Graziella Bonanno - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Graziella Bonanno
Economia Politica
This paper uses a novel micro econometric approach to analyze the impact of social benefits on th... more This paper uses a novel micro econometric approach to analyze the impact of social benefits on the individual probabilities of poverty exit and entry in Italy, and their relative importance with respect to other socio-economic determinants of poverty transitions. Year to year transitions are defined as dichotomous variables capturing the changes of the individual poverty status, and are analyzed using random effects probit models estimated on pooled Italian data from 9 longitudinal components of IT-SILC covering the period 2004–2015. Our results show that social benefits strongly counteract the adverse effects of individual characteristics like unemployment, work intensity, inactivity, household size (and composition) and past poverty experience on the individual probabilities of poverty exit and entry. Despite their important effects on the individual probabilities of transitions, however, social benefits have a limited coverage among the vulnerable groups of the population, which ...
Eurasian Business Review
This paper investigates the relationship between profit efficiency, finance and innovation. By ad... more This paper investigates the relationship between profit efficiency, finance and innovation. By adopting stochastic frontiers, we pioneer the use of a novel dataset merging firm level survey data with balance sheet information for a large sample of European companies. We find that firms having difficulties in access to finance as well as firms introducing product innovation display an incentive to improve their efficiency. While innovation produces benefit for firms’ profitability, financial constraints impose a discipline to the firms forcing them to cut unproductive costs that reduce the profitability. We document nuanced differences between firms in industry and services, while they are more pronounced when we look at disaggregation across High-Tech and Low-Tech companies. From a policy perspective, our results enrich the understanding on the link between innovation, financial constraints and efficiency, which goes beyond the idea that easier access to finance is the panacea to ge...
Ix INTRODUZIONE del 2015-per il contenimento del riscaldamento globale, basato sulla riduzione de... more Ix INTRODUZIONE del 2015-per il contenimento del riscaldamento globale, basato sulla riduzione delle emissioni di CO 2-sia da fattori comportamentali che condizioneranno i cambiamenti nella domanda di trasporto in un prossimo futuro. Le analisi empiriche condotte in alcuni saggi di questo volume (capitoli 1, 2, 5, 6 e 7) si basano sulle informazioni qualitative e quantitative provenienti dall'indagine Survey on the Access to Finance of Enterprises (SAFE) della Banca Centrale Europea (BCE). A tal fine intendo ringraziare la BCE per aver autorizzato e reso disponibile l'uso dei dati SAFE. Tutti i capitoli raccolti in questo volume sono stati sottoposti a referaggio interno. Ringrazio pertanto Romeo Danielis, Nadia Fiorino, Elena Podrecca, Achille Puggioni e Lucia Rotaris per aver letto e commentato i capitoli redatti da altri autori. Ovviamente la responsabilità per quanto scritto rimane interamente ed esclusivamente degli autori di ciascun saggio. Desidero ringraziare, inoltre, Nadia Fiorino e Achille Puggioni per i preziosi consigli e le numerose occasioni di dialogo. Ringrazio infine l'Università di Trieste per il supporto finanziario al progetto di ricerca (FRA 2018).
This paper aims to evaluate the role played by different sources of finance when analysing firms’... more This paper aims to evaluate the role played by different sources of finance when analysing firms’ attitudes to innovate. The empirical investigation is based on the firm-level data for a large sample of European SMEs across the 2012–2017 period. Different measures of finance and several robustness checks are used to select a well-behaved probit multilevel model. Importantly, results show that the probability to innovate increases when firms use internal finance and grants. The same applies when funds come from family and friend channels, while no conclusive evidence is found for bank loans.
