Economia e Politica Industriale

Public authorities have shown concern about the possible harmful effects of platforms acquiring or imitating complementary services sold on their platforms. The effect of these practices on the restrictions on participation, development, or use of platform services (platform openness) has started to attract the attention of policymakers and researchers alike, but the evidence is still limited. We build a model that considers the trade-off that a monopoly platform faces when deciding whether to acquire or imitate a complementor and how such a decision influences openness and welfare. We show that a platform always has an incentive to acquire or imitate complementors. Which one is preferred depends on whether the increase in platform value (acquisition) offsets the market expansion effect (imitation). We find that acquisitions reduce openness and welfare but may generate more valuable complements while imitation increases openness and welfare but may harm third-party developers.

This study identifies the effect of firm performance, especially efficiency, on firm survival. This study applies efficiency calculations using a translog model based on both time-invariant and time-varying production functions and the Ackerberg–Caves–Frazer (ACF) model to overcome the endogeneity problem in the estimation of the production function. The data used are firm-level data, which are medium and large manufacturing company censuses with an observation period from 1995 to 2015. This study used two estimation techniques: the Cox proportional hazard model and Poisson regression. I estimate the Cox regression with firm-level data, whereas the Poisson regression is estimated with aggregate data for 2-digit ISIC. Estimates at the aggregate 2-digit ISIC level are intended to not only see the effect of efficiency on companies that survive but also on companies that enter and exit. Firm-level evidence shows that a company’s efficiency reduces the hazard ratio or increases its survival time. Moreover, consistent with firm-level results, the aggregate-level estimation shows that efficiency increases the chances of survival and entry of companies into Indonesia and reduces the rate of company exit from the Indonesian market. This shows that a company's level of technical efficiency makes an important contribution to the survival of manufacturing companies in Indonesia.

In this paper, we analyse the long run sustainability of a small jurisdiction open to capital flows. Policy instruments used to reach an efficient steady state (when possible) are capital taxes and attractive public infrastructures. We first show that there exists one long run efficient equilibrium which is saddle-point stable. If capital mobility is high enough, the small economy is always able to converge to a long run efficient state by a one-shot adjustment of the share of taxes allocated to infrastructure. If capital mobility is too low, convergence to long run efficiency may be impossible. In this case, an eventual economic collapse can occur.

Industry 4.0 is a concept that represents a whole new vision of the factory where components and machines are becoming intelligent and are part of a network based on a heterogeneous integration of data and knowledge. This is what we tend to designate today as the factory of the future or the intelligent factory. Nowadays, industries in developed countries are experiencing this revolution and are achieving a very high level of performance. On the other hand, for emerging countries, they are beginning to enter this industrial era. Morocco is one of the countries that adopt an industrial acceleration plan to create an efficient industry, and to increase the industrial share in the national GDP (gross domestic product). The aim of this paper is to study the opportunities and challenges of the industry 4.0 in Moroccan firms. Based on the use of data from a large-scale survey of 11 industrial sectors representing 1200 companies of the industry in Morocco, we studied what technologies 4.0 are most used by these companies and according to which sectors, and what are the benefits that 4.0 technologies can bring to these industries. We show also the internal and external obstacles that hinder these industries in achieving and implementing these digital technologies. This work contributes by in providing a background to advance research on real benefits of the industry 4.0.

Using a multiple case study of Italian high-end fashion, we analyze how new ventures pursue an open innovation by forming network ties to facilitate symbolic value propositions. We identify three strategies to form these ties: leverage of extant ties, Product exposure, and Entrepreneur exposure. Discussing the specificity of our empirical setting, we find that the identified strategies accommodate an industry context where market value is socially constructed and uncertainty is high. As a result, rather than being set by entrepreneurs, symbolic value propositions result from a mix of multiple diverse network ties. New high-end fashion ventures form these ties by applying strategies facilitating flexibility through open-ended search.

This paper aims at providing novel evidence about the geographical concentration of venture capital (VC) activity in seven European countries. Drawing upon a unique dataset, VICO 2.0, we describe the geographical distribution of VC investments and VC-backed technology-intensive start-ups and analyse the regional and country-level factors associated to the regional concentration in VC activity. Results from econometric estimates suggest that regional VC activity is positively associated to the level of regional knowledge intensity, the level of regional human capital, the local supply of VC investors and a more favourable country’s legal and institutional environment.

In this paper, we study how information asymmetries influence the relation between serial crowdfunding and campaign success. We argue that the main advantage of serial crowdfunders is related to the role of information asymmetry reduction of the community they had developed through previous campaigns. Therefore, serial crowdfunders experience higher advantages compared to novice crowdfunders for campaigns characterized by high information asymmetries while their advantages tend to disappear for other campaigns. Similarly, we show that when information asymmetries are particularly high, the advantages of serial crowdfunders are endurable over time, while when information asymmetries are lower they tend to disappear rapidly. Econometric results on a sample of 34217 Kickstarter projects confirm our contentions. These finding are confirmed when using machine learning techniques instead of classical econometric analysis. Implications for research, practice and policy are discussed.

Despite increasing political tensions, the major European economies have done little to strengthen their energy security prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022. Shocked by Russian atrocities, Western nations condemned the war and decided to support Ukraine’s effort to defend its territory. Beyond quantifying EU’s dependence on Russian energy imports and explaining how this dependence came to be, this paper analyses the multifaceted implications of Europe’s efforts to regain its energy sovereignty. A comparative vulnerability study between Germany and Lithuania complements this analysis, highlighting two fundamentally different ways to approach energy security issues and tackle the looming energy crisis. What will become apparent in this article is that: trade cannot be a panacea for bridging political divides; the war and the policy announcements that accompany it place unprecedented burdens on Western economies; a country’s historical background plays – as the German-Lithuanian case demonstrates – an essential role in crafting its energy security strategy and in its readiness to act in crisis situations; and the accelerated deployment of renewable energies and other measures aimed at steering European economies away from Russian fuels encounter barriers that cannot be solved with political will alone, they also require breakthroughs in power storage technologies and extensive investments in critical infrastructure projects.

Corporate misconduct can have serious harmful consequences for business if it is revealed and sanctioned. For this reason, the literature argues that Multinational Enterprises’ (MNEs) involvement in misconduct depends on the regulatory pressures exerted by the governments of the countries where they deploy their global value chain (GVC). We argue that regulatory pressures are not the only determinant of corporate misconduct, and that these pressures interact with civil liberties generating more complex outcomes than a linear low to high regulatory pressure scenario. In countries where regulatory pressures are high and that enjoy a high degree of civil liberties, firms avoid misconduct because it is in their interest. In countries with low regulatory pressures and a low degree of civil liberties, misconduct is likely to go unpunished. In these situations, MNEs may be under pressure to conform to local norms, including engaging in misconduct, or risk being expelled or sanctioned by the authorities. Finally, countries with a low level of regulatory pressures but a high degree of civil liberties may be better at avoiding firm misconduct than countries with high regulatory pressures and low degrees of civil liberties. Access to technology for information and communication purposes makes it so that even when regulatory pressures are low, as long as there is a certain degree of civil liberties, corporate misconduct can be exposed and punished by stakeholders. Implications of this interaction are discussed.