Luigi Mundula

Smart Cities and a Stochastic Frontier Analysis: A Comparison among European Cities

The level of interest in smart cities is growing, and the recent literature on this topic (Holland, 2008; Caragliu et al., 2009, Nijkamp et al., 2011 and Lombardi et al., 2012) identifies a number of factors that characterise a city as smart, such as economic development, environment, human capital, culture and leisure, and e-governance. Thus, the smartness concept is strictly linked to urban efficiency in a multifaceted way. A seminal research for European policy conducted by Giffinger et al. (2007) defines a smart city on the basis of several intangible indicators, such as a smart economy, smart mobility, smart environment, smart people, smart living, and smart governance. These authors’ methodology results in a ranking of 70 European cities in terms of their smartness. Our aim is to verify the robustness of these smartness indicators in explaining the efficiency of the same sample of European cities. Using the concept of output maximising, we built a stochastic frontier function in terms of urban productivity and/or urban efficiency by assessing the economic distance that separates cities from being smart. Moreover, this approach, which distinguishes between inputs and efficiency, allows us to incorporate the smartness indicators into the systematic component within the error term. As a result, our conclusions identify a different ranking of European cities with respect to Giffinger et al. (2007)’s analysis, thereby highlighting the need for a better and more robust definition of these indicators.

A Critical Reflection on Smart Governance in Italy: Definition and Challenges for a Sustainable Urban Regeneration

The aim of this work is to analyze the projects carried out by public institutions in the field of smartness, in order to reflect on the most effective mechanisms of governance. To this end, the paper is organized into two main sections. The first section provides a literature analysis of theoretical frameworks as they pertain to the role of political bodies, the policies, and their impacts on local communities in relation to the governance of smart cities. The second section explores the ongoing implementation of “smart city” projects in Italy, in order to understand how cities address their development perspectives from a conceptual framework to the construction of an actual urban space, faced with divergent politics, messy social systems, and different scales of urban governance. In this framework, disparities between urban governance scales and ideologies encompassing smart cities seem linked to the relational systems that local administrations can develop between neighboring cities. The final section summarizes the authors’ conclusions, giving particular attention to how networked urban systems are programmed, because they have been found to be key to strategic and transformative planning.

Closed Real Estate Fund: the strange case of Italian market

In Italy since 1999 disposals of public assets have been made by using securitization or closed real estate funds. Not always the results of these public asset sale operations, have resulted as efficient as those that were obtained in the private sector. This article focus on closed real estate funds, making a comparison, between Italian case, that is unique worldwide, and the international closed real estate fund market, in order also to detect if the “public hand” has acted in an efficient market way achieving results in line with private competitors in term of return. In the last 10 years international closed real estate funds have performed an annual average of 0.5%. This result is often under the benchmark stated in the fund statutes, and it represents a very poor performance when compared with the returns offered by international bonds (5.6%) or international equity markets (6.9%) in the last decade. This positive trend however is not followed by closed real estate investment fund sponsored by the Italian State. International financial crisis, affect international closed fund returns, showing that, on average, there is a positive effect on the returns of the funds, the funds in the euro area have increased by more than 14 percentage points, while those of Swiss Franc area, of about 1.5%.

A Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Framework for Prioritizing Investments Evaluation in Banking Sector: An Application on ASEAN Market

The purpose of the present study is the development of classification model taking into account a set of different criteria that could be used in the evaluation of strategic investment alternatives in the banking sector. The model takes into account the main criteria required to enrich the quality of a companys information system. The global financial crisis has exacerbated the problem of seeking new markets for financial intermediaries as well as competition between them. The same crisis has also highlighted the problem of limiting errors in the strategic decisions for the development of each banking institution new business. The planning and appraisal of a new business projects involve rather complex tasks. Multi-criteria methods provide a flexible tool that is able to handle and bring together a wide range of variables appraised in different ways and thus offer valid assistance in supporting financial economic decision processes. Unfortunately a great number of determinants can create problems with the evaluation. Thus it is necessary to select a limited number of important indicators. In this paper we build a synthetic index, starting from a selection of a set of indicators, and weighting them via linear and non linear multivariate analysis. We use a sample of 42 criteria, extracted from World Bank database, that includes indicators of the macroeconomic, institutional and regulatory environment, for all ASEAN countries, during 1995-2011, as well as basic characteristics of the banking and financial sector. The resulting ABA (Attractiveness of Banking activity) Index could be an useful tool in financial business opportunities evaluations.

Growth of the ASEAN Countries: Determinants and Perspectives

From being essentially a rural area, during the last decade the ASEAN has undergone an intense process of industrialization that, even if still fragmented, reshaped the region. The liberalization of trade and services, the inflows of investments and the idea of a common market and of a common productive basis to be realized within 2015 strengthened the economic integration process of the region (Paganetto, 2012). During the recent downturn of the world economy, the ASEAN countries continued to grow, and they acquired the reputation of engines of the global economy. But the economic features that made the ASEAN economy resistant to the crisis and capable of playing such a positive role on the international scene are still to be clearly identified.The aim of this research is that of providing an answer to the following questions:- Which are the main features of the extraordinary process of growth activated in ASEAN? - Did the economic growth contributed to strengthen the regional integration process?- At sectorial level, which relationships occur among value added, employment, productivity and wages? - It is possible to highlight sectorial and territorial effects in the analysis of the main industrial relations estimated?