This paper provides new evidence on trade price-elasticities by analysing the case of China and t... more This paper provides new evidence on trade price-elasticities by analysing the case of China and the Oecd countries over the period 1990-2013. Import and export equations have been made using time-series framework and panel data techniques for non-stationary data. The contributions are threefold. Firstly, the panel data econometric specification allows for cross-country common factors, thereby controlling for unobserved time-varying omitted variables. Secondly, we complement the study by referring to a single-country time-series analysis based on a VECM model. This is a powerful robustness test on the results of our panel data setting, whose dimension, however, is large enough to ensure the reliability of estimations. Thirdly, we control for structural stability of export and import price elasticities and, thus, test the relevance of several breaks that we identify as potential source of randomness in the long-run equilibrium of each country.
Journal of Economic Surveys, 2019
This paper reviews the literature on local government efficiency by metareviewing 360 observation... more This paper reviews the literature on local government efficiency by metareviewing 360 observations retrieved from 54 papers published from 1993 to 2016. The meta-regression is based on a random effect model estimated with the 2-step Random Effects Maximum Likelihood (REML) technique proposed by Gallet and Doucouliagos (2014). Results indicate that the study design matters when estimating a frontier in local government. We find that studies focusing on technical efficiency provide higher efficiency scores than works evaluating cost efficiency. The same applies when using panel data instead of cross-section data. Interestingly, studies that use the Free Disposal Hull (FDH) approach yield, on average, higher efficiency scores than papers employing the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method, thereby suggesting that in this literature the convexity hypothesis of the production set is a matter. Finally, the efficiency of local government increases with the level of development of the analysed countries and is positively related to the national integrity of the legal system. The opposite holds when considering the corruption.
Knowledge and Process Management, 2016
The article focuses on the measurement of a relevant component of the human capital, the manageri... more The article focuses on the measurement of a relevant component of the human capital, the managerial ability (MA). Quantifying MA is central to management literature. Prior research indicates that manager specific features (ability, talent, reputation, or style) affect economic outcomes but, in management literature, most of the measures used in archival research also reflect significant aspects of the firm that are outside of management's control. The article aims to find a measure, better than existing ones, which allows distinguishing the effect of the manager from the effect of the firm in creating firm value. The article uses the "two-stage SFA-DEA" approach, in which both Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) are used to estimate the efficiency scores firms adopt to derive a measure of MA. The idea is to obtain a measure of MA as a residue of the inefficiency equation of SFA and to use it as a new input to insert in the "second/third" DEA stage. Italian banks have been chosen as the sample to investigate and implement the model. The differences in results with or without this new MA measure provide evidence of the existence of this contribution. The originality of the article consists in the proposition of a new model to measure MA, which outperforms the alternative measures, simple to use as it is based on easily obtainable financial data and available for a broad cross section of firms, so opening the door to a wide array of studies previously difficult to conduct.
Journal of Economic Surveys, 2017
One learns two main lessons from studying the great quantity of banking efficiency literature. Th... more One learns two main lessons from studying the great quantity of banking efficiency literature. These lessons regard the heterogeneity in results and the absence of a comprehensive review aimed at understanding the reasons for this variability. Surprisingly, although this issue is well-known, it has not been systematically analyzed before. In order to fill this gap, we perform a Meta-Regression-Analysis (MRA) by examining 1,661 efficiency scores retrieved from 120 papers published over the period 2000-2014. The meta-regression is estimated by using the Random Effects Multilevel Model (REML), because it controls for within-study and between-study heterogeneity. The analysis yields four main results. Firstly, parametric methods yield lower levels of banking efficiency than nonparametric studies. This holds true even after controlling for the approach used in selecting the inputs and outputs of the frontier. Secondly, we show that banking efficiency is highest when using the value added approach, followed by estimates from studies based on the intermediation method, whereas those based on the hybrid approach are the lowest. Thirdly, efficiency scores also depend on the quality of studies and on the number of observations and variables used in the primary papers. As far as the effects of sample size, dimension and quality of papers are concerned, there are significant differences in sign and magnitude between parametric and nonparametric studies. Finally, cost efficiency is found to be higher than profit and production efficiency. Interestingly, MRA results are robust to the potential outliers in efficiency and sample size distributions.
