviewed journals and trade and industry reports. The paper is organized in four sections. Section 1 discusses some definitions of robotics and robotics subclasses, and various robotics classifications. Sections 2 and 3 provide a snapshot of demand and supply of robotics, and offers some insights into select regional markets and global technological trends. Section 4 describes the challenges and opportunities surrounding robotics and Industry 4.0, and the future impact of these technologies
The paper provides a theoretical model of technology adoption based on the idea that the diffusio... more The paper provides a theoretical model of technology adoption based on the idea that the diffusion of information about a technology depends both on the social structure of the adopters and their degree of assortativity. We propose a framework that-while retaining the core assumptions of epidemic diffusion models-allows for explicit modelling of the social structure via social network and of agents cultural heterogeneity via agent-based simulation. Decision-making takes place in institutional contexts where individual features trigger differentiated imitative responses and societal organization acts as medium on which information flows. The model simulates the diffusion of fertilizers in five Ethiopian villages (Peasant Associations),which differ in both political and relational structures and farmers belong to numerous ethnic and religious groups. Starting from survey data we run a compositional understanding simulation with the aim of reproducing observed diffusion curves on the basis of unobserved individual interactions. By minimizing the divergence from model output and observed diffusion, the exercise of categorical calibration and time series fit identify a set of plausible parameters for each village. Results highlight the importance of cultural dissimilarities to understand the diffusion processes.
This paper discusses the extent to which sociodemographic characteristics of consumers and their ... more This paper discusses the extent to which sociodemographic characteristics of consumers and their past consumption are less effective in explaining the decision of purchasing a cultural good than the characteristics of the product itself, which allow for imitative behaviors and are at the basis of distinction. While the former approaches are well documented in the literature, the latter refers to Bourdieu’s idea of objectified cultural capital, which has been revisited and empirically explored. Because the various causal effects interact with each other, this paper tests a theoretical model which matches individual characteristics of the consumer with the properties of the cultural product. Specifically, we discussed the emergence of a new version of a cultural good, which is able to broaden the dimension of the market by gaining rapid success in its audience. This diffusion pattern is a quite rare event, but disruptive for the market and extremely profitable for the producer. The authors label this occurrence a disruptive cultural fad and try to understand the determinants of its adoption. The hypotheses of the model are tested on a unique dataset of microdata of purchasing transactions in Milan in the early nineteenth century, when the music by Gioachino Rossini emerged as a disruptive cultural fad at the dawn of the music industry. Results show that key features of a successful disruptive cultural fad are the role of some specific patterns of personal past consumption, the capabilities of generating positive network externalities in the consumption, and, surprisingly, the lack of negative ones due to any possible hip or snob effect.
This paper provides new empirical evidence about the impact of technological policies upon firms'... more This paper provides new empirical evidence about the impact of technological policies upon firms' innovative behavior. We take into consideration the role of R&D subsidies and innovative public procurement. While the former policy tool has been both extensively discussed in the literature and empirically investigated, the latter is a growing trend, which still lacks robust empirical evidence. In this paper, we replicate existing results on R&D subsidies, we surmise fresh empirical evidence on the outcome of innovative public procurement, and we address the issue of a possible interaction among the two tools. When controlling for this interaction of public procurement, R&D subsidies cease to be as effective as reported in previous studies. Innovative public procurement seems to be more effective than R&D subsidies. Evidence suggests that the two policies provide the highest impact when they interact and that they have to be simultaneously considered. Failure in doing so might lead to biased results.
Scientific breakthroughs coming from universities can contribute to the emergence of new industri... more Scientific breakthroughs coming from universities can contribute to the emergence of new industries, such as in the case of biotechnology. Obviously, not all research conducted in universities leads to a radical change from existing technological trajectories. Patents and patent dynamics have long been recognized as critical in understanding the emergence of new technologies and industries. Specifically, patent citations provide insight into the originality of a discovery that has received patent protection. Yet while a large body of literature addresses the impact of patent originality on various firm performance measures, we address the question of what conditions drive patent originality in the process of knowledge creation within the university. Using data on patented cancer research, we examine how research context -as reflected by the funding source for each scientistis associated with patent originality. We find that when university scientists are partly funded by their own university, they have a higher propensity to generate more original patents. By contrast, university scientists funded either by industry or other non-university organizations have a lower propensity to generate more original patents. The significance of our findings in the cancer research setting call for further research on this question in other research fields.
Scientific breakthroughs emanating from universities can be a trigger for the emergence of new in... more Scientific breakthroughs emanating from universities can be a trigger for the emergence of new industries such as in the paradigmatic case of biotechnology. Obviously, not all research conducted in the universities leads to radical departure from the existing technological trajectories. When a patent protection is granted to a discovery, it is possible to construct a proxy for the originality of the discovery based on patent citations. Patent originality has been long recognized in fostering the emergence of new technologies and industries. However, while a large body of literature exists measuring the impact of patent originality on a broad range of measures of firm performance, this paper aims at investigating the conditions driving patent originality. In particular, in providing the first empirical examination of the determinants of patent originality, this paper finds that the research context, as reflected by the funding source for the scientist, influences the extent to which intellectual property protected by a patent is original.
