Economics: Research Guide

In the following article I take into consideration the role of knowledge workers in the Italian regions. The analysed data refers to the ISTAT-BES database. The metric analysis consists of an in-depth analysis of the trends of the regions and macro-regions, followed by clustering with the k-Means algorithm, the application of machine learning algorithms for prediction, and the presentation of an econometric model with panel methods date. The results are also critically discussed in light of the North-South divide and the economic policy implications.

Multifactor productivity (MFP) growth is an imperative economic engine. MFP dynamism across five advanced and seven developing countries from 1996 to 2015 is analyzed, elucidating its association with financing and intangible assets. Debt is manifested by its inverted U-shaped nonlinear relationship with MFP advancement, while corporate cash holdings are negatively (positively) associated with MFP development in five (three) countries. The heterogeneous relationships between intangible assets and MFP growth are identified across industries, countries, and time; intangible assets are requisite MFP growth enhancers for manufacturing in developing countries, for service businesses in advanced c..

The primary objective of this study is to assess the significance of the knowledge diffusion process in relation to the employment outcomes resulting from sustainable development investments made by major multinational corporations. To gauge the degree of technological interconnectedness among these companies, we employ a measure derived from the distribution of environmentally friendly patents. Within this analytical framework, we aim to decipher the multifaceted factors influencing labor innovation outcomes, which encompass both the displacement of jobs and the compensation effects stemming from innovation. This study delves into two primary research inquiries. Firstly, we examine whether ..

High-paying factory jobs in the 1940s were an engine of egalitarian economic growth for a generation. Are there alternate forms of work organization that deliver similar benefits for frontline workers? Work organization varies by type of complexity and degree of employer control. Technical and tacit knowledge tasks receive higher pay for signaling or developing human capital. Higher-autonomy tasks elicit efficiency wages. To test these ideas, we match administrative earnings to task descriptions from job postings. We then compare earnings for workers hired into the same occupation and firm, but under different task allocations. When jobs raise task complexity and autonomy, new hires’ start..

This study uses patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (applied before 2011) to analyze the relationship among the value of patents, account information of patent-holding firms, and citations of academic papers empirically. The results are summarized as follows: First, profitable firms tend to cite papers more frequently than other firms. Second, patents that cite academic papers have more forward citations than other patents do. Third, patents that cite academic papers are cited in a wider range of technical fields than those that do not. These results imply that incorporating academic knowledge increases patent value, expands utilization range, and increases firm profitabi..

We study how job-seekers share information about jobs within their social network, and its implications for firms. We randomly increase the amount of competition for a job and find that job-seekers are less likely to share information about the job with their high ability peers. This lowers the quality of applicants, hires, and performance on the job - suggesting that firms who disseminate job information through social networks may see lower quality applicants than expected for their most competitive positions. While randomly offering higher wages attracts better talent, it is not able to fully overcome these strategic disincentives in information sharing.

Drawing on collective experience from ten collaborative research projects focused on the Global South, we identify three major challenges that impede the translation of research on sustainability and resilience into better-informed choices by individuals and policy-makers that in turn can support transformation to a sustainable future. The three challenges comprise: (i) converting knowledge produced during research projects into successful knowledge application; (ii) scaling up knowledge in time when research projects are short-term and potential impacts are long-term; and (iii) scaling up knowledge across space, from local research sites to larger-scale or even global impact. Some potential..

Using data from the Dutch Household Survey, we examine what individuals know about cryptocurrencies and how they acquire information about these assets. Our results suggest that higher-educated respondents with a stronger desire to be informed use more different information sources, which results in better knowledge. However, respondents relying on social media or friends for information on cryptocurrencies do not have better knowledge. We also observe that individuals who hold cryptocurrencies are better informed. Furthermore, the longer they own cryptocurrencies, the better knowledge respondents have. Finally, we find that individuals who acquire cryptocurrencies for investment purposes de..

To promote a more environmentally sustainable economy, countries need to broaden their innovation activities to include green technologies. In this process, the increasing global interconnectedness and internationalisation of innovative activities underlines the growing importance of external knowledge linkages. This paper examines how different categories of countries - technological leaders, catching-up countries and follower countries - diversify into green technologies by exploiting different types of external linkages through co-inventions with international partners. The dataset covers 49 countries over a period of 40 years. The results show that it is complementary linkages, rather th..

Patents applied by private firms occasionally cite scientific papers. We regard these citations as a signal that the research project of the applying firms involves basic research, and examine the relationship between basic research and firm performance. Firms conducting basic research are more likely to earn higher profit margins, while no monotonic relationship is observed between basic research and sales size. We then construct an endogenous growth model incorporating the basic research investment by heterogeneous firms. Firms' decisions regarding basic research depend on firm size, the necessity for basic research for developing their products, and the degree of knowledge spillover from ..