China & World Economy, 2015
Estimates have been made using panel data techniques for non-stationary data. After demonstrating... more Estimates have been made using panel data techniques for non-stationary data. After demonstrating that long-run relationships are stable to any structural break, it is found that exports are significantly determined by foreign demand, with long-run income elasticity significantly higher than unity for China, Japan, Germany, the UK and the USA. Conversely, exports are price inelastic for most of the countries in the sample, in both the long run and the short run. The exception is France, whose export price elasticity is lower (higher) than unity in the short run (long run).
Eurasian Business Review, 2015
This paper focuses on trade elasticities by analysing the case of China,
The empirical literature on trade imbalances does not make currency tensions easy to understand, ... more The empirical literature on trade imbalances does not make currency tensions easy to understand, because tensions across traders originate from the assumption that export-price elasticity is high. This paper provides new evidence by analysing the export-behaviour of China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, and the USA from 1990 to 2012. Estimates of export-price elasticities have been made using panel data techniques for non-stationary data. Long run relationships are stable to any structural break and indicate that exports are heavily dependent on world income, with long run income elasticity significantly higher than unity in many cases (China, Japan, Germany, UK and USA). Conversely, exports are price inelastic for most of the countries in the sample, in both the long and short runs. The exception is France, whose exports in the long run would increase by 2 percent if the country experienced a 1 percent depreciation of its real exchange rate.
We propose an empirical application of models derived in Bonanno et al. (2017) for estimating cos... more We propose an empirical application of models derived in Bonanno et al. (2017) for estimating cost efficiency (CE) on data used by Greene (1990) to test Gamma distribution for the inefficiency component and by Smith (2008) to test the dependence between the two error terms of a Stochastic Frontier (SF). We also derive the closed–form of denisty function of the overall error term and the formula to calculate the Cost Efficiency (CE) scores.
Assessing the impact of social policies on income poverty and material deprivation dynamics is cr... more Assessing the impact of social policies on income poverty and material deprivation dynamics is crucial in order to develop effective policy responses. Yet, this kind of analysis has seldom been attempted with longitudinal data. This manuscript begins to fill this gap, and investigates the micro and macro determinants of year to year income poverty and material deprivation transitions in Italy over the period 2004-2015, focusing on the impact of social benefits received at the individual level and of average per capita expenditures for social services by Municipalities at the aggregate level. We define year to year transitions as dichotomous variables, and estimate probit models on pooled data from 9 longitudinal components of IT-SILC (complemented with data on macro-structural factors, from ISTAT source). This allows us to analyze complex interdependencies between different covariates influencing poverty and deprivation in a dynamic context over eleven years characterized by differe...
Business Strategy and the Environment, 2022
European Central Bank Research Paper Series, 2020
This paper aims at investigating the relationship between firms’ profit efficiency, access to fin... more This paper aims at investigating the relationship between firms’ profit efficiency, access to finance and innovation activities. We enrich our understanding on firms’ performance by adopting the stochastic frontier approach (SFA), which allows us to estimate profit functions and to obtain efficiency scores for a large sample of European firms. We pioneer the use of a novel dataset that merges survey-based data derived from the ECB Survey on access to finance for enterprises (SAFE) with balance sheet information. Our evidence documents that credit constrained firms display an incentive to improve their efficiency in order to increase profitability. Among firms that have embarked in product innovation, those in the industry and high-tech sectors see their effort translated in higher profit efficiency. From a policy perspective, our results could help to better understand the link between innovation, financial constraints and efficiency, which goes beyond the idea that easier access to...