Page 1. Variety generation and price evolution in the ski manufacturing industry Nicoletta Corroc... more Page 1. Variety generation and price evolution in the ski manufacturing industry Nicoletta Corrocher * and Marco Guerzoni° *Cespri, Bocconi University, Via Sarfatti 25, 20136 Milan, Italy *Department of Economics, NFH, University of Tromso, 9037 Tromso, Norway ...
The aim of this paper is to explain the why of a certain innovative activity instead of another a... more The aim of this paper is to explain the why of a certain innovative activity instead of another as the result of the coevolution of markets and technology. The long demand-pull vs. technology-push debate turned out to be sterile (Freeman 1994): what really matters to ...
The generation of new varieties is crucial for economic growth. The capitalistic mode of producti... more The generation of new varieties is crucial for economic growth. The capitalistic mode of production has shown over time a remarkable capability of setting incentives for economic actors to create new products and processes. Concerning the development of new products, the ...
Emerging literature on crowdfunding, until now, is missing detailed empirical analyses on profile... more Emerging literature on crowdfunding, until now, is missing detailed empirical analyses on profiles of “crowdfunders”. Our paper aims to address this shortage, analyzing geographical and socio-economic characteristics of crowdfunders, looking at how crowdfunding influences the nature of geography and social contacts in new ventures. Our analysis concentrates on Italy, a country suffering for a huge economic crisis but that, at the same time, is showing a strong dynamism in crowdfunding. We collect data on donors of about 350 projects, estimating with a micro-econometric model not only which donors’ characteristics increase the likelihood of an investment, but also the role played by social media in the crowdfunding process. Our results give some remarkable indications about crowdfunding in different countries and cultural contexts.
We study the impact of demand on innovation. By focusing on a sample of small- and medium-sized e... more We study the impact of demand on innovation. By focusing on a sample of small- and medium-sized enterprises in several industries and European countries, we analyse how demand stimulates innovation by providing economic incentives and reducing uncertainty. Considering the size of the market as a proxy for the presence of demand, we find support for the idea that the presence of incentives stimulates innovation. This is particularly true for process innovation. In considering interaction with customers as a way to reduce uncertainty, we find that firms that see customers as the most important sources of information for both innovation ideas and completion, tend to introduce product innovations. Firm size, R&D expenditure and sectoral effects also matter.
The present paper aims at examining the role of variety in the ski manufacturing industry and its... more The present paper aims at examining the role of variety in the ski manufacturing industry and its relevance in firms’ price setting strategies. In particular, it intends to investigate and to empirically test three hypotheses concerning the relations between: product quality and prices; variety in technical characteristics and prices; variety in service characteristics and prices. Our empirical investigation finds that prices are positively affected by product quality and positively affected by variety in service characteristics. This means that a high degree of product variety allows firms to charge a premium price on consumers, who are able to find the product that best meets their needs and are therefore willing to pay a higher price. By contrast, variety in technical characteristics negatively impacts prices. In a context where a dominant design has emerged and new varieties are not radically different from each other, the gains in economies of scale and scope outweigh the costs of the increased flexibility in the equipment required to produce variety.
The aim of the paper is to critically review contributions on the role of innovation upon industr... more The aim of the paper is to critically review contributions on the role of innovation upon industrial dynamics and the evolution of sectors. Two theoretical and interpretative divides stream along the literature; on the one hand, there is the well known divide "technology push vs. demand pull". The technology push literature assumes that, being the set of possible human needs limitless, users cannot provide information for firms, which ultimately make their decision based upon technological opportunities and bottlenecks. Conversely, demand pull theories suggest that there is tendency of new technology to lag behind the revelation of human needs. On the other hand, both technology push and demand pull contributions are not monolithic, neither homogenous since a second divide intersects both streams of literature. Indeed there exists a flow of literature both coherent with mainstream economics and focused on the monetary incentives of firms to innovate. On the technology side, this is translated into the analysis of the impact of markets and institutions upon the rewards of innovation. On the demand side, this framework results in the analysis of the market size as the main pull mechanism. A second approach departs from mainstream economics, sacrifices the analytical tractability of the issues, and highlights the role of the knowledge embedded in the innovation processes. The focus is thus on the learning process within and between firms as necessary conditions to innovation. The demand side here is conceived as a flow of information from users and consumers to producers. The organization of the paper will mimic the historical structure of the literature. Specifically, it shows how these approaches emerged, the critiques they are confronted with and, eventually, their refinement. Finally, the paper discusses the recent attempts to overcome both divides in order to have an increasingly coherent theory of innovation and evolution of industries.
