Financial constraints and limited access to markets are the most important obstacles for economic development in developing economies that are largely dependent on agriculture. Lack of access to credit and output markets, in particular, is frequently identified as a key barrier to transformation of subsistence agriculture. The fundamental problems are related to information asymmetry, lack of collateral and limited economies of scale. Innovative institutional mechanisms, in the form of microfinance and producer organizations, offer ways to address information asymmetry and increase scale economies. This dissertation examines the outreach, financial performance and impact of microfinance institutions as well as the key drivers of agricultural cooperatives and its impact on smallholder farmers efficiency in Ethiopia. To meet these objectives four data sets from Ethiopia, one institutional and three household survey data, are used. The analysis of microfinance generally focuses on examining the trade-offs between outreach to the poor and financial sustainability by ownership forms (shareholder owned vs. memberowned). The outreach-financial sustainability trade-offs analyzed first using the institutional survey data. The empirical results show that serving the poor and financial sustainability are challenging objectives to achieve together. There is also evidence that suggests the presence of mission drift. Second, the role of ownership form on outreach, financial performance and cost-efficiency is analyzed within the framework of efficient ownership assignment theories using regression and stochastic cost frontier approaches. This analysis aims at testing whether the commonly held proposition of greater efficiency of shareholder firms in microfinance by policy advocates is empirically supported. The results reject the superiority of shareholder-owned microfinance over financial cooperatives. In fact, the evidence here supports the advantages of member-owned microfinance on cost efficiency and balancing the double bottom-lines of microfinance. Third, the impact of access to microfinance credit on farmers investment on agricultural inputs is assessed using propensity score matching (PSM) and control-function-regression methods that address potential participation selection biases. Results from both approaches show that access to credit increased the use of productivity enhancing inputs among borrower farmers. Indeed, farmers that borrow from financial cooperatives tend to invest more on modern inputs. The analysis of agricultural cooperatives tested theoretical propositions from organizational and the new institutional economics theories on the drivers of agricultural cooperatives incidence and farmers membership and patronage decisions. Discrete choice models are employed for the empirical analysis. The results indicate that the incidence of agricultural cooperatives in Ethiopia is more related to the countervailing market power argument than to the transaction cost reduction hypothesis. Despite open membership polices, the analysis on farmers participation indicates that membership and patronage decisions are related and significantly influenced by location, asset and relational specificities. Finally, the impact analysis estimated technical efficiency gains of membership in agricultural cooperatives and employed matching and stochastic production frontier techniques. The evidence suggests that membership in agricultural cooperatives significantly enhances efficiency gains among smallholder farmers.

Eco-innovation is crucial for companies to balance environmental compliance with profitability. It involves implementing more efficient resource use and reducing harmful environmental effects. However, eco-innovation requires significant resources and corporate commitment. This thesis examines how sustainability affects firms’ performance and how some firms’ structures influence this relationship. Three articles are included: one studies the moderating role of the supply chain network in the relationship between corporate environmental and financial performance; the second studies how board gender diversity impacts eco-innovation through a moderated mediation model introducing the CSR committee as a mediator and board-independent members as a moderator; and the third studies the link between eco-innovation and productivity in reducing GHG emissions.