The objective of this paper is to analyse the efficiency of the Italian Banking System over the p... more The objective of this paper is to analyse the efficiency of the Italian Banking System over the period 2006-2011. The Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA) is applied to a panel of 700 Italian Banks. The analysis is based on the joint estimation of a cost function and an efficiency equation (Battese and Coelli, 1995). Following the intermediation approach (Sealey and Lindley, 1977), bank outputs are comprised of loans, the non-interest income and securities. Besides the controlling variables, the efficiency equation includes an indicator of credit quality. The main results are fourfold. First, cost efficiency does not show regular dynamics over time and ranges from 0.86, observed in 2008, to 0.92 in 2011. Secondly, it indicates that the cost efficiency of cooperative banks (CCB) is always higher than that observed for joint-stock companies (LTD) and Popolari banks. Third, the study suggests that cost efficiency tends to decrease as bank size increases. Finally, as regards the role of t...
Economic Analysis and Policy, 2020
Abstract The paper aims to shed light on the geography of well-being in Italian regions and expla... more Abstract The paper aims to shed light on the geography of well-being in Italian regions and explain the distance of a given region from an efficiency frontier. We build a composite regional well-being index over the period 2010–2015. Then using the index as output, we estimate a well-being generating function to rank Italian regions in terms of efficiency in attaining well-being. The rankings confirm the divide between Northern and Southern regions as regards overall well-being and efficiency. Our findings indicate that regions more dependent on external financing achieve lower efficiency scores. Current failures should not be used to reinforce selfish localism; they should rather stimulate the search for more effective policies to reduce disparities.
Eurasian Business Review, 2015
Are Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Research & Development (R&D) productive in... more Are Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Research & Development (R&D) productive inputs or efficiency determinants? This is the topic of this paper which analyses a sample of 2691 Italian manufacturing firms over the period 2007-2009. The empirical setting is based on a production function estimated through the Stochastic Frontier (SF) approach. ICT and R&D are used once as inputs, once as efficiency determinants (Coelli et al., 1999). The results show that the rates of return of ICT and R&D investments are quite high (0.08 for ICT and 0.04 for R&D) when they enter into the model only as inputs. We also documented that ICT and R&D contribute positively to explain the efficiency scores.
Economia Politica
This paper uses a novel micro econometric approach to analyze the impact of social benefits on th... more This paper uses a novel micro econometric approach to analyze the impact of social benefits on the individual probabilities of poverty exit and entry in Italy, and their relative importance with respect to other socio-economic determinants of poverty transitions. Year to year transitions are defined as dichotomous variables capturing the changes of the individual poverty status, and are analyzed using random effects probit models estimated on pooled Italian data from 9 longitudinal components of IT-SILC covering the period 2004–2015. Our results show that social benefits strongly counteract the adverse effects of individual characteristics like unemployment, work intensity, inactivity, household size (and composition) and past poverty experience on the individual probabilities of poverty exit and entry. Despite their important effects on the individual probabilities of transitions, however, social benefits have a limited coverage among the vulnerable groups of the population, which ...
Eurasian Business Review
This paper investigates the relationship between profit efficiency, finance and innovation. By ad... more This paper investigates the relationship between profit efficiency, finance and innovation. By adopting stochastic frontiers, we pioneer the use of a novel dataset merging firm level survey data with balance sheet information for a large sample of European companies. We find that firms having difficulties in access to finance as well as firms introducing product innovation display an incentive to improve their efficiency. While innovation produces benefit for firms’ profitability, financial constraints impose a discipline to the firms forcing them to cut unproductive costs that reduce the profitability. We document nuanced differences between firms in industry and services, while they are more pronounced when we look at disaggregation across High-Tech and Low-Tech companies. From a policy perspective, our results enrich the understanding on the link between innovation, financial constraints and efficiency, which goes beyond the idea that easier access to finance is the panacea to ge...
