Antonella Rocca - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Antonella Rocca
SN Social Sciences
Young people are one of the most vulnerable segments of the population in the labour market. This... more Young people are one of the most vulnerable segments of the population in the labour market. This evidence is due to many personal and macro-economic factors and applies to all countries worldwide. However, the young people's disadvantage strongly differs across countries and, in some cases, also within the countries. In this paper, we aim at analyzing the influence that the place of residence exerts on the propensity to the NEET (young individuals not in employment, education, or training) status in Italy, the country that, in Europe, shows by many years the highest share of NEETs, with an evident internal variability. We applied a multilevel model using macro-data with deep territorial detail: the regional, the provincial, and even the municipality level. Results highlight the significant effect on the NEET phenomenon of factors linked to the territory, including the share of enterprises, the innovative content of the economy, and the quality of the education system. Investing...
The aim of this paper is to explore the main determinants of women\u27s job search propensity and... more The aim of this paper is to explore the main determinants of women\u27s job search propensity and the mechanism underlying the selection effect into labour markets. The analysis compares the European countries, sharing the lowest female activity rates, with the well-developed economies of North Europe, traditionally characterized by the highest levels of female labour force participation. The potential selection bias due to the overlap in some unobserved characteristics is addressed via a bivariate probit model. Significant selection effects in women\u27s job search process of opposite signs are found for Greece, on the one side, and for the Polish and the Norwegian labour markets, on the other one
Societies
Our overriding goal was to understand territorial inequalities regarding secondary school complet... more Our overriding goal was to understand territorial inequalities regarding secondary school completion by testing which contextual factors and educational resources are associated with their change in high- and low-density Portuguese municipalities. Our analysis covered the time between 2009 and 2018, including both the economic crisis and the economic recovery period. Drawing mostly on publicly available data from 253 municipalities and following a Linear Mixed Model approach, we found that low-density municipalities depicted significantly greater levels of secondary school attainment by 2013 compared to high-density municipalities. Moreover, growing unemployment rates were associated with a reduction in secondary school completion rates across the assessed time points. Contrary to our expectations, higher rates of permanent teachers were associated with worse rates of secondary school completion. In addition, we found a significant increase in the rates of secondary school conclusio...
Utilities Policy, 2021
Abstract The port sector has received growing attention from port authority managers and policyma... more Abstract The port sector has received growing attention from port authority managers and policymakers. The strategic relevance of ports has improved, but the environment is negatively affected by port operations. This study attempts to assess the performance of twenty-four European ports considering their eco-efficiency. The stochastic frontier analysis has been proposed to evaluate the port performance, and several data envelopment analysis estimations have been calculated to verify the consistency condition. Evidence suggests that recent management efforts to increase the volume of the ports’ activity do not impair their eco-efficiency, and policymakers can refer to different theoretical patterns to verify the potential impact of specific measurements targeted at improving eco-efficiency performance.
In the last decades, political and pre-election polls have been assuming more and more importance... more In the last decades, political and pre-election polls have been assuming more and more importance because they measure not only support for political parties and candidates, but also public opinion on a wide range of social and political issues. When conducted through a scientific design, they are a powerful political and democratic instrument. Nevertheless, in Italy, a set of "best practices" about their quality is likely to remain elusive. In this paper, according to the AGCOM resolutions, an analysis on the qualitative content of all the Italian political and pre-election polls from 2000 to 2012 is proposed, with the aim to evaluate their reliability and to draw an identikit of high quality polls.
Advances in Methodology and Statistics, 2017
Ph.D. education is a key element in innovation and the generation of new knowledge. Nevertheless,... more Ph.D. education is a key element in innovation and the generation of new knowledge. Nevertheless, in Italy, the share of doctoral graduates is still lower than the average for OECD member countries. This paper investigates the effectiveness of doctoral education and the extent to which the Italian labour market properly absorbs the rising flow of Ph.D. holders. The effectiveness is assessed from the twofold perspective of the formal relevance of a Ph.D. qualification in the labour market and the substantial applicability of skills acquired to different occupations inside and outside university. Logit models enable sketches of the main determinants of overeducation and overskilling among Italian Ph.D.'s, whereas log-earnings equations allow assessment of the role of educational and skills mismatches in terms of wage penalties. Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions help analyse some causes of these mismatches. The different patterns of overeducation and overskilling among Ph.D. holders wo...
