The analysis of the complex and fast changing technological processes which today are summarized in the term ‘Industry 4.0’ reveals that the industrial system is shifting towards a new technological paradigm (Perez, 2009; 2010), implying systemic transformations at micro, meso and macro levels of analysis (Geels, 2005). These radical transformations are deeply changing the way products, production processes and business models are conceived, questioning the traditional separation between manufacturing and services, and making it more and more important for firms to adopt a collaborative approach to innovation (Hagedoorn et al., 2000). This rapid technological advance implies the need for the socio-economic players to adopt new strategic and operational measures in order to prevent the loss of competitive advantage of national and regional innovation systems. The recent debate on industrial policies shows that a mission-oriented industrial policy approach (Mazzucato, 2014; European Commission, 2018) may provide interesting inspirational principles able to guide these transformations, since it places at the centre of its reasoning the key role of the public actor able to stimulate the strategic coordination between multiple socio-economic players at different levels (Mazzucato and Perez, 2014; Rodrik, 2004). According to this approach, Public-Private research Partnerships, are assumed to be effective vehicles of governance able to improve technological development, stimulating strong links between the relevant socio-economic players and thus increasing the national and regional systems’ overall innovative potential (Mazzucato, 2014; Rodrik, 2004; 2014; Robin and Schubert, 2013; Kristensen and Scherrer, 2016). The aim of the present work is to understand how the strategic coordination between public and private players may be an opportunity for the definition of effective innovation policies in the context of the current socio-technical transition. In order to reach this purpose, a multilevel approach (Geels, 2005) is adopted, taking into account both the national and the regional levels of analysis. A quantitative analysis is provided at national level in order to understand the relationship between a specific approach to innovation and technology policy, the overall innovation performance and the level of diffusion of cooperative innovation activities in a National Innovation System (Lundvall, 1988); moreover, it contributes to the existing literature on Public-Private research Partnerships (Hagedoorn et al., 2000) by testing the effectiveness of some main variables at industry and company level explaining the propensity of companies to get involved in formal cooperative innovation activities. This analysis is made taking into account data stemming from the 8th wave of the Community Innovation Survey, 2010-2012. Moreover, the results of a field research conducted at regional level are presented, aiming at understanding the elements of an institutional/organizational framework which are able to positively influence technological local development. In this case, the analysis takes into account a Regional Innovation System (Cooke et al., 1997): the Autonomous Province of Trento. Data have been gathered through both primary sources, based on 57 semi-structured interviews to local institutions and firms, and secondary sources, based on relevant documents and reports. The major conclusion of the present work is that, given the systemic nature of this socio-technical transition, only a mission-oriented policy approach to innovation policy based on strategic Public-Private research Partnerships may be able to trigger the necessary cross-level synergies between the different socio-economic players involved, managing the important challenges lying behind these transformations.

This thesis includes three main chapters that are the outcome of different research projects. All chapters stand as independent papers, but they are linked by the common focus on firm financial factors and export behavior, and by the use of microeconometric methodologies applied to firm-level data. The first two chapters investigate, respectively, the impact of export activity on firms’ access to credit and the role of corporate financial structure as a determinant of exporters’ ability to compete on foreign markets through quality. The third chapter looks instead at the scope for promoting investment and exports of small and medium enterprises through the introduction of more favorable Corporate Taxation rates.

Improving agricultural productivity, agricultural commercialization and improving the livelihoods of the population are the main challenges in the Sub-Saharan Africa region where the majority of the population are poor and live in rural areas. Several factors including lack of improved farming practices, poor infrastructure, low level of market integration to the world market and within countries, climate change, and inadequate policy support restrained the performance of the agricultural sector in the region. This thesis consists of four chapters, three empirical and one theoretical chapter. Each of the empirical chapters deals with selected topics pertinent to the agriculture sector in Ethiopia. The theoretical chapter reviews the agricultural policies adopted by the existing government and implemented over the past two decades. After the introductory chapter, the second chapter analyzes the impacts of climate change on crop yields and yield vari-ability in Ethiopia. The impacts of climate change appear to be different across crops and regions. However, the future crop yield levels largely depend on future technological development in farming practices. The third chapter aims to understand the extent of price transmissions from the world markets to domestic grain markets, and the extent of market integration in domestic grain markets. The fourth chapter investigates and compares the volatilities of oilseeds prices in the world and domestic markets. The data used in the second, third and fourth chapters are obtained from various secondary sources. The fifth chapter reviews major agricultural policies implemented over the last two decades and identifies policies that either enhanced the growth of the agricultural sector or holding back its performance. The sixth chapter underlines the main conclusions and indicates future research areas.