Ix INTRODUZIONE del 2015-per il contenimento del riscaldamento globale, basato sulla riduzione de... more Ix INTRODUZIONE del 2015-per il contenimento del riscaldamento globale, basato sulla riduzione delle emissioni di CO 2-sia da fattori comportamentali che condizioneranno i cambiamenti nella domanda di trasporto in un prossimo futuro. Le analisi empiriche condotte in alcuni saggi di questo volume (capitoli 1, 2, 5, 6 e 7) si basano sulle informazioni qualitative e quantitative provenienti dall'indagine Survey on the Access to Finance of Enterprises (SAFE) della Banca Centrale Europea (BCE). A tal fine intendo ringraziare la BCE per aver autorizzato e reso disponibile l'uso dei dati SAFE. Tutti i capitoli raccolti in questo volume sono stati sottoposti a referaggio interno. Ringrazio pertanto Romeo Danielis, Nadia Fiorino, Elena Podrecca, Achille Puggioni e Lucia Rotaris per aver letto e commentato i capitoli redatti da altri autori. Ovviamente la responsabilità per quanto scritto rimane interamente ed esclusivamente degli autori di ciascun saggio. Desidero ringraziare, inoltre, Nadia Fiorino e Achille Puggioni per i preziosi consigli e le numerose occasioni di dialogo. Ringrazio infine l'Università di Trieste per il supporto finanziario al progetto di ricerca (FRA 2018).
This paper aims to evaluate the role played by different sources of finance when analysing firms’... more This paper aims to evaluate the role played by different sources of finance when analysing firms’ attitudes to innovate. The empirical investigation is based on the firm-level data for a large sample of European SMEs across the 2012–2017 period. Different measures of finance and several robustness checks are used to select a well-behaved probit multilevel model. Importantly, results show that the probability to innovate increases when firms use internal finance and grants. The same applies when funds come from family and friend channels, while no conclusive evidence is found for bank loans.
This paper provides new evidence on trade price-elasticities by analysing the case of China and t... more This paper provides new evidence on trade price-elasticities by analysing the case of China and the Oecd countries over the period 1990-2013. Import and export equations have been made using time-series framework and panel data techniques for non-stationary data. The contributions are threefold. Firstly, the panel data econometric specification allows for cross-country common factors, thereby controlling for unobserved time-varying omitted variables. Secondly, we complement the study by referring to a single-country time-series analysis based on a VECM model. This is a powerful robustness test on the results of our panel data setting, whose dimension, however, is large enough to ensure the reliability of estimations. Thirdly, we control for structural stability of export and import price elasticities and, thus, test the relevance of several breaks that we identify as potential source of randomness in the long-run equilibrium of each country.
Journal of Economic Surveys, 2019
This paper reviews the literature on local government efficiency by metareviewing 360 observation... more This paper reviews the literature on local government efficiency by metareviewing 360 observations retrieved from 54 papers published from 1993 to 2016. The meta-regression is based on a random effect model estimated with the 2-step Random Effects Maximum Likelihood (REML) technique proposed by Gallet and Doucouliagos (2014). Results indicate that the study design matters when estimating a frontier in local government. We find that studies focusing on technical efficiency provide higher efficiency scores than works evaluating cost efficiency. The same applies when using panel data instead of cross-section data. Interestingly, studies that use the Free Disposal Hull (FDH) approach yield, on average, higher efficiency scores than papers employing the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method, thereby suggesting that in this literature the convexity hypothesis of the production set is a matter. Finally, the efficiency of local government increases with the level of development of the analysed countries and is positively related to the national integrity of the legal system. The opposite holds when considering the corruption.
