RISULTATI RICERCA

Negli ultimi decenni i maggiori cambiamenti nella geografia dello sviluppo sono relativi all’ascesa dei paesi BRICS e in particolare alla Cina in Africa. L’articolo – servendosi dell’esempio fornito, attraverso una ricerca sul campo, dal Centro di dimostrazione tecnologica dell’agricoltura in Tanzania – si propone di esaminare l’evoluzione della cooperazione agricola Cina-Africa come rappresentativa di pratiche e modalità della cooperazione Sud-Sud. Il contributo interroga la presenza cinese in Africa come generatrice di relazioni di dipendenza e, allo stesso tempo, riflette sul ruolo della Cina come elemento di diversificazione della dipendenza africana. La ricerca condotta intende stimolare una riflessione critica sulla cooperazione agricola sino-africana, contribuendo al dibattito geografico circa lo sviluppo delle relazioni BRICS-Sud.

Mario Artuso, Cooperation for Development: Contrasting Opinions - This paper addresses recent scholarly studies that review the experiences of Western intervention into poor countries and that use the implications of these experiences in order to confront present-day policies. I examine the publications of the three authoritative economists William Easterly, Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Collier. Easterly is very critical of international interventions and maintains that they have never produced and will never produce realistic results because of the way they are conceived. Easterly faults aid programs most of all because the ways they use to distribute the aid are largely insensitive to local conditions. In contrast, Sachs is much more optimistic. He maintains that present-day technology provides what is needed for eliminating poverty in the poorer countries. The only condition is that the investments should be large enough and long-term enough to get realistic initiatives for modernization going. Collier’s position is different from those of Easterly and Sachs in one respect. Even if Collier concedes that foreign aid plays an important role, he holds that this alone is not enough to win the battle against poverty in the poorest countries of the world. In fact, aid should be tied in with initiatives that promote public security, that produce international charters setting up the monitoring of institutional reforms, and that make local commerce easier to conduct. In its conclusion this paper compares and contrasts these various positions and points out the attention that they have attracted in international public opinion.

I modelli locali di sviluppo sostenibile, itinerari diversi che forniscono un ricco caleidoscopio di esperienze concrete e modelli teorici di riferimento, con lo scopo di: favorire un approccio multilaterale che prediliga lo strumento dei “partenariati territoriali di lungo periodo”, perseguire una gestione partecipata e decentralizzata dei fondi, costruire reti territoriali di comunicazione per promuovere l’heritage culture e consolidare le capacità locali…

R&D activities are carried out through the introduction of new products, new processes or, according to the latest indications (OECD / Eurostat, 2005), through new organizational and marketing levels. These activities increasingly depends by the firm’s ability in interacting with other subjects (firms, research centers), so that they can share risks and costs of the projects, internalize spillover effects, access to new sources of knowledge (Veugelers, 1997). However, there is not unanimous consent whether these interaction’ forms determine an increase of firms’R&D costs. The object of the paper is to verify if cooperation agreements influence firms’ expenses in innovative activities, and if there are complementary or substitution effects. Using data from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) of 2008 referred to Italy, a double hurdle model is estimated and a positive and statistically significant effect of cooperation on R&D investment is found.

Based on a research made in 2002 in Burkina Faso, the article establishes a connection between development co-operation and migration. With a study made on the migration situation of the country, particularly in the colony period, the text explains the situation of two different Burkina Faso savannas populations included in this exam: Nanoro and Pilimpikou. Both of them have similar culture and territory structure but their historic path was very different because of the access to developmental help, which was huge in the first case and non existent in the second one. How did these facts influence the migration of these two populations? In this case-study, the relationship between the help of development and the reduce of migration has been positive.

In recent decades firms have stepped up cooperation in R&D to improve their innovation capability by exploiting the external knowledge. Using data from the Community Innovation Survey, this paper analyzes the effect of cooperation on the propensity to innovate of Italian firms. Overall, the main results show that cooperation in research and development has a positive effect on this propensity. However, the effect varies according to the type of partner chosen by the firm. The greatest benefits derive from collaborations with non-competitive partners, such as suppliers and clients, but cooperation with competitors may also stimulate the firms’ innovation capabilities. Instead, cooperation with universities and other public research organizations shows a weak positive correlation with innovation propensity of firms. Size, R&D intensity, public support and internationalization also play an important role. The work takes into account the simultaneity and heterogeneity in firms’ innovation and collaboration strategies.

This study presents an analysis of the financial statements of consortia from 2005 to 2012. The data come from the final accounts made available by the Ministry of Interior and cover 404 consortia and 2,090 participating municipalities that, with an average adhesion of 5.17 municipalities per consortium, represent 25.95% of the total municipalities. The goal of the analysis is to identify the existence of different types of consortia, characterized by both the composition of joint expenses and financing sources, and to assess the effect that the consortium has on both the overall levels of spending and its composition. In light of the above data, we can state that the weight, in terms of revenue and expenditure of municipal consortia, within the Italian public administration has so far been modest. However, the degree of activism of consortia, in terms of the ratio between the consortium per capita expenditure and the per capita expenditure of the belonging municipalities, is very heterogeneous both regionally and for spending functions.

L’articolo si propone di valutare, alla luce dell’analisi economica, le politiche di sostegno alla cooperazione sociale di inserimento lavorativo fino all’art. 14 del d.lgs. n. 276 del 2003. A questo fine vengono brevemente presentate le ragioni che giustificano la necessità di adottare politiche specifiche per l’inserimento dei lavoratori svantaggiati. Si illustrano quindi l’evoluzione e le caratteristiche della cooperazione sociale di inserimento lavorativo, se ne discutono i vantaggi e i limiti e si individuano le politiche di sostegno più coerenti. Alla luce di questa premessa si analizzano quindi criticamente le politiche adottate a partire dal 1991, giungendo alla conclusione che le soluzioni finora prodotte sono state complessivamente deboli, frammentarie e poco coerenti. E che l’art. 14 del d.lgs. n. 276 del 2003, lungi dal favorire l’inserimento lavorativo rischia di influenzare negativamente sia la performance che la mission delle cooperative sociali di inserimento lavorativo.

La cooperazione transfrontaliera è una delle strategie di promozione dello sviluppo più evocate ed apprezzate nel contesto dell’integrazione europea. In particolare, la cooperazione transfrontaliera ambisce a coniugare la crescita integrata di territori attraversati da confini nazionali con la capacità di ricomporre le fratture sociali presenti negli stessi territori. Tuttavia, tale strategia funziona solo nel caso in cui le aree coinvolte siano capaci di rappresentarsi come territori di confine, ovvero di riflettere la complementarietà dei processi di sviluppo come patrimonio relazionale delle popolazioni residenti al di qua e al di là del confine. Il capitolo discute tali problemi in riferimento al caso dei Balcani, segnatamente della ex-Jugoslavia. Il ruolo del nazionalismo, la specificità delle società di frontiera, la formazione dello stato e l’uso politico della violenza sono alcuni dei fattori principali della formazione di un’area di confine. Gli stessi fattori compongono la costellazione di riferimento per cogliere i significati e le ambizioni della cooperazione transfrontaliera, nonché le ragioni del suo successo o delle sue difficoltà.