La presente tesi di dottorato è articolata in tre capitoli a se stanti che riguardano l’ambito dell’economia applicata e dell’economia dello sviluppo. Il primo capitolo analizza l’impatto intergenerazionale di shock idiosincratici alla situazione lavorativa dei genitori sull'istruzione secondaria dei figli, utilizzando un’indagine longitudinale condotta in Bosnia Erzegovina. Il secondo capitolo tratta delle potenziali conseguenze di lungo termine della guerra civile sulla partecipazione politica. In particolare, l’analisi utilizza le statistiche ufficiali disponibili relative alle elezioni in Bosnia Erzegovina e mostra che nelle municipalità più intensamente colpite dal conflitto, misurato in termini di perdite civili, l’affluenza elettorale e il capitale sociale sono minori. Il terzo capitolo contribuisce alla letteratura sulla “auto-selezione” in termini di salute della popolazione Indiana migrante presente in Inghilterra. L'analisi fornisce evidenza empirica delle differenze in termini di statura ed altri indicatori di salute delle prime e seconde generazioni di migranti in relazione alla popolazione nativa del paese di destinazione, e a quella del paese di origine. / This dissertation is a collection of three self-contained essays in applied and development economics. In the first chapter I evaluate whether educational investments of adolescent offspring are vulnerable to idiosyncratic shocks to parental employment. Specifically, I estimate the short-term impact of parental job loss on children’s enrollment in post-compulsory schooling, introducing a focus on paternal and maternal unemployment, and analysing differential gender specific effects. I further discuss the potential channels of inter-generational transmission with a specific focus on the role played by female labor supply in contexts of developing economies. Using panel data estimation techniques based on four waves of longitudinal household data from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the results show that maternal involuntary employment shocks affects school enrollment of daughters aged 15-18. In the second chapter I analyze the consequences of exposure to civil conflict on voters’ turnout and social participation. Our source of variation in violence exposure is given by war-related civilian fatalities recorded at the municipality level. In a “difference in differences” estimation framework, our results show that the intensity of civil conflict reduces turnout in the medium and long run, up to twenty years after the end of the war. War exposure is also associated with lower generalised trust and worse measures of social participation. The third chapter evaluates height performances of first and second generation migrants of Indian origins in England, with respect to adults and children in India, and the native population at destination. We provide evidence of migrants’ “self selection” on health, and we show that the circumstances in which individuals are born and raised can contribute to the definition of body size, in addition to the genetic channel and to the traits transmitted by maternal characteristics through gestation.

La tesi contiene due saggi sull'economia delle politiche pubbliche a sostegno dell'accesso al credito per le piccole e medie imprese. Il primo valuta l'impatto netto sulla disponibilità e il costo del credito e sulle performanec delle imprese del più grande schema di garanzie pubbliche al credito in Italia. Il secondo indaga empiricamente gli effetti distorsivi della politica e i costi che ne derivano, con particolare focus sull'eterogeneità a livello di banca e di impresa. / The dissertation deals with the role of public policy in support of firms' access to credit. It is composed of two essays. The first is an evaluation of the net effect of an Italian public credit guarantee scheme in support of PMIs. The impact evaluation assesses financial outputs such as credit availability and conditions, as well as economic outputs such as firms' performance. The second essay empirically investigates how the presence of asymmetry of information can affect the output of these policies at the bank and firm level.