Autonomous agents based on Large Language Models (LLMs) that devise plans and tackle real-world challenges have gained prominence.However, tailoring these agents for specialized domains like quantitative investment remains a formidable task. The core challenge involves efficiently building and integrating a domain-specific knowledge base for the agent's learning process. This paper introduces a principled framework to address this challenge, comprising a two-layer loop.In the inner loop, the agent refines its responses by drawing from its knowledge base, while in the outer loop, these responses are tested in real-world scenarios to automatically enhance the knowledge base with new insights.W..

Our main message is that policies restricting knowledge flows should be limited to narrowly defined areas of strategic importance.

We study the effects of low-intensity digital financial education interventions on undergraduate students' financial knowledge in a small-scale RCT. We test the substitutability or complementarity of two treatments: an online video financial education treatment and an incentive-based approach where students are issued pre-paid voucher cards worth 50 EUR to register with a broker specializing in roboadvised investment in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Three months after the intervention, the video treatment enhanced financial knowledge scores by more than 50 percent of a standard deviation. Conversely, the vouchers showed no effect. The findings suggest that subsidies encouraging roboadvised i..

This paper investigates the potential benefits of intellectual property rights (IPR) institutions for international production networks. Using unique data on manufacturer-supplier linkages in the automotive industry, we establish a positive empirical relationship between the productivity and efficiency of manufacturing firms and IPR protection in their suppliers’ locations. Notably, IPRs do not have the same impact on ownership networks, and protection of physical property rights does not generate any improvement in performance. We confirm that the results are not driven by other firm-level characteristics and address potential endogeneity concerns by employing a novel gravity-based IV app..

Following three decades of strong growth (7% on average) which enabled the country to eradicate extreme poverty and reach middle-income status, Vietnam continues to offer highly attractive prospects. Socio-political stability, a cautious policy mix, continually high economic growth, and the size of the domestic market of 100 million inhabitants are all major assets. Vietnam also benefits from a limited public debt ratio. Finally, the economy will continue to build on its strong integration into international trade, where recent upheavals (reconfiguration of value chains related to the Covid-19 crisis and the US-China trade war) have largely benefited Vietnam.

This paper assesses the performance of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in terms of their achievements towards becoming knowledge-based economies. This is done through a comparison against 17 benchmark countries using a four pillars' framework comprising; (1) information and communication technology, (2) education, (3) innovation and (4) economy and regime. Results indicate that the UAE ranks slightly better than the median rank of the 19 compared countries while Qatar ranks somewhat below. Results also indicate that both countries lag considerably behind knowledge economy leaders; particularly evidenced in the innovation pillar. Policy recommendations are mainly addressed at further..

The recognition of business opportunities is the first stage in the entrepreneurial process. The current work analyzes the effects of individuals' possession of and access to knowledge on the probability of recognizing good business opportunities in their area of residence. The authors use an eclectic theoretical framework consisting of intellectual and social capital concepts. In particular, they analyze the role of individuals' educational level, their perception that they have the right knowledge and skills to start a business, whether they own and manage a firm, their contacts with other entrepreneurs, and whether they have been business angels. The hypotheses proposed here are tested us..

Public financial support for firm-level Research and Innovation (R&I) can generate important socio-economic returns. This is especially true if firms use this support to develop radical innovation, defined as new-to-market goods and services. However, radical innovation is risky, and prone to failure. Therefore, subsidising radical innovation can also generate sub-optimal socio-economic returns (i.e. policy failure). Understanding how public funding for R&I can be allocated in a way that encourages radical innovation, while avoiding policy failure, is crucial. Our paper investigates, for thefirst time, whether public fundingfor R&I generates more radical innovation in firms seeking to innova..

There is limited research assessing how AI knowledge affects employment prospects. The present study defines the term 'AI capital' as a vector of knowledge, skills and capabilities related to AI technologies, which could boost individuals' productivity, employment and earnings. Subsequently, the study reports the outcomes of a genuine correspondence test in England. It was found that university graduates with AI capital, obtained through an AI business module, experienced more invitations for job interviews than graduates without AI capital. Moreover, graduates with AI capital were invited to interviews for jobs that offered higher wages than those without AI capital. Furthermore, it was fou..

Multinationals play a crucial role in international knowledge diffusion. Given the recent concern that multinationals are departing China, understanding the importance of multinationals for China's technology is also particularly policy-relevant. Using comprehensive patent data from China, we document: (1) multinational affiliates and their foreign parent firms comprise a significant portion of patents filed with China’s patent office; and (2) there are subsequent transfers and spillovers of these technologies to domestic firms. Guided by the empirical findings, we develop a quantitative framework of multinational activities featuring cross-country technology flows, transfers, and spillove..