Social Indicators Research
In this study we investigate the impact of individual, parental and social factors on young adult... more In this study we investigate the impact of individual, parental and social factors on young adults’ job-finding intentions across countries and overall. We test our hypotheses by conducting binary logistic regressions on the basis of an original dataset that comprises responses from more than 5200 young adults and their parents from 11 European countries. Our findings show that individual factors are most decisive in shaping the job-finding intentions of young adults. Most importantly, being enrolled in education does not prevent young adults from lowering their aspirations with respect to anticipated earnings or finding more sophisticated jobs. Social factors, in terms of being socially involved or having more friends in employment, lead to stronger mobility intentions as well as to stronger intentions to improve skills or develop new ones. At the country level, and compared to Italian participants, who go through a longer school-to-work transition, participants from Northern or Ce...
Proceedings e report, 2021
The scientific production on the Innovation, especially on Sustainable Innovation, has grown in r... more The scientific production on the Innovation, especially on Sustainable Innovation, has grown in recent years. Various expressions and definitions for sustainability and innovation have been reported in the literature. Sometimes the two concepts are combined and described with one term, Sustainable Innovation. Research on sustainable innovation has grown in popularity due to the need to incorporate sustainability within business practices. The purpose of this study is to investigate the status and the evolution of the scientific studies on this topic and identify the worldwide trends in scientific production over time through a research conducted on the metadata of Web of Science, a database commonly used by researchers. A bibliometric analysis has been developed to analyse a total of 1,511 documents published between 2000 and 2021 in order to discover the research trends in this field and the main dimensions and words related to the term “Sustainable Innovation”.
The transition from school to work (STW) involves the period between leaving the education system... more The transition from school to work (STW) involves the period between leaving the education system and entering the world of work until the achievement of a stable job. It represents a critical steps in the life cycle of an individual because he/she suffers a disadvantage in comparison with the older experienced workers, due to the lack of work experience and also in searching for a job. In this paper, we analyze the main determinants of STW duration in a selection of 21 European countries through survival models. The latter allow for an estimate of the probability to exit from the STW transition over time. Data come from EU-SILC and refer to young people completing their studies from 2011 to 2015, following their professional status until two years from the end of studies, respectively from 2013 to 2017. This paper contributes to the literature on the analysis of the factors influencing the initial experience of young people in the labour market in a broad perspective, including inf...
Pomorstvo, 2021
In the recent literature, the strategic relevance of ports has improved, and this paper provides ... more In the recent literature, the strategic relevance of ports has improved, and this paper provides a comparative analysis of 24 European ports. The port performance has been evaluated considering data envelopment analysis and Shephard’s distance function. This latter approach offers an alternative method to address a significant restraint of the standard Stochastic Frontier when the model needs to consider multiple outputs. From a policy point of view, the conclusion could offer valuable insights to support policy measures targeted to expand port efficiency. The findings obtained from the analysis reveal that several contextual indicators must be included in benchmark analysis.
The recent economic crisis has further increased the socio-economic disparities across European c... more The recent economic crisis has further increased the socio-economic disparities across European countries. In particular, the levels of NEETS (young people Not in Employment, Education and Training) has resulted greater than before in European Mediterranean countries, more severely hit by the crisis. The aim of this paper is to analyze the peculiarities of NEETs in Italy, Spain and Greece in the years from 2007 to 2016 and verify if the introduction of the Youth Guarantee Schemes has contributed to decrease these high shares. To this aim, some econometric models have been applied to the Labour Force Survey data and Youth Guarantee Schemes effects have been tested using the Chow test.