Traditional choice models perform poorly in understanding the determinants of the adoption of new... more Traditional choice models perform poorly in understanding the determinants of the adoption of new products. First, data on pioneers and early adopters are biased towards specific performance characteristics of the product and the socio-demographic characteristics of the consumers. Second, surveys on the intention to buy underperform in detecting movements of those who do not intend to buy, who are the majority in the case of new products. Probabilistic choice models try to overcome this issue. By using survey data on electric vehicles, we theoretically contribute to this stream of literature and empirically estimate the impact of specific performance improvements and price reduction on the probability of consumers switching from non-intention to buy to intention to buy. Results show that price reduction is the most important triggering factor for the diffusion of electric vehicles, as it determines more than other factors the transition of consumers from the non-intention to the intention to buy an electric vehicle. The improvement in the driving range constitutes the second most important factor for low initial values of the stated intention to buy, while the possibility of recharging at home matters significantly more for consumers with high initial values of the stated intention to buy.
This paper shows how data science can contribute to improving empirical research in economics by ... more This paper shows how data science can contribute to improving empirical research in economics by leveraging on large datasets and extracting information otherwise unsuitable for a traditional econometric approach. As a test-bed for our framework, machine learning algorithms allow us to create a new holistic measure of innovation following a 2012 Italian Law aimed at boosting new high-tech firms. We adopt this measure to analyse the impact of innovativeness on a large population of Italian firms which entered the market at the beginning of the 2008 global crisis. The methodological contribution is organised in different steps. First, we train seven supervised learning algorithms to recognise innovative firms on 2013 firmographics data and select a combination of those models with the best prediction power. Second, we apply the latter on the 2008 dataset and predict which firms would have been labelled as innovative according to the definition of the 2012 law. Finally, we adopt this new indicator as the regressor in a survival model to explain firms' ability to remain in the market after 2008. The results suggest that innovative firms are more likely to survive than the rest of the sample, but the survival premium is likely to depend on location. JEL CODES: O30, D22, C52, C55.
The paper presents the topic modeling technique known as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a for... more The paper presents the topic modeling technique known as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a form of text-mining aiming at discovering the hidden (latent) thematic structure in large archives of documents. By applying LDA to the full text of the economics articles stored in the JSTOR database, we show how to construct a map of the discipline over time, and illustrate the potentialities of the technique for the study of the shifting structure of economics in a time of (possible) fragmentation
The technology underlying the digital transformation triggered a process of concentration in seve... more The technology underlying the digital transformation triggered a process of concentration in several digital markets and few global players rose to dominate key industries by leveraging on network externalities and economies of scale. We evaluate the risk of abuse of dominant position by looking at three economic aspects stressed in the economic theory: the contestability of digital markets, the presence of price discrimination, and potential for technological improvement. All in all, we conclude that the nature of big data on the one side has been the trigger of market concentration, but, on the other side, it limits the possibility of its abuse. This claim is not an a-priori apologia of large incumbents in digital markets, which should anyway kept under surveillance by antritrust authorities as any other industry, but rather an attempt to argue that market concentration is a matter a fact and not an necessarily evil one. Nonetheless, the concentration of power in few large global players should rise other concerns linked with the supranational nature of these firms, which can easily cherry-picking locations to exploit tax competition among countries or more favorable legislation on the privacy and the fair use of data.
The main aim of this report is to provide detailed evidence on the long-term resilience of Italia... more The main aim of this report is to provide detailed evidence on the long-term resilience of Italian manufacturing, focusing, in particular, on the regions in the North-West (primary locus of Italy’s historical industrialization) and North-East (primary locus of industrialization in the 1980s and 1990s) of Italy. We study the case of Piemonte and also analyse the main trends in Lombardia, Emilia Romagna and Triveneto. Overall, this geographical macro area accounts for about 27 million people, equivalent to the population in BENELUX. The journey from Milano by train takes 45 minutes to reach Torino, 60 minutes to reach Bologna and 200 minutes to reach Venezia. Milano and Torino can be considered an urban agglomeration (e.g., the Metropolitan Statistical Area of greater Boston is about 110 km in diameter involves a mean work commute travel time of 45 minutes). We introduce and discuss a set of indicators aimed at capturing industrial resilience in the most recent years. We examine the evolution of our main indicators from the mid-1990s, the period when Italian productivity began to lag behind that of Germany, the other main European exporter.