The Twin Transitions (TT) concept highlights the interconnection between the green transition, geared toward achieving climate goals, and the digital transition, aimed at disseminating digital technologies and infrastructures. These objectives are fundamental for the long run competitiveness of economic systems. Even though various EU strategic documents and a part of the scientific literature assume the two transitions to be mutually reinforcing, the effective sustainability of the TT is endangered by two issues of environmental nature: the dependence of modern technologies on specific mineral resources and the management of end-of-life technologies, that is electronic waste. Circular Economy (CE) strategies, ultimately aimed at decoupling techno-economic systems from the use of natural resources and at a minimization of human-induced environmental impacts, emerge as a tool to address both issues. Throughout the thesis, this overarching research theme has evolved into three lines of activity: 1) analysis of the relationship between recent technological trajectories and mineral resources consumption; 2) review of the literature on Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) to investigate its rationale, policy makers expectations and, focusing on the specific case of electronic waste, its impacts in environmental and innovation terms; 3) empirical analysis of the relationship between EPR on batteries and international trade of waste. The project embraces the multidisciplinary and multidimensionality nature of sustainability analysis, by linking various streams of literature (Innovation studies, Ecological Economics, International Economics, Environmental Economics) and types of data (international trade, patents, waste management, resources extraction, material composition of technologies, scientific production). Ultimately, the project elucidates how both market-driven and policy-led CE strategies can engender structural changes capable of driving, at least partially, the Twin Transition dynamics toward achieving effective sustainability outcomes.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse the potential effects of the planned Brenner Pass opening in 2028. The thesis is divided into 3 studies: in the first, we will provide a methodological description of possible approaches to be used in this type of analysis. In the second, we will propose an experiment to understand if it is possible to exploit the default effect to induce a modal shift towards the most sustainable means of transportation: the train. In the third study, we will conduct a simulation by applying the model constructed by Monte et al in 2018. The simulation results demonstrate that the opening of the Brenner Base Tunnel will lead to an increase in welfa re in the Trentino Alto Adige region (+0.2%), along with other socio economic changes such as increased commuting and housing costs. Theresults of the second study highlight the potential of a simple policy based on the default effect, pushing over half ( 54%) of the participants to repeatedly choose the most sustainable option.

The present work is organized in five chapters and it proposes and applies alternative measures of productivity constructed using input-output tables and based mainly on the Sraffian scheme. The first three chapters of the thesis are devoted to the development and the empirical application of new productivity measures. These chapters form the main part of the work. The last two chapters are devoted to sensitivity analysis. In the first chapter, entitled †̃Productivity accounting based on production pricesâ€TM an alternative method of productivity accounting is proposed. By using input–output tables from four major OECD countries between 1970 and 2000, we compute the associated wage-profit frontiers and the net national products curves, and from these we derive two measures of productivity growth based on production prices and a chosen numeraire. The findings support the general conclusions in the existing literature on the productivity slowdown and later rebound, and supply new important insights to the extent and timing of these events. The second chapter is entitled †̃New measures of sectoral productivityâ€TM. The objective of this chapter is to propose alternative methods of sectoral productivity accounting based the theoretical work of Goodwin (1976), Gossling (1972), Pasinetti (1973), and Sraffa (1960). The indexes developed in this study differ from the standard indexes of productivity because they are designed on the basis of some of the following desiderable features: take into account the interconnections among economic sectors, aggregate heterogeneous goods by using production prices, and compute productivity by using quantity of goods instead of their values. These indexes are then be tested empirically by computing productivity of four major OECD countries. The third chapter is entitled †̃Productivity in the Italian regions: development of Alternative Indicators based on input-output tablesâ€TM. This chapter calculates indices of aggregate productivity, sectoral productivity, and technological progress for a selected sample of Italian regions. Besides these indices, two different versions of the so-called technological frontier were calculated. The contemporary frontiers that are constructed from all the production techniques extracted from the regional input-output tables in a given year and the intertemporal frontier that is computed for the full set of techniques available over time and across regions. The availability of the technological frontiers allows the calculation of the recently developed Velupillai-Fredholm-Zambelli indices of convergence (Fredholm and Zambelli, 2009) that are based on the distance between the region-specific wage-profit frontiers and the technological frontiers. Given the important role played by the production prices, this chapter also examines the price curves for each region and industry and it identifies remarkable regularities. Not surprisingly, analyses of the findings reveal that there is a productivity gap between the regions of North and South. However, the analysis of sectoral productivity reveals two important facts. The first is that the techniques of some industries are more productive in the South than in the North. The second, who follows from the first, is that all regions could therefore improve productivity through greater integration. Chapter four is entitled †̃An Inquiry into the choice of Numeraireâ€TM. This chapter has several objectives. The main aim is to examine the robustness of the results obtained by applying the new approach to measuring productivity if we change the numeraire chosen. However, it should be mentioned that the problem of the choice of numeraire is a general one and for this reason, the chapter also proposes universal guidelines to be followed in choosing the numeraire and in testing the robustness of the results to changes in the numeraire. Finally, chapter five is entitled †̃An Inquiry into the effect of aggregation of input-output tablesâ€TM. The aim of this chapter is to test the robustness of the results from a progressive aggregation of the input-output tables.