CESifo Economic Studies, 2019
Using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model with a seasonal frequency, this study attemp... more Using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model with a seasonal frequency, this study attempts to analyse the changes occurred in the share of Italian NEETs (young people Not in Employment, Education and Training), from 2005 to 2016. The recent economic crisis increased the share of NEETs in many European countries. This work aims at analysing the main determinants of the NEET phenomenon in Italy, starting from the wider European framework. Furthermore, the Chow test for the structural breaks detection allows verifying if a structural break occurred in the share of Italian NEETs over time, as a consequence of the introduction of this Youth Guarantee Fund and of the overcoming of the deepest phase of the crisis. The under-representation of women in the labour market, and the North-South dualism, required different analyses. The results confirm that a significant structural break happened in the levels of NEETs almost everywhere, in 2014. It was directly ascribable to the trend observed in the share of NEETs in the South of Italy, especially for women, in contrast with the Centre and Northeast , where it refers in particular to men. (JEL codes: J13)
International Journal of Manpower, 2022
Purpose The Italian school-to-work transition (STWT) is astonishingly slow and long in comparison... more Purpose The Italian school-to-work transition (STWT) is astonishingly slow and long in comparison to the other EU countries. We analyze its determinants comparing the Italian case with Austria, Poland and the UK. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is based on a Cox survival model with proportional hazard. The smoothed hazard estimates allow us to identify the nonlinear path of the hazard function. Findings The authors reckon that the actual length of the transition to a stable job is around 30 months in Italy. Conversely, it is less than one year in the other countries. Women are particularly penalized, despite being on average more educated than men. Tertiary or vocational education at high secondary school strongly increases the hazard rate to a regular job. The smoothed hazard estimates suggest positive duration dependence at the beginning of the transition and slightly negative thereafter. Practical implications Stimulating economic growth and investing in education and tr...
Sustainability, 2021
The social sustainability of rural areas is affected by the phenomenon of “brain drain” due to yo... more The social sustainability of rural areas is affected by the phenomenon of “brain drain” due to younger generations’ outward migration. Our study examines how structural and subjective factors determine the returning intentions of university students over time, before completion of their studies. We conducted a longitudinal, 3-wave survey between 2018 and 2020, involving 349 students (Mean age = 21.89; 63.04% women) and originating from a rural, remote region of Portugal. Using a Tobit panel model approach for data analysis, we found that participants whose mothers had a university degree, who expected higher income 3 years after studies completion, and who were more attached to the place where they were studying were less inclined to return to their native rural area. Conversely, those who were more attached to their rural origins were more likely to show an increased interest in returning over time. Our findings show that university students originating from rural areas and their r...
Proceedings e report
Society and policy makers demand innovation systems oriented towards several goals of sustainable... more Society and policy makers demand innovation systems oriented towards several goals of sustainable development. Therefore, recent literature has dedicated a growing interest to both innovation and sustainability in the pursuit of environmental, economic and social development; in addition, the emerging topic of ‘sustainable innovation’ (and ‘eco-innovation’) seems to combine the main features of them. The definition of these concepts has been significantly changed during the last decades, and a broad discussion continues today about which indicators should be used to measure innovation, sustainability and their combination. The current paper investigates this relationship, and - in the authors’ opinion - the research question connected to the impact of the innovative product (and service and process) solutions on sustainability can be addressed by means of a stable theoretical framework. To study the interaction between innovation and sustainability, the usage of specific territorial...
Social Indicators Research
What is the real meaning of sustainable innovation? How is sustainable innovation different from ... more What is the real meaning of sustainable innovation? How is sustainable innovation different from other forms of innovation? How does sustainable innovation contribute to societal development? How can we measure the sustainable innovation of a country-which indicators and which synthesis methods should we use? In this paper we try to answer these previous questions. Starting from the concept of sustainable innovation, as it has been extensively discussed in recent years in a range of disciplines from economics to engineering and sociology, the paper focuses on the basic criteria (such as indicators and statistical models) required to evaluate the sustainable innovation at the regional level, choosing Italy as a case study. From the elementary indicators of innovation, on one hand, and sustainability, on other hand, a composite indicator of sustainable innovation has been computed. The statistical model used to compute this composite indicator has been a Higher-Order Partial Least Squares Path model. The results obtained applying this model to the Italian scenario are discussed, the ranking of the different Italian regions, and the impact of the composite indicator sustainable innovation on economic results of each region are discussed.