Department of Management, Università Ca'Foscari Venezia Working Paper , 2020
Recent literature on the diffusion of robots mostly ignores the regional dimension. The contribut... more Recent literature on the diffusion of robots mostly ignores the regional dimension. The contribution of this paper at the debate on Industry 4.0 is twofold. First, IFR (2017) data on acquisitions of industrial robots in the five largest European economies are rescaled at regional levels to draw a first picture of winners and losers in the European race for advanced manufacturing. Second, using an unsupervised machine learning approach to classify regions based on their composition of industries. The paper provides novel evidence of the relationship between industry mix and the regional capability of adopting robots in the industrial processes.
Industry 4.0 may be regarded as an emerging approach to the adoption of next-generation robotics ... more Industry 4.0 may be regarded as an emerging approach to the adoption of next-generation robotics for industrial applications. Our study sheds light on the current state of robotics, with a particular focus on robots for industrial applications. The research combines publicly-available information from company press releases, news articles, peer-reviewed journals and trade and industry reports. The paper is organized in four sections. Section 1 discusses some definitions of robotics and robotics subclasses, and various robotics classifications. Sections 2 and 3 provide a snapshot of demand and supply of robotics, and offers some insights into select regional markets and global technological trends. Section 4 describes the challenges and opportunities surrounding robotics and Industry 4.0, and the future impact of these technologies
The paper provides a theoretical model of technology adoption based on the idea that the diffusio... more The paper provides a theoretical model of technology adoption based on the idea that the diffusion of information about a technology depends both on the social structure of the adopters and their degree of assortativity. We propose a framework that-while retaining the core assumptions of epidemic diffusion models-allows for explicit modelling of the social structure via social network and of agents cultural heterogeneity via agent-based simulation. Decision-making takes place in institutional contexts where individual features trigger differentiated imitative responses and societal organization acts as medium on which information flows. The model simulates the diffusion of fertilizers in five Ethiopian villages (Peasant Associations),which differ in both political and relational structures and farmers belong to numerous ethnic and religious groups. Starting from survey data we run a compositional understanding simulation with the aim of reproducing observed diffusion curves on the basis of unobserved individual interactions. By minimizing the divergence from model output and observed diffusion, the exercise of categorical calibration and time series fit identify a set of plausible parameters for each village. Results highlight the importance of cultural dissimilarities to understand the diffusion processes.
This paper discusses the extent to which sociodemographic characteristics of consumers and their ... more This paper discusses the extent to which sociodemographic characteristics of consumers and their past consumption are less effective in explaining the decision of purchasing a cultural good than the characteristics of the product itself, which allow for imitative behaviors and are at the basis of distinction. While the former approaches are well documented in the literature, the latter refers to Bourdieu’s idea of objectified cultural capital, which has been revisited and empirically explored. Because the various causal effects interact with each other, this paper tests a theoretical model which matches individual characteristics of the consumer with the properties of the cultural product. Specifically, we discussed the emergence of a new version of a cultural good, which is able to broaden the dimension of the market by gaining rapid success in its audience. This diffusion pattern is a quite rare event, but disruptive for the market and extremely profitable for the producer. The authors label this occurrence a disruptive cultural fad and try to understand the determinants of its adoption. The hypotheses of the model are tested on a unique dataset of microdata of purchasing transactions in Milan in the early nineteenth century, when the music by Gioachino Rossini emerged as a disruptive cultural fad at the dawn of the music industry. Results show that key features of a successful disruptive cultural fad are the role of some specific patterns of personal past consumption, the capabilities of generating positive network externalities in the consumption, and, surprisingly, the lack of negative ones due to any possible hip or snob effect.
This paper provides new empirical evidence about the impact of technological policies upon firms'... more This paper provides new empirical evidence about the impact of technological policies upon firms' innovative behavior. We take into consideration the role of R&D subsidies and innovative public procurement. While the former policy tool has been both extensively discussed in the literature and empirically investigated, the latter is a growing trend, which still lacks robust empirical evidence. In this paper, we replicate existing results on R&D subsidies, we surmise fresh empirical evidence on the outcome of innovative public procurement, and we address the issue of a possible interaction among the two tools. When controlling for this interaction of public procurement, R&D subsidies cease to be as effective as reported in previous studies. Innovative public procurement seems to be more effective than R&D subsidies. Evidence suggests that the two policies provide the highest impact when they interact and that they have to be simultaneously considered. Failure in doing so might lead to biased results.
Scientific breakthroughs coming from universities can contribute to the emergence of new industri... more Scientific breakthroughs coming from universities can contribute to the emergence of new industries, such as in the case of biotechnology. Obviously, not all research conducted in universities leads to a radical change from existing technological trajectories. Patents and patent dynamics have long been recognized as critical in understanding the emergence of new technologies and industries. Specifically, patent citations provide insight into the originality of a discovery that has received patent protection. Yet while a large body of literature addresses the impact of patent originality on various firm performance measures, we address the question of what conditions drive patent originality in the process of knowledge creation within the university. Using data on patented cancer research, we examine how research context -as reflected by the funding source for each scientistis associated with patent originality. We find that when university scientists are partly funded by their own university, they have a higher propensity to generate more original patents. By contrast, university scientists funded either by industry or other non-university organizations have a lower propensity to generate more original patents. The significance of our findings in the cancer research setting call for further research on this question in other research fields.