Most individuals accumulate work experience before starting a venture. Does the knowledge gained from the worker’s occupation influential of the decision to become self-employed? Does it make a difference for the business? Data on the career history of individuals are used to identify whether being employed in an occupation requiring high managerial knowledge matter for the processes by which individuals move into and perform in all kinds of self-employment. We find that higher knowledge in management increases the likelihood to start a business and improves business performance. We also find that workers with higher knowledge in management perform better when they start an incorporated bu..

This paper studies how national research subsidies affect productivity growth and national welfare through adjustments in the geographic location of research and development (R&D) across countries. Our two-country framework features a tension in the firm-level innovation location decision between accessing technical knowledge and sourcing low-cost high-skilled labor. With trade costs and imperfect international knowledge diffusion, the larger country has a greater share of industry and tends to host a larger share of innovation. In this setting, we find that an R&D subsidy expands the implementing country’s share of innovation and raises the rate of productivity growth. Although the non-im..

In the past 15 years, two international observatories have been intensively studying entrepreneurship using empirical studies with different methodologies: GEM and PSED. Both projects have generated a considerable volume of scientific production, and their intellectual structures are worth analyzing. The current work is an exploratory study of the knowledge base of the articles generated by each of these two observatories and published in prestigious journals. The value added of this work lies in its novel characterization of the intellectual structure of entrepreneurship according to the academic production of these two initiatives. The results may be of interest to the managers and members..

We examine the effect of entry by French firms into a new export market on the dynamics of their patents' citations received from that destination. Applying a difference-in-differences identification strategy with a staggered treatment design, we show that: (i) entering a new foreign market has a significant impact on the long-run flow of citations; (ii) the impact is mostly driven by the extensive margin; (iii) inventors in destination countries patent mostly in products that do not directly compete with those of the exporting firm; (iv) the spillover intensity decreases with the technological distance between the exporting firm and the destination.

Awareness structures by Fagin and Halpern (1988) (FH) feature a syntactic awareness correspondence and accessibility relations modeling implicit knowledge. They are a flexible model of unawareness, and best interpreted from a outside modeler's perspective. Unawareness structures by Heifetz, Meier, and Schipper (2006, 2008) (HMS) model awareness by a lattice of state spaces and explicit knowledge via possibility correspondences. Sublattices thereof can be interpreted as subjective views of agents. Open questions include (1) how implicit knowledge can be defined in HMS structures, and (2) in which way FH structures can be extended to model the agents' subjective views. In this paper, we addres..

The aim was to provide some understanding elements of the crisis based on the complex thinking developed by Edgar Morin, taking as a basis the necessary trans-formation of training. Understanding the crises that are sweeping the world implies thinking about them according to the principles of systemic, hologrammatic, retroactive and recursive loops, autonomy and dependencies, dialogy and the reintroduction of the knowledgeable into knowledge. It's this last principle that has led us to question the reform of training through a knowledge of the inner obstacles to knowledge, a complex noetic knowledge.

The small city-state of Kuwait has undergone marked change over the last century. However, despite the significant transformations within its political economy, Kuwait’s socioeconomic needs require attention. This is essential, considering Kuwait’s current attempt to transform into a knowledge-based economy (KBE), a central component of Kuwait’s Vision 2035 and at the top of the country’s policy agenda. Kuwait’s attempt to diversify its resources requires significant reform in KBE’s four main pillars: effective investment in education, constructing robust and innovative tertiary sector capabilities, modernising the information technology infrastructure, and having an economic env..

This study analyses the influence of Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) on radical innovation at the firm-level in 27 EU countries. KETs are a group of six technologies that are considered to be promising for Europe’s industrial competitiveness and innovativeness because they are horizontal and widely combinable, representing properties of General Purpose Technologies. We test this by investigating whether KET knowledge promotes the emergence of radical innovation in firms and whether regional specialization in KETs can moderate this relationship. Based on a unique firm-level database, our results show that KETs generally facilitate the emegence of radical innovation and that firms lacking K..

Formally, for common knowledge to arise in a dynamic setting, knowledge that it has arisen must be simultaneously attained by all players. As a result, new common knowledge is unattainable in many realistic settings, due to timing frictions. This unintuitive phenomenon, observed by Halpern and Moses (1990), was discussed by Arrow et al. (1987) and by Aumann (1989), was called a paradox by Morris (2014), and has evaded satisfactory resolution for four decades. We resolve this paradox by proposing a new definition for common knowledge, which coincides with the traditional one in static settings but generalizes it in dynamic settings. Under our definition, common knowledge can arise without sim..

Artificial intelligence (AI) is seen as a key technology for economic growth. However, the impact of AI on firm productivity has been under researched – particularly through the lens of inequality and clusters. Based on a unique sample of German firms, filling at least one patent between 2013 and 2019, we find evidence for a positive influence of AI on firm productivity. Moreover, our analysis shows that while AI knowledge does not contribute to productivity divergences in general, it increases the productivity gap between laggard and all other firms. Nevertheless, this effect is reduced through the localisation in clusters.