SN Social Sciences
Young people are one of the most vulnerable segments of the population in the labour market. This... more Young people are one of the most vulnerable segments of the population in the labour market. This evidence is due to many personal and macro-economic factors and applies to all countries worldwide. However, the young people's disadvantage strongly differs across countries and, in some cases, also within the countries. In this paper, we aim at analyzing the influence that the place of residence exerts on the propensity to the NEET (young individuals not in employment, education, or training) status in Italy, the country that, in Europe, shows by many years the highest share of NEETs, with an evident internal variability. We applied a multilevel model using macro-data with deep territorial detail: the regional, the provincial, and even the municipality level. Results highlight the significant effect on the NEET phenomenon of factors linked to the territory, including the share of enterprises, the innovative content of the economy, and the quality of the education system. Investing...
The aim of this paper is to explore the main determinants of women\u27s job search propensity and... more The aim of this paper is to explore the main determinants of women\u27s job search propensity and the mechanism underlying the selection effect into labour markets. The analysis compares the European countries, sharing the lowest female activity rates, with the well-developed economies of North Europe, traditionally characterized by the highest levels of female labour force participation. The potential selection bias due to the overlap in some unobserved characteristics is addressed via a bivariate probit model. Significant selection effects in women\u27s job search process of opposite signs are found for Greece, on the one side, and for the Polish and the Norwegian labour markets, on the other one
Societies
Our overriding goal was to understand territorial inequalities regarding secondary school complet... more Our overriding goal was to understand territorial inequalities regarding secondary school completion by testing which contextual factors and educational resources are associated with their change in high- and low-density Portuguese municipalities. Our analysis covered the time between 2009 and 2018, including both the economic crisis and the economic recovery period. Drawing mostly on publicly available data from 253 municipalities and following a Linear Mixed Model approach, we found that low-density municipalities depicted significantly greater levels of secondary school attainment by 2013 compared to high-density municipalities. Moreover, growing unemployment rates were associated with a reduction in secondary school completion rates across the assessed time points. Contrary to our expectations, higher rates of permanent teachers were associated with worse rates of secondary school completion. In addition, we found a significant increase in the rates of secondary school conclusio...
Utilities Policy, 2021
Abstract The port sector has received growing attention from port authority managers and policyma... more Abstract The port sector has received growing attention from port authority managers and policymakers. The strategic relevance of ports has improved, but the environment is negatively affected by port operations. This study attempts to assess the performance of twenty-four European ports considering their eco-efficiency. The stochastic frontier analysis has been proposed to evaluate the port performance, and several data envelopment analysis estimations have been calculated to verify the consistency condition. Evidence suggests that recent management efforts to increase the volume of the ports’ activity do not impair their eco-efficiency, and policymakers can refer to different theoretical patterns to verify the potential impact of specific measurements targeted at improving eco-efficiency performance.
In the last decades, political and pre-election polls have been assuming more and more importance... more In the last decades, political and pre-election polls have been assuming more and more importance because they measure not only support for political parties and candidates, but also public opinion on a wide range of social and political issues. When conducted through a scientific design, they are a powerful political and democratic instrument. Nevertheless, in Italy, a set of "best practices" about their quality is likely to remain elusive. In this paper, according to the AGCOM resolutions, an analysis on the qualitative content of all the Italian political and pre-election polls from 2000 to 2012 is proposed, with the aim to evaluate their reliability and to draw an identikit of high quality polls.
Advances in Methodology and Statistics, 2017
Ph.D. education is a key element in innovation and the generation of new knowledge. Nevertheless,... more Ph.D. education is a key element in innovation and the generation of new knowledge. Nevertheless, in Italy, the share of doctoral graduates is still lower than the average for OECD member countries. This paper investigates the effectiveness of doctoral education and the extent to which the Italian labour market properly absorbs the rising flow of Ph.D. holders. The effectiveness is assessed from the twofold perspective of the formal relevance of a Ph.D. qualification in the labour market and the substantial applicability of skills acquired to different occupations inside and outside university. Logit models enable sketches of the main determinants of overeducation and overskilling among Italian Ph.D.'s, whereas log-earnings equations allow assessment of the role of educational and skills mismatches in terms of wage penalties. Oaxaca-Blinder decompositions help analyse some causes of these mismatches. The different patterns of overeducation and overskilling among Ph.D. holders wo...