Scientific breakthroughs emanating from universities can be a trigger for the emergence of new in... more Scientific breakthroughs emanating from universities can be a trigger for the emergence of new industries such as in the paradigmatic case of biotechnology. Obviously, not all research conducted in the universities leads to radical departure from the existing technological trajectories. When a patent protection is granted to a discovery, it is possible to construct a proxy for the originality of the discovery based on patent citations. Patent originality has been long recognized in fostering the emergence of new technologies and industries. However, while a large body of literature exists measuring the impact of patent originality on a broad range of measures of firm performance, this paper aims at investigating the conditions driving patent originality. In particular, in providing the first empirical examination of the determinants of patent originality, this paper finds that the research context, as reflected by the funding source for the scientist, influences the extent to which intellectual property protected by a patent is original.
Page 1. Variety generation and price evolution in the ski manufacturing industry Nicoletta Corroc... more Page 1. Variety generation and price evolution in the ski manufacturing industry Nicoletta Corrocher * and Marco Guerzoni° *Cespri, Bocconi University, Via Sarfatti 25, 20136 Milan, Italy *Department of Economics, NFH, University of Tromso, 9037 Tromso, Norway ...
The aim of this paper is to explain the why of a certain innovative activity instead of another a... more The aim of this paper is to explain the why of a certain innovative activity instead of another as the result of the coevolution of markets and technology. The long demand-pull vs. technology-push debate turned out to be sterile (Freeman 1994): what really matters to ...
The generation of new varieties is crucial for economic growth. The capitalistic mode of producti... more The generation of new varieties is crucial for economic growth. The capitalistic mode of production has shown over time a remarkable capability of setting incentives for economic actors to create new products and processes. Concerning the development of new products, the ...
Emerging literature on crowdfunding, until now, is missing detailed empirical analyses on profile... more Emerging literature on crowdfunding, until now, is missing detailed empirical analyses on profiles of “crowdfunders”. Our paper aims to address this shortage, analyzing geographical and socio-economic characteristics of crowdfunders, looking at how crowdfunding influences the nature of geography and social contacts in new ventures. Our analysis concentrates on Italy, a country suffering for a huge economic crisis but that, at the same time, is showing a strong dynamism in crowdfunding. We collect data on donors of about 350 projects, estimating with a micro-econometric model not only which donors’ characteristics increase the likelihood of an investment, but also the role played by social media in the crowdfunding process. Our results give some remarkable indications about crowdfunding in different countries and cultural contexts.
We study the impact of demand on innovation. By focusing on a sample of small- and medium-sized e... more We study the impact of demand on innovation. By focusing on a sample of small- and medium-sized enterprises in several industries and European countries, we analyse how demand stimulates innovation by providing economic incentives and reducing uncertainty. Considering the size of the market as a proxy for the presence of demand, we find support for the idea that the presence of incentives stimulates innovation. This is particularly true for process innovation. In considering interaction with customers as a way to reduce uncertainty, we find that firms that see customers as the most important sources of information for both innovation ideas and completion, tend to introduce product innovations. Firm size, R&D expenditure and sectoral effects also matter.
The present paper aims at examining the role of variety in the ski manufacturing industry and its... more The present paper aims at examining the role of variety in the ski manufacturing industry and its relevance in firms’ price setting strategies. In particular, it intends to investigate and to empirically test three hypotheses concerning the relations between: product quality and prices; variety in technical characteristics and prices; variety in service characteristics and prices. Our empirical investigation finds that prices are positively affected by product quality and positively affected by variety in service characteristics. This means that a high degree of product variety allows firms to charge a premium price on consumers, who are able to find the product that best meets their needs and are therefore willing to pay a higher price. By contrast, variety in technical characteristics negatively impacts prices. In a context where a dominant design has emerged and new varieties are not radically different from each other, the gains in economies of scale and scope outweigh the costs of the increased flexibility in the equipment required to produce variety.
