LIBRI DI ANTONELLO ZANFEI

This paper focuses on the role of public sector in shaping the competitiveness of national economic systems and proposes an alternative measure of the quality of public administrations based on the availability of public eService. Using the Eiburs-Taips database, which allows a comparative analysis of the diffusion of four typologies of public eService (eGovernment, Intelligent Transport Systems, eHealth, and eProcurement), different patterns of performance are highlighted across PAs at the national and local (city) levels in UE15. The use of novel e-service based indicators confirms that Mediterranean countries, including Italy, lag behind the best performers of Northern Europe. Over and above national differences, the degree of specialisation in service categories largely varies also within countries and across large cities in Europe, suggesting that public policies should be fine tuned in this respect. Italy exhibits a rather weak performance overall, and in the areas of Infomobility and eProcurement in particular, which appear to be the most urgent areas wherein a competitive gap must be filled relative to other UE countries.

The idea that distance may hinder cross-border economic activities has a long tradition in both international trade and international business studies. Increasingly, this literature has highlighted the need to consider distance as a multifaceted concept including both spatial and institutional features. In this paper we argue that the complexities of distance factors and their impact on FDIs can be best appreciated when considered across regions, across firms and across functions. We present some developments in extant literature that account for heterogeneity in each of these three directions, and draw some implications for the analysis of FDIs location decisions.

Using data from the Istat Business R&D (RS1) Survey we explore inward and outward R&D activities of different categories of firms resident in Italy in 2001-2010. From this perspective we provide detailed evidence of the role played by this country in the global creation and transmission of technology. First, foreign owned multinationals are the most active in cross-border R&D but holding a low and decreasing share. This trend confirms that the Italian economy is a poorer and poorer attractor of high value added investments from abroad, while national companies have significantly increased their R&D efforts over the past decade. Second, although outward expenditures of Italian companies increased substantially, R&D performed abroad remains a minor component of business research activities, and is due to a small number of firms investing in a few destination countries. We argue that this paucity of outward R&D activity might hinder both "asset exploiting" and "asset seeking" strategies of Italian firms. Third, we find a strong positive correlation between outward R&D and other innovative activities, including domestic research and R&D commissioned to foreign affiliates.

The innovative system of the Marche Region faces the challenges of international competition in conditions of relative weakness with respect to a national context which is already frail. The weakness of the Marche system regards, above all, the lack of institutionalized research and, to a lesser extent, the capability to introduce and commercialise new and successful products and processes. In this framework, we document the existence of a limited albeit not negligible number of firms, even of small-medium size, which exhibit more systematic and efficient research activities, and invest in the establishment of laboratories, in the employment of qualified personnel dedicated to research and in the development of technological collaboration both with other enterprises and institutions. The relative fragility of each component of the regional innovative system (firms, universities, public establishments), which is partly compensated by an increasing recourse to collaboration both inside and outside the regional and national boundaries, is nevertheless remarkable with respect to the access to, and the use of, new technologies, especially those underlying the development of new paradigms. Furthermore, public support towards research and development is largely directed to short term objectives with immediate impact on businesses.