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 propone evidenze empiriche e teoriche sull’importanza delle abilità cosiddette non cognitive come elemento fondamentale del capitale umano individuale. In particolare, ci si propone di discutere se, e in che portata, queste capacità relazionali incidano sulle performance lavorative e sulle decisioni concernenti la salute. La tesi propone le reti sociali, o “social networks”, come possibile misurazione di queste capacità interpersonali. Il primo capitolo presenta una dettagliata rassegna della letteratura sulle abilità non cognitive, e sui loro effetti su salari e stato di salute, e discute l’appropriatezza dell’utilizzo delle variabili di “social networks” come misura per tali abilità. Il secondo capitolo stima a livello empirico l’impatto delle capacità relazionali sui salari. Per una completezza di metodologia e per verificare la robustezza dei risultati, le stime vengono effettuate con diverse metodologie econometriche. Il terzo capitolo analizza gli effetti di queste abilità sociali sul consumo di sigarette, e discute la loro importanza rispetto ad altri fattori rilevanti, come tasse e comportamenti dei genitori. Il capitolo applica diversi stimatori, lineari e non, ed esamina le differenze, in termini di grandezza e significatività statistica, nei risultati ottenuti. / This thesis provides further evidence on the importance of including non-cognitive and social skills as a component of individual human capital. In particular, it aims to assess whether interpersonal skills, measured through social network metrics, influence labour market and health attainment. The first chapter reviews the literature on non-cognitive skills and their impact on various outcomes, and discusses the use of social network metrics as measure of interpersonal skills. The second chapter empirically estimates the impact of these social skills on earnings. The effect is estimated comparing alternative empirical strategies to model social interactions, to fully examine the robustness and the meaning of the results obtained. The third chapter examines the effect of these skills on individual smoking behaviour over the young adulthood life. In particular, it examines the role of popularity and social skills on smoking decision, and compares the relative importance of these skills to other factors, such as cigarette taxes, and parents’ smoking behaviour. It also analysed the extent to which using non-linear estimators affects the significance and the magnitude of the effects of these factors.

All’interno del quadro teorico del Capability Approach ‘agency’ viene definito come ciò che permette agli individui di raggiungere i propri obiettivi. Quando il concetto di ‘agency’ viene studiato attraverso misure soggettive, insorge il problema delle preferenze adattive. Lo scopo di questa Tesi è di testare una metodologia che possa catturare la percezione individuale di ‘agency’ nelle diverse dimensioni che compongono la nostra vita, limitando i problemi di misurazione dovuti delle preferenze adattive. Per questo fine, ci affidiamo al ‘Relative Autonomy Index’. Inoltre, utilizziamo la metodologia di ‘Achoring Vignette’ per aumentare la comparabilità tra le percezioni dei singoli individui. Nella prima parte, indaghiamo se il nostro metodo effettivamente riduce l’incomparabilità individuale attraverso uno studio pilota. I risultati dimostrano come il nostro metodo sia in grado di catturare differenze nel comportamento di risposta. Nella seconda parte, sulla base di una seconda raccolta di dati, applichiamo la nostra metodologia al fine di indagare l'impatto dei Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale sul livello di autonomia di un gruppo di produttori italiani. I nostri risultati indicano che il coinvolgimento con i Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale evita la riduzione dell'autonomia percepita dai quei produttori che non sono coinvolti con i Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale. / Within the Capability Approach, agency is one of the components that enable individuals to be empowered. When subjective measures are applied to the study of agency, the problem of ‘adaptive preferences’ arises. The aim of this thesis is to test a methodology that captures the individual perception of agency, while taking into account the bias coming from adaptive preferences. We rely on the Relative Autonomy Index to capture the individual’s agency in several dimensions. In addition, in order to increase the comparability between the individual’s perceptions, we employ the Anchoring Vignette methodology. We investigate whether our methodology reduces the individual incomparability through a pilot study. The results of this preliminary exercises show that our methodology is able to capture dissimilarities in response behaviours. Through a second data collection, we apply our methodology in order to investigate the impact that the commercial relationship between Solidarity Purchasing Group and Italian producers has on the latter. Our findings suggest that the involvement in the Solidarity Purchasing Group has a mainly positive impact on producers’ level of autonomy, which remains at lower levels for producers that did not develop a relationship with the Solidarity Purchasing Group.