The aim of the paper is to critically review contributions on the role of innovation upon industr... more The aim of the paper is to critically review contributions on the role of innovation upon industrial dynamics and the evolution of sectors. Two theoretical and interpretative divides stream along the literature; on the one hand, there is the well known divide "technology push vs. demand pull". The technology push literature assumes that, being the set of possible human needs limitless, users cannot provide information for firms, which ultimately make their decision based upon technological opportunities and bottlenecks. Conversely, demand pull theories suggest that there is tendency of new technology to lag behind the revelation of human needs. On the other hand, both technology push and demand pull contributions are not monolithic, neither homogenous since a second divide intersects both streams of literature. Indeed there exists a flow of literature both coherent with mainstream economics and focused on the monetary incentives of firms to innovate. On the technology side, this is translated into the analysis of the impact of markets and institutions upon the rewards of innovation. On the demand side, this framework results in the analysis of the market size as the main pull mechanism. A second approach departs from mainstream economics, sacrifices the analytical tractability of the issues, and highlights the role of the knowledge embedded in the innovation processes. The focus is thus on the learning process within and between firms as necessary conditions to innovation. The demand side here is conceived as a flow of information from users and consumers to producers. The organization of the paper will mimic the historical structure of the literature. Specifically, it shows how these approaches emerged, the critiques they are confronted with and, eventually, their refinement. Finally, the paper discusses the recent attempts to overcome both divides in order to have an increasingly coherent theory of innovation and evolution of industries.
Climate change constitutes a rising challenge to the agricultural base of developing countries. M... more Climate change constitutes a rising challenge to the agricultural base of developing countries. Most of the literature has focused on the impact of changes in the means of weather variables on mean changes in production and has found very little impact of weather upon agricultural production. Instead, a more recent stream of literature showed that we can assess the impact of weather on production by looking at extreme weather events. Based on this evidence, we surmise that there is a missing link in the literature consisting of relating the extreme events in weather with extreme losses in crop production. Indeed, extreme events are of the greatest interest for scholars and policy makers only when they carry extraordinary negative effects. We build on this idea and for the first time, we adapt a conditional dependence model for multivariate extreme values to understand the impact of extreme weather on agricultural production. Specifically, we look at the probability that an extreme event drastically reduces the harvest of any of the major crops. This analysis, which is run on data for six different crops and four different weather variables in a vast array of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, shows that extremes in weather and yield losses of major staples are associated events.
This paper analyses culture as a determinant of technology adoption in a developing country. Whil... more This paper analyses culture as a determinant of technology adoption in a developing country. While the literature extensively discusses the influence of culture upon economic growth, little attention has been paid to the mechanisms that can explain this link at the micro level. In this paper, we postulate that culture may play a crucial role in hindering or fostering the adoption and diffusion of innovation, a key trigger of the engine of growth. We thus borrow from the literature on the economics of innovation, and we model the impact of culture upon households’ decision to adopt innovation. We focus on developing countries and specifically on the adoption of fertilizer in Ethiopian rural areas. This empirical study uses the Ethiopia Rural Household Survey to attempt to differentiate between individual cultural traits, namely, ethnicity and religion, and the cultural homogeneity of the environment as co-determinants of fertilizer adoption. We thus apply a multivariate survival model for clustered and correlated observations and find a positive effect on the diffusion of fertilizer. Firstly, habits and social norms, proxied by ethnicity, provide a better explanation for the role of culture, than religious beliefs, as usually posited in the literature. Secondly, the cultural environment plays a decisive role. While a homogeneous ethnic environment accelerates the diffusion of fertilizer, a diverse religious background in a community creates an environment conducive to initial adoption. While the direct contribution of this paper relates to technology adoption at the micro level, we believe it represents a first step in gaining a better understanding of the relation between culture and growth at the micro level.
This paper presents a History Friendly Model which addresses the issue of the bifurcation in “tec... more This paper presents a History Friendly Model which addresses the issue of the bifurcation in “technological styles” between US and Britain during the nineteenth century. The model aims at gaining a better understanding of the micro-dynamics that gave rise to different patterns of innovation in the two countries. In particular, we suggest that different demand patterns might be an explanation for the faster diffusion of capital intensive technologies in the US. Simulation results confirm this hypothesis, although only when we jointly control for the role of technological opportunities.
The aim of this paper is an investigation on the role of demand in industrial
dynamics. Despite t... more The aim of this paper is an investigation on the role of demand in industrial dynamics. Despite the decades-long debate on demand and innovation, theory still lacks a comprehensive analytical formulation. This paper proposes a model where demand is conceived as a peculiar blend of two conditions, market size, and users’ sophistication. These conditions drive firms’ incentives to innovate. As main outcome, the paper proposes both a theoretical taxonomy of sectors and an original explanation of technological life cycle.
Innovation is widely acknowledged as one of the main forces driving economic growth. However,
des... more Innovation is widely acknowledged as one of the main forces driving economic growth. However, despite our significant knowledge of the technological determinants of innovation processes, an adequate understanding of demand side factors is still lacking. This paper aims to survey the literature on the influence of demand upon innovation. Although theories and empirical studies on this issue can be found at various points in economics, management theory, and marketing, in each context, the concept of demand has been understood in different ways and both different methodologies and units of analysis have been employed. This Babel of languages makes it difficult to find a common thread among the different contributions and boosts the perception of a certain disregard of the demand side. This paper reviews the most important literature on the topic with two aims: one is to give an overall picture on how innovation studies have handled the concept of demand; the other is to suggest a framework that includes the main insights from previous contributions. More than an attempt to come out with a general theory on demand, it constitutes a suggestion of a common language.
