Giulio Guarini

Public knowledge partnerships in European research projects and knowledge creation across R&D institutional sectors

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the role of public knowledge partnerships in EU-funded framework programmes (FP) on knowledge creation across a sample of European countries. Different from previous studies, we investigate whether the impact of participation in FP on new knowledge (patents) differs across private companies, universities and public research centres. We find that, while all institutional sectors benefit from joint projects, the main benefits (in terms of patenting activity) go to universities and public research centres, while private companies benefit less. We also find evidence of important complementarities between participation in international research projects and internal innovation drivers (researchers), thus highlighting the crucial role of domestic absorptive capacity for fully benefiting from international cooperation in R&D projects.

Culture, economic development and social mobility in Italy: the territorial gaps

Our dataset consists of 20 years (1992-2012) information for Italy from Multiscopo ISTAT surveys, that we have reworked to conform. After describing the cultural variables, comparing Italy with Europe and showing the gap between the Centre-North and the South of Italy, we present some econometric estimates to ensure both the effect of the variable «accumulated over the years» reading on income per capita, and the effect of education on employment. The results prove that the idea of a virtuous circle between culture, economic development and social mobility, that we set in the point of view of Smiths approach as reformulated by the Sens capability approach, is fruitful. The territorial variable strengthens the results, highlighting the structural deficit of our South. All this is enhanced by the crisis.