A partire dagli anni ’80, la diffusione dei metodi statistici, abbinata ai progressi nelle capacità computazionali dei personal computers, ha progressivamente facilitato i ricercatori nel testare empiricamente le proprie teorie. Gli economisti sono diventati in grado di eseguire milioni di regressioni prima di pranzo senza abbandonare le proprie scrivanie. Purtroppo, ciò ha portato ad un accumulo di evidenze spesso eterogenee, quando non contradditorie se non esplicitamente in conflitto. Per affrontare il problema, questa tesi fornirà una panoramica dei metodi meta-analitici disponibili in economia. Nella prima parte verranno introdotte le intuizioni alla base dei modelli gerarchici a fattori fissi e casuali capaci di risolvere le problematicità derivanti dalla presenza di osservazioni non indipendenti. Verrà inoltre affrontato il tema dell’errore sistematico di pubblicazione in presenza di elevata eterogeneità tra gli studi. La metodologia verrà successivamente applicata, nella seconda e terza parte, a due diverse aree della letteratura economica: l’impatto del rapporto banca-impresa sulle prestazioni aziendali e il dibattito sulla relazione fra democrazia e crescita. Mentre nel primo caso la correlazione negativa non è influenzata da fattori specifici ai singoli paesi, il contrario è vero per spiegare l’impatto (statisticamente non significativo) delle istituzioni democratiche sullo sviluppo economico. Quali siano questi fattori è però meno chiaro; gli studiosi non hanno ancora individuato le co-variate – o la corretta misurazione di esse – capaci di spiegare questa discussa relazione. / Starting in the late 1980s, improved computing performances and spread knowledge of statistical methods allowed researchers to put their theories to test. Formerly constrained economists became able [to] run millions of regressions before lunch without leaving their desks. Unfortunately, this led to an accumulation of often conflicting evidences. To address such issue, this thesis will provide an overview of the meta-analysis methods available in economics. The first paper will explain the intuitions behind fixed and random effects models in such a framework. It will then detail how multilevel modelling can help overcome hierarchical dependence issues. Finally, it will address the problem of publication bias in presence of high between-studies heterogeneity. Such methods will be then applied, in the second and third papers, to two different areas of the economics literature: the effect of relationship banking on firm performances and the democracy and growth conundrum. Results are far-reaching. While in the first case the documented negative relation is not driven by country-specific characteristics the opposite is true for the (statistically insignificant) impact of democratic institutions on economic growth. What these characteristics are is, however, less clear. Scholars have not yet found the covariates - or their suitable proxies - that matter to explain such much-debated relationship.

I primi due capitoli di questa tesi mirano a determinare se il processo decisionale e le scelte di investimento degli individui possono essere influenzati da variabili psicologiche che non hanno alcuna valenza puramente economica. L'analisi empirica, condotta utilizzando dati relativi ai mercati italiano e statunitense, fornisce dei risultati che sono coerenti con l'ipotesi secondo cui esistono svariati fattori psicologici che giocano un ruolo nel processo mentale che produce le scelte di portafoglio degli agenti economici. Il terzo capitolo affronta la teoria della segmentazione di mercato, secondo cui la curva dei rendimenti è articolata in diversi segmenti temporali che sono a tutti gli effetti separati in termini di allocazione degli investimenti da parte degli operatori. / The first two chapters of this dissertation investigate whether some economically-neutral but psychologically-relevant factors can affect investors' decision-making and, in turn, their investment choices. The empirical analysis, conducted on Italian and US stock market data, provides some evidence consistent with the view that several psychological elements indeed play a role in the mental process that generates people's portfolio allocation choices. The third chapter consists in an examination of the market segmentation hypothesis, according to which government bonds with different maturities are not perceived to any extent as substitutes by investors, the consequence being that the yield curve in fact contains different maturity segments that are totally separated from one another.

La letteratura economica che affianca il principio di eguaglianza delle opportunità suggerisce l’introduzione dei valori libertari e di autonomia nella valutazione del benessere sociale. Questa teoria non si concentra sulla semplice eguaglianza tra i cittadini in termini di reddito, salute, utilità ma valuta l’eguaglianza delle loro opportunità affinché esiti plurimi possano essere raggiunti unicamente sulla base dell’impegno dei singoli individui. Nel primo capitolo ripercorriamo attraverso una breve carrellata le indicazioni provenienti da economisti e filosofi della politica che hanno trattato questo argomento nel corso degli ultimi decenni. Nel secondo capitolo ci occupiamo della misurazione della eguaglianza delle opportunità studiando differenti metodologie che coinvolgono l’indice di Atkinson e i suoi sviluppi in termini di eguaglianza. Il terzo capitolo prosegue invece attraverso una analisi empirica sulla salute. I risultati suggeriscono come le decisioni individuali riguardanti il fumo, considerato come un fattore di responsabilità, influenzino gravemente la salute degli individui rispetto alla loro condizione familiare. Il capitolo 4 studia invece l’interazione tra eguaglianza delle opportunità ed efficienza nel mercato del credito dimostrando come, oltre ad una palese violazione del principio egalitario, esistano anche problematiche di efficienza come surrogato delle dinamiche discriminatorie dovute alle asimmetrie informative. / The economic literature on equality of opportunity suggests non-welfarist foundations of social choice introducing the concepts of freedoms and liberties of individuals in the assessment of social welfare. The opportunity egalitarian principle does not focus on equality of outcomes but essentially on equality of means to realize those outcomes, i.e., it places some responsibilities on individuals to decide how much effort to pay in order to exploit the opportunity offered to them. This concept refers to be a part of conventional wisdom and has a long tradition and wide acceptance. On these grounds chapter 1 is devoted to a review of the most recent research on equality of opportunity. Some economists and political philosophers have argued that, in examining distributional questions, instead of focusing on differences in observed incomes or current levels of welfare, it is more appropriate to focus on the choice or opportunity sets that individuals face. Chapter 2 focus on the measurement of the degree of equality of opportunity based on alternative decompositions of the Atkinson index of equality according to welfare theory approach. In chapter 3 we address a measurement in health using data from the British Household Panel Survey (1996-2005). Our results suggest a great incidence of the direct effect of the individual behaviors in terms of lifestyles reducing the indirect contribution of social background. Public health programs are more likely to produce results if targeted on individual responsibility. A different point at issue is tackled in chapter 4 where we introduce the relationship between equality of opportunity and efficiency in the credit market. We show that richer individuals participate more in the credit market even when relatively more averse to effort violating the equality of opportunity principle. Moreover, we find that marginal richer borrowers exert less effort than poorer ones in equilibrium. Empirical evidence in Italy points to a limited impact of policy measures aimed at increasing credit opportunities without targeting accurately the beneficiaries.