Knowledge and Process Management, 2016
The article focuses on the measurement of a relevant component of the human capital, the manageri... more The article focuses on the measurement of a relevant component of the human capital, the managerial ability (MA). Quantifying MA is central to management literature. Prior research indicates that manager specific features (ability, talent, reputation, or style) affect economic outcomes but, in management literature, most of the measures used in archival research also reflect significant aspects of the firm that are outside of management's control. The article aims to find a measure, better than existing ones, which allows distinguishing the effect of the manager from the effect of the firm in creating firm value. The article uses the "two-stage SFA-DEA" approach, in which both Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) are used to estimate the efficiency scores firms adopt to derive a measure of MA. The idea is to obtain a measure of MA as a residue of the inefficiency equation of SFA and to use it as a new input to insert in the "second/third" DEA stage. Italian banks have been chosen as the sample to investigate and implement the model. The differences in results with or without this new MA measure provide evidence of the existence of this contribution. The originality of the article consists in the proposition of a new model to measure MA, which outperforms the alternative measures, simple to use as it is based on easily obtainable financial data and available for a broad cross section of firms, so opening the door to a wide array of studies previously difficult to conduct.
Journal of Economic Surveys, 2017
One learns two main lessons from studying the great quantity of banking efficiency literature. Th... more One learns two main lessons from studying the great quantity of banking efficiency literature. These lessons regard the heterogeneity in results and the absence of a comprehensive review aimed at understanding the reasons for this variability. Surprisingly, although this issue is well-known, it has not been systematically analyzed before. In order to fill this gap, we perform a Meta-Regression-Analysis (MRA) by examining 1,661 efficiency scores retrieved from 120 papers published over the period 2000-2014. The meta-regression is estimated by using the Random Effects Multilevel Model (REML), because it controls for within-study and between-study heterogeneity. The analysis yields four main results. Firstly, parametric methods yield lower levels of banking efficiency than nonparametric studies. This holds true even after controlling for the approach used in selecting the inputs and outputs of the frontier. Secondly, we show that banking efficiency is highest when using the value added approach, followed by estimates from studies based on the intermediation method, whereas those based on the hybrid approach are the lowest. Thirdly, efficiency scores also depend on the quality of studies and on the number of observations and variables used in the primary papers. As far as the effects of sample size, dimension and quality of papers are concerned, there are significant differences in sign and magnitude between parametric and nonparametric studies. Finally, cost efficiency is found to be higher than profit and production efficiency. Interestingly, MRA results are robust to the potential outliers in efficiency and sample size distributions.
China & World Economy, 2015
Estimates have been made using panel data techniques for non-stationary data. After demonstrating... more Estimates have been made using panel data techniques for non-stationary data. After demonstrating that long-run relationships are stable to any structural break, it is found that exports are significantly determined by foreign demand, with long-run income elasticity significantly higher than unity for China, Japan, Germany, the UK and the USA. Conversely, exports are price inelastic for most of the countries in the sample, in both the long run and the short run. The exception is France, whose export price elasticity is lower (higher) than unity in the short run (long run).
Eurasian Business Review, 2015
This paper focuses on trade elasticities by analysing the case of China,
The empirical literature on trade imbalances does not make currency tensions easy to understand, ... more The empirical literature on trade imbalances does not make currency tensions easy to understand, because tensions across traders originate from the assumption that export-price elasticity is high. This paper provides new evidence by analysing the export-behaviour of China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, and the USA from 1990 to 2012. Estimates of export-price elasticities have been made using panel data techniques for non-stationary data. Long run relationships are stable to any structural break and indicate that exports are heavily dependent on world income, with long run income elasticity significantly higher than unity in many cases (China, Japan, Germany, UK and USA). Conversely, exports are price inelastic for most of the countries in the sample, in both the long and short runs. The exception is France, whose exports in the long run would increase by 2 percent if the country experienced a 1 percent depreciation of its real exchange rate.
We propose an empirical application of models derived in Bonanno et al. (2017) for estimating cos... more We propose an empirical application of models derived in Bonanno et al. (2017) for estimating cost efficiency (CE) on data used by Greene (1990) to test Gamma distribution for the inefficiency component and by Smith (2008) to test the dependence between the two error terms of a Stochastic Frontier (SF). We also derive the closed–form of denisty function of the overall error term and the formula to calculate the Cost Efficiency (CE) scores.