L'obiettivo di questa tesi è di estendere la teoria di effectuation guardando attraverso la lente di un contesto piuttosto nuovo come l'Africa. In questo modo, possiamo ampliare il nostro comprensione dell'effectuation delle dinamiche promettenti - in particolare - della pluralità istituzionale, della scarsità di risorse e delle attività imprenditoriali nell'economia informale. Nei seguenti capitoli presenteremo tre articoli che raccoglieranno gli argomenti delineati e quindi, essi dimostrare la fertilità del territorio africano per la ricerca imprenditoriale. / The objective of this thesis is to extend effectuation theory by looking at it through the lens of a rather new context such as Africa. By doing this, we can broaden our understanding of effectuation to promising dynamics – namely - to institutional plurality, resource scarcity, and entrepreneurial activities in the informal economy. In the following chapters we will present three papers which will pick up the outlined topics and hence, they demonstrate the fertility of the African territory for entrepreneurship research.

Rapid technical progress has increased the speed of quality change. Its impact has a large scale effect on a broad set of variables and it has exacerbated a latent economic problem on the measurement of true economic variables. For example, the reliability of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has been increasingly undermined since it has been argued that price indexes suffer either an upward or a downward bias due to quality change in goods and services. This paper is aimed to be a comprehensive survey on historical contributions to modeling quality from a theoretical perspective. The fundamental contributions of several economists are framed into a coherent building block. We construct a general framework for quality adjustment in price index theory which helps to understand the importance of economic theory for price index definitions. Supply and demand side models are analysed and merged into Rosen (1974) model, the first well grounded attempt to construct a general equilibrium explanation to quality choices. First, we address the issue of quality measures into price index theory. Then, we present a survey of the relevant contributions to hedonic price modeling. We focus on two main fields of applied analysis: (1) determining how the price of a unit of commodity varies with the set of attributes; (2) estimating the demand and supply functions for the attributes of products. The open issues on quality adjustment in consumer price indexes will be analysed in the two applied papers, namely chapter 3 and chapter 4. They are two applied original contributions to hedonic price literature. Chapter 3: In this paper we show that a real time measure of pure price change for different varieties of non durable volatile and seasonal products is possible. Moreover, we introduce the idea of unobservable elements captured by brand specific and by time specific dummies. In order to compute a pure price index, a theoretically correct quality adjustment procedure has been determined where quality is measured in terms of attributes (Griliches, 1971a, 1971b; Tauchen and Witte, 2001; Pakes, 2003; Ekeland et al. 2002, 2004; Triplett 2004) and it is becomes a ’fundamental’ of the market. We have analyzed the prices of apples and oranges traded in the General Milan Market for fruit and vegetables. We have used a large amount of information from more than 8000 of observations collected between 2000 and 2004. We have found that quality is changed over time even if new goods/varieties were not introduced. Price levels adjusted for qualitative levels, measured in terms of the content of characteristics, are above the Laspeyres hedonic price index on average for apples whilst the pure price index for oranges is close to the Laspeyres price index. Our empirical analysis shows that a price index, which does not account for quality change, is underepresiting inflation for apples and correctly measuring price changes for oranges. Chapter 4: The relevant literature dealing with the problem of quality measurement in passenger cars (inter alias, Ohta and Griliches 1976, 1983; Lancaster (1966), Rosen (1974), Berry et al. 1995; 2004) relies on general hedonic imputation methods for the assessment of the quality adjusted price index. We deviate from this standard approach by computing a new quality adjusted index for cars based on a weighted adjustment procedure which accounts for attrition due to observable elements (Fitzgerald et al., 1998; Nevo, 2003; Horowitz and Manski, 1998). By doing this, we are able to define a quality adjusted price index which generates a more accurate identification of price index levels than the current state of the art. We use data for the universe of new cars and their characteristics, sold between 2000 and 2007 in Italy, and we identify the basic reference unit. Based on this we study the pricing behavior of the firms. We model a non random and non ignorable selection process based on an entry/exit process of cars (Olly and Pakes, 1996) due to profit maximizing firms in a differentiated product space. We find that the official index is overestimating inflation since our results point to a mild deflation. However we show that traditional hedonic techniques lead to an overestimation of quality improvement and consequently they under-estimate inflation.