Social Indicators Research
In this study we investigate the impact of individual, parental and social factors on young adult... more In this study we investigate the impact of individual, parental and social factors on young adults’ job-finding intentions across countries and overall. We test our hypotheses by conducting binary logistic regressions on the basis of an original dataset that comprises responses from more than 5200 young adults and their parents from 11 European countries. Our findings show that individual factors are most decisive in shaping the job-finding intentions of young adults. Most importantly, being enrolled in education does not prevent young adults from lowering their aspirations with respect to anticipated earnings or finding more sophisticated jobs. Social factors, in terms of being socially involved or having more friends in employment, lead to stronger mobility intentions as well as to stronger intentions to improve skills or develop new ones. At the country level, and compared to Italian participants, who go through a longer school-to-work transition, participants from Northern or Ce...
Proceedings e report, 2021
The scientific production on the Innovation, especially on Sustainable Innovation, has grown in r... more The scientific production on the Innovation, especially on Sustainable Innovation, has grown in recent years. Various expressions and definitions for sustainability and innovation have been reported in the literature. Sometimes the two concepts are combined and described with one term, Sustainable Innovation. Research on sustainable innovation has grown in popularity due to the need to incorporate sustainability within business practices. The purpose of this study is to investigate the status and the evolution of the scientific studies on this topic and identify the worldwide trends in scientific production over time through a research conducted on the metadata of Web of Science, a database commonly used by researchers. A bibliometric analysis has been developed to analyse a total of 1,511 documents published between 2000 and 2021 in order to discover the research trends in this field and the main dimensions and words related to the term “Sustainable Innovation”.
The transition from school to work (STW) involves the period between leaving the education system... more The transition from school to work (STW) involves the period between leaving the education system and entering the world of work until the achievement of a stable job. It represents a critical steps in the life cycle of an individual because he/she suffers a disadvantage in comparison with the older experienced workers, due to the lack of work experience and also in searching for a job. In this paper, we analyze the main determinants of STW duration in a selection of 21 European countries through survival models. The latter allow for an estimate of the probability to exit from the STW transition over time. Data come from EU-SILC and refer to young people completing their studies from 2011 to 2015, following their professional status until two years from the end of studies, respectively from 2013 to 2017. This paper contributes to the literature on the analysis of the factors influencing the initial experience of young people in the labour market in a broad perspective, including inf...
Pomorstvo, 2021
In the recent literature, the strategic relevance of ports has improved, and this paper provides ... more In the recent literature, the strategic relevance of ports has improved, and this paper provides a comparative analysis of 24 European ports. The port performance has been evaluated considering data envelopment analysis and Shephard’s distance function. This latter approach offers an alternative method to address a significant restraint of the standard Stochastic Frontier when the model needs to consider multiple outputs. From a policy point of view, the conclusion could offer valuable insights to support policy measures targeted to expand port efficiency. The findings obtained from the analysis reveal that several contextual indicators must be included in benchmark analysis.
The recent economic crisis has further increased the socio-economic disparities across European c... more The recent economic crisis has further increased the socio-economic disparities across European countries. In particular, the levels of NEETS (young people Not in Employment, Education and Training) has resulted greater than before in European Mediterranean countries, more severely hit by the crisis. The aim of this paper is to analyze the peculiarities of NEETs in Italy, Spain and Greece in the years from 2007 to 2016 and verify if the introduction of the Youth Guarantee Schemes has contributed to decrease these high shares. To this aim, some econometric models have been applied to the Labour Force Survey data and Youth Guarantee Schemes effects have been tested using the Chow test.