Assessing the impact of social policies on income poverty and material deprivation dynamics is cr... more Assessing the impact of social policies on income poverty and material deprivation dynamics is crucial in order to develop effective policy responses. Yet, this kind of analysis has seldom been attempted with longitudinal data. This manuscript begins to fill this gap, and investigates the micro and macro determinants of year to year income poverty and material deprivation transitions in Italy over the period 2004-2015, focusing on the impact of social benefits received at the individual level and of average per capita expenditures for social services by Municipalities at the aggregate level. We define year to year transitions as dichotomous variables, and estimate probit models on pooled data from 9 longitudinal components of IT-SILC (complemented with data on macro-structural factors, from ISTAT source). This allows us to analyze complex interdependencies between different covariates influencing poverty and deprivation in a dynamic context over eleven years characterized by differe...
Business Strategy and the Environment, 2022
European Central Bank Research Paper Series, 2020
This paper aims at investigating the relationship between firms’ profit efficiency, access to fin... more This paper aims at investigating the relationship between firms’ profit efficiency, access to finance and innovation activities. We enrich our understanding on firms’ performance by adopting the stochastic frontier approach (SFA), which allows us to estimate profit functions and to obtain efficiency scores for a large sample of European firms. We pioneer the use of a novel dataset that merges survey-based data derived from the ECB Survey on access to finance for enterprises (SAFE) with balance sheet information. Our evidence documents that credit constrained firms display an incentive to improve their efficiency in order to increase profitability. Among firms that have embarked in product innovation, those in the industry and high-tech sectors see their effort translated in higher profit efficiency. From a policy perspective, our results could help to better understand the link between innovation, financial constraints and efficiency, which goes beyond the idea that easier access to...
The objective of this paper is to analyse the efficiency of the Italian Banking System over the p... more The objective of this paper is to analyse the efficiency of the Italian Banking System over the period 2006-2011. The Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA) is applied to a panel of 700 Italian Banks. The analysis is based on the joint estimation of a cost function and an efficiency equation (Battese and Coelli, 1995). Following the intermediation approach (Sealey and Lindley, 1977), bank outputs are comprised of loans, the non-interest income and securities. Besides the controlling variables, the efficiency equation includes an indicator of credit quality. The main results are fourfold. First, cost efficiency does not show regular dynamics over time and ranges from 0.86, observed in 2008, to 0.92 in 2011. Secondly, it indicates that the cost efficiency of cooperative banks (CCB) is always higher than that observed for joint-stock companies (LTD) and Popolari banks. Third, the study suggests that cost efficiency tends to decrease as bank size increases. Finally, as regards the role of t...
Economic Analysis and Policy, 2020
Abstract The paper aims to shed light on the geography of well-being in Italian regions and expla... more Abstract The paper aims to shed light on the geography of well-being in Italian regions and explain the distance of a given region from an efficiency frontier. We build a composite regional well-being index over the period 2010–2015. Then using the index as output, we estimate a well-being generating function to rank Italian regions in terms of efficiency in attaining well-being. The rankings confirm the divide between Northern and Southern regions as regards overall well-being and efficiency. Our findings indicate that regions more dependent on external financing achieve lower efficiency scores. Current failures should not be used to reinforce selfish localism; they should rather stimulate the search for more effective policies to reduce disparities.
Eurasian Business Review, 2015
Are Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Research & Development (R&D) productive in... more Are Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Research & Development (R&D) productive inputs or efficiency determinants? This is the topic of this paper which analyses a sample of 2691 Italian manufacturing firms over the period 2007-2009. The empirical setting is based on a production function estimated through the Stochastic Frontier (SF) approach. ICT and R&D are used once as inputs, once as efficiency determinants (Coelli et al., 1999). The results show that the rates of return of ICT and R&D investments are quite high (0.08 for ICT and 0.04 for R&D) when they enter into the model only as inputs. We also documented that ICT and R&D contribute positively to explain the efficiency scores.