Questa tesi è una raccolta di tre articoli riguardanti l’economia dell’informazione. Il primo articolo riguarda i possibili effetti negativi delle elezioni sul benessere degli elettori. Infatti, il controllo ottimo nei confronti di un politico dipende in modo non banale dalla relazione tra effetto disciplinante, effetto di selezione e effetto di riduzione della rendita. Il risultato è che un eccessivo controllo nei confronti di un politico può ridurre il benessere sociale. Il secondo articolo analizza un modello di competizione elettorale nel quale l’abilità del politico è sconosciuta anche al politico stesso oltre che agli elettori. L’analisi è in tempo continuo e sviluppata mediante tecniche di programmazione dinamica e di filtraggio. Le credenze sull’abilità vengono aggiornate secondo la regola di Bayes tramite l’osservazione del processo diffusivo che descrive il valore del settore pubblico. Il politico trae utilità da una rendita che è però inferiore in presenza di una scadenza elettorale. Il terzo articolo descrive una relazione principale-agente in tempo continuo dove l’output è rappresentato da un processo diffusivo il cui drift è determinato dallo sforzo dell’agente, che il principale non osserva, e dall’abilità dell’agente, che non è osservata nemmeno dall’agente stesso. Vengono analizzati sia gli incentivi espliciti dati dal contratto che gli incentivi impliciti legati ai career-concerns. L’analisi è sviluppata in tempo continuo; vengono applicate tecniche di programmazione dinamica e di filtraggio. / This thesis is a collection of three essays about information economics. The first essay studies the possible negative effects of elections on voters’ welfare. In fact, the optimal control of politicians depends on the interplay of disciplining, selection and rent-shrinking effects in a non-trivial way. We show that too much control on the politician may reduce social welfare. The second essay studies an agency model of electoral competition where the incumbent’s ability is unknown to the voters as well as to the politician herself. The analysis is developed in a continuous-time stochastic framework using dynamic programming techniques. Competence is unobservable to everyone and learned over time in a Bayesian fashion through the observation of the value of the public sector. Politicians can divert resources being in office thus reducing the economy wealth but this rent is lower (all other things the same) with an electoral constraint. The third essay describes a continuous-time principal-agent model in which the output is a diffusion process whose drift is determined by the agent’s unobserved effort and by manager’s competence (it is assumed symmetric information about it). We study separately both explicit incentives arising from the contract and implicit incentives arising from career concerns.. All the analysis is developed in a continuous-time stochastic framework; we apply dynamic programming and filtering techniques.

La tesi è una raccolta di tre saggi sul processo di invecchiamento, salute e disabilità in Italia. Il primo capitolo esplora la relazione tra gli indicatori di salute. Il secondo guarda all'associazione tra condizioni di cattiva salute e la qualità del lavoro in un'ottica multidimensionale e di genere. Infine il terzo studia la disabilità in Italia con l'ausilio del capability approach. / The thesis is a collection of three essays on ageing, health and disability for Italy. The first chapter explores the complex structure of un-health among older people in Italy. The second investigates the connection of un-health and quality of work by adopting a multidimensional view and a gender perspective. The third explores disability by adopting the capability approach.