CESifo Economic Studies, 2019
Using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model with a seasonal frequency, this study attemp... more Using an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model with a seasonal frequency, this study attempts to analyse the changes occurred in the share of Italian NEETs (young people Not in Employment, Education and Training), from 2005 to 2016. The recent economic crisis increased the share of NEETs in many European countries. This work aims at analysing the main determinants of the NEET phenomenon in Italy, starting from the wider European framework. Furthermore, the Chow test for the structural breaks detection allows verifying if a structural break occurred in the share of Italian NEETs over time, as a consequence of the introduction of this Youth Guarantee Fund and of the overcoming of the deepest phase of the crisis. The under-representation of women in the labour market, and the North-South dualism, required different analyses. The results confirm that a significant structural break happened in the levels of NEETs almost everywhere, in 2014. It was directly ascribable to the trend observed in the share of NEETs in the South of Italy, especially for women, in contrast with the Centre and Northeast , where it refers in particular to men. (JEL codes: J13)
International Journal of Manpower, 2022
Purpose The Italian school-to-work transition (STWT) is astonishingly slow and long in comparison... more Purpose The Italian school-to-work transition (STWT) is astonishingly slow and long in comparison to the other EU countries. We analyze its determinants comparing the Italian case with Austria, Poland and the UK. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is based on a Cox survival model with proportional hazard. The smoothed hazard estimates allow us to identify the nonlinear path of the hazard function. Findings The authors reckon that the actual length of the transition to a stable job is around 30 months in Italy. Conversely, it is less than one year in the other countries. Women are particularly penalized, despite being on average more educated than men. Tertiary or vocational education at high secondary school strongly increases the hazard rate to a regular job. The smoothed hazard estimates suggest positive duration dependence at the beginning of the transition and slightly negative thereafter. Practical implications Stimulating economic growth and investing in education and tr...
Sustainability, 2021
The social sustainability of rural areas is affected by the phenomenon of “brain drain” due to yo... more The social sustainability of rural areas is affected by the phenomenon of “brain drain” due to younger generations’ outward migration. Our study examines how structural and subjective factors determine the returning intentions of university students over time, before completion of their studies. We conducted a longitudinal, 3-wave survey between 2018 and 2020, involving 349 students (Mean age = 21.89; 63.04% women) and originating from a rural, remote region of Portugal. Using a Tobit panel model approach for data analysis, we found that participants whose mothers had a university degree, who expected higher income 3 years after studies completion, and who were more attached to the place where they were studying were less inclined to return to their native rural area. Conversely, those who were more attached to their rural origins were more likely to show an increased interest in returning over time. Our findings show that university students originating from rural areas and their r...
Proceedings e report
Society and policy makers demand innovation systems oriented towards several goals of sustainable... more Society and policy makers demand innovation systems oriented towards several goals of sustainable development. Therefore, recent literature has dedicated a growing interest to both innovation and sustainability in the pursuit of environmental, economic and social development; in addition, the emerging topic of ‘sustainable innovation’ (and ‘eco-innovation’) seems to combine the main features of them. The definition of these concepts has been significantly changed during the last decades, and a broad discussion continues today about which indicators should be used to measure innovation, sustainability and their combination. The current paper investigates this relationship, and - in the authors’ opinion - the research question connected to the impact of the innovative product (and service and process) solutions on sustainability can be addressed by means of a stable theoretical framework. To study the interaction between innovation and sustainability, the usage of specific territorial...
Social Indicators Research
What is the real meaning of sustainable innovation? How is sustainable innovation different from ... more What is the real meaning of sustainable innovation? How is sustainable innovation different from other forms of innovation? How does sustainable innovation contribute to societal development? How can we measure the sustainable innovation of a country-which indicators and which synthesis methods should we use? In this paper we try to answer these previous questions. Starting from the concept of sustainable innovation, as it has been extensively discussed in recent years in a range of disciplines from economics to engineering and sociology, the paper focuses on the basic criteria (such as indicators and statistical models) required to evaluate the sustainable innovation at the regional level, choosing Italy as a case study. From the elementary indicators of innovation, on one hand, and sustainability, on other hand, a composite indicator of sustainable innovation has been computed. The statistical model used to compute this composite indicator has been a Higher-Order Partial Least Squares Path model. The results obtained applying this model to the Italian scenario are discussed, the ranking of the different Italian regions, and the impact of the composite indicator sustainable innovation on economic results of each region are discussed.