Demand, Complexity, and Long-Run Economic Evolution, 2019
In a much-debated essay of 1930, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keyne... more In a much-debated essay of 1930, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes sketched the dream of a human race finally free from the economic problem of material scarcity. A hundred years of capital accumulation and technological progress will result in the advent of abundance, he wrote. Then, "man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem-how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well". Although Keynes's estimates about prospected economic growth have proved quite accurate, his reflections on the future of capitalism (full employment and rather highly reduced hours worked, with "love of money for money's sake, and therefore "purposiveness" and greed, being superseded by the want to cultivate the "arts of life") appear now as over-optimistic hopes, to say the least. This paper employs an unconventional-in the light of the recent literature on the Economic Possibilities-but well-grounded view of Keynes's speculations about the end of the "economic problem" with a view to interpreting what may appear as a structural crisis of current capitalism and to suggesting a Keynes-inspired possible solution to counteract it. The paper draws a suggestive interpretation of both production and consumption mechanisms underlying the dynamics of today's capitalism, and surmises that this structure may not be sustainable in the medium-long run. Current capitalism demands continuous creation of new industrial sectors, for both supply-side and demand-side reasons. Partly deriving from the nature of technology, which often exhibits economies of scale, partly actively sought by actors investing in R&D to reduce production costs, increasing returns in the production of goods and services are responsible for those increases in productivity that nation states need to survive and win in a competitive environment. However, in aggregate, higher productivity leads, ceteris paribus, to a decrease in demand for labour, and increased output allows for mechanisation of production, which in turn biases input allocation, favouring capital over labour. As analytically explained by both Pasinetti (1983) and, more recently, Saviotti (1996), decreased labour demand triggers a reduction in aggregate income and might cause oversupply. The system is therefore sustainable in the long run only if the introduction of new sectors-machineries (Marx, 1867; Vivarelli, 1995), if we adopt a Marxian view, or new products (Schumpeter, 1934), in a Schumpeterian perspective-to absorb the excess of labour supply and generate new income. This mechanism has a counterpart on the demand side. Due to network externalities-the value of a good or service depends on the total number of actors consuming it (Shy, 2001)-, the diffusion of new successful products tends to saturate markets (Rogers, 1976). In mass consumption societies, social network externalities are pervasive, owing to imitation effects and herdish behaviour (Hazlitt, 1918; Guerzoni and Soellner, 2013). More, the rapid diffusion of new products accelerates the descent in the learning curve for producers and amplifies the increasing-returns effects of technology. To this, one should add that current demand patterns are often the result of defensive rather than creative consumption, to adopt (following Bianchi 2003) a distinction introduced by Hawtrey (1926) and later developed by Scitovsky (1976).
This book is about the history of product variety in the US automotive industry from the black
F... more This book is about the history of product variety in the US automotive industry from the black Ford-T to hot-rodders and easy-riders up to latest trends. It focuses on the dual structure of automotive industry in the United States: on one hand, relatively few and large companies producing cars that apparently achieve a degree of market power through product differentiation, and on the other hand, a relatively small niche market with distinct and smaller producers offering specialty equipment to enhance the performance, appearance, ...
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Papers by Marco Guerzoni
We evaluate the risk of abuse of dominant position by looking at three economic aspects stressed in the economic theory: the contestability of digital markets, the presence of price discrimination, and potential for technological improvement. All in all, we conclude that the nature of big data on the one side has been the trigger of market concentration, but, on the other side, it limits the possibility of its abuse. This claim is not an a-priori apologia of large incumbents in digital markets, which should anyway kept under surveillance by antritrust authorities as any other industry, but rather an attempt to argue that market concentration is a matter a fact and not an necessarily evil one. Nonetheless, the concentration of power in few large global players should rise other concerns linked with the supranational nature of these firms, which can easily cherry-picking locations to exploit tax competition among countries or more favorable legislation on the privacy and the fair use of data.
in the 1980s and 1990s) of Italy. We study the case of Piemonte and also analyse the main trends in Lombardia, Emilia Romagna and Triveneto. Overall, this geographical macro area accounts for about 27 million people, equivalent to the population in BENELUX. The
journey from Milano by train takes 45 minutes to reach Torino, 60 minutes to reach Bologna and 200 minutes to reach Venezia. Milano and Torino can be considered an urban agglomeration (e.g., the Metropolitan Statistical Area of greater Boston is about 110 km in
diameter involves a mean work commute travel time of 45 minutes).
We introduce and discuss a set of indicators aimed at capturing industrial resilience in the most recent years. We examine the evolution of our main indicators from the mid-1990s, the period when Italian productivity began to lag behind that of Germany, the other main
European exporter.
manufacturing. Second, using an unsupervised machine learning approach to classify regions based on their composition of industries. The paper provides novel evidence of the relationship between industry mix and the regional capability of adopting robots in the industrial processes.
The paper is organized in four sections. Section 1 discusses some definitions of robotics and robotics subclasses, and various robotics classifications. Sections 2 and 3 provide a snapshot of demand and supply of robotics, and offers some insights into select regional markets and global technological trends. Section 4 describes the challenges and opportunities surrounding robotics and Industry 4.0, and the future impact of these technologies
We evaluate the risk of abuse of dominant position by looking at three economic aspects stressed in the economic theory: the contestability of digital markets, the presence of price discrimination, and potential for technological improvement. All in all, we conclude that the nature of big data on the one side has been the trigger of market concentration, but, on the other side, it limits the possibility of its abuse. This claim is not an a-priori apologia of large incumbents in digital markets, which should anyway kept under surveillance by antritrust authorities as any other industry, but rather an attempt to argue that market concentration is a matter a fact and not an necessarily evil one. Nonetheless, the concentration of power in few large global players should rise other concerns linked with the supranational nature of these firms, which can easily cherry-picking locations to exploit tax competition among countries or more favorable legislation on the privacy and the fair use of data.
in the 1980s and 1990s) of Italy. We study the case of Piemonte and also analyse the main trends in Lombardia, Emilia Romagna and Triveneto. Overall, this geographical macro area accounts for about 27 million people, equivalent to the population in BENELUX. The
journey from Milano by train takes 45 minutes to reach Torino, 60 minutes to reach Bologna and 200 minutes to reach Venezia. Milano and Torino can be considered an urban agglomeration (e.g., the Metropolitan Statistical Area of greater Boston is about 110 km in
diameter involves a mean work commute travel time of 45 minutes).
We introduce and discuss a set of indicators aimed at capturing industrial resilience in the most recent years. We examine the evolution of our main indicators from the mid-1990s, the period when Italian productivity began to lag behind that of Germany, the other main
European exporter.
manufacturing. Second, using an unsupervised machine learning approach to classify regions based on their composition of industries. The paper provides novel evidence of the relationship between industry mix and the regional capability of adopting robots in the industrial processes.
The paper is organized in four sections. Section 1 discusses some definitions of robotics and robotics subclasses, and various robotics classifications. Sections 2 and 3 provide a snapshot of demand and supply of robotics, and offers some insights into select regional markets and global technological trends. Section 4 describes the challenges and opportunities surrounding robotics and Industry 4.0, and the future impact of these technologies
differentiate between individual cultural traits, namely, ethnicity and religion, and the cultural homogeneity of the environment as co-determinants of fertilizer adoption. We thus apply a multivariate survival model for clustered and correlated observations and find a positive effect on the diffusion of fertilizer. Firstly, habits and social norms, proxied by ethnicity, provide a better explanation for the role of culture, than religious beliefs, as usually posited in the literature. Secondly, the cultural environment plays a decisive role. While a homogeneous ethnic environment accelerates the diffusion of fertilizer, a diverse religious background in a community creates an environment conducive to initial
adoption. While the direct contribution of this paper relates to technology adoption at the micro level, we believe it represents a first step in gaining a better understanding of the relation between culture and growth at the micro level.
dynamics. Despite the decades-long debate on demand and innovation, theory
still lacks a comprehensive analytical formulation. This paper proposes a model
where demand is conceived as a peculiar blend of two conditions, market size,
and users’ sophistication. These conditions drive firms’ incentives to innovate.
As main outcome, the paper proposes both a theoretical taxonomy of sectors
and an original explanation of technological life cycle.
despite our significant knowledge of the technological determinants of innovation processes, an
adequate understanding of demand side factors is still lacking.
This paper aims to survey the literature on the influence of demand upon innovation. Although
theories and empirical studies on this issue can be found at various points in economics,
management theory, and marketing, in each context, the concept of demand has been understood in
different ways and both different methodologies and units of analysis have been employed. This
Babel of languages makes it difficult to find a common thread among the different contributions
and boosts the perception of a certain disregard of the demand side. This paper reviews the most
important literature on the topic with two aims: one is to give an overall picture on how innovation
studies have handled the concept of demand; the other is to suggest a framework that includes the
main insights from previous contributions. More than an attempt to come out with a general theory
on demand, it constitutes a suggestion of a common language.
Ford-T to hot-rodders and easy-riders up to latest trends. It focuses on the dual structure of
automotive industry in the United States: on one hand, relatively few and large companies
producing cars that apparently achieve a degree of market power through product
differentiation, and on the other hand, a relatively small niche market with distinct and
smaller producers offering specialty equipment to enhance the performance, appearance, ...