Social capital has remained relatively underexplored in innovation literature. Existing studies have failed to reach a consensus on its impact on local innovative performance: some empirical analyses emphasize a positive effect, others speak about a ‘dark side’ of social capital. This paper...

The paper examines the role of demography on the growth perspectives of European metropolitan areas. Our findings are in support of the key role played by the demographic structure of the population in determining the economic prospects of European cities. Regions and cities with higher levels...

This paper looks at foreign Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) investing in the UK and at their impact on the innovation performance of domestic firms active in their same sector. By employing data on Foreign Direct Investments matched with firm-level information the paper develops a direct...

This paper investigates the impact of technological change on local labour market outcomes in Britain. Using a newly assembled panel database for the period 2000-2007 and a directly observed measure of technological change based on patent records, the analysis suggests that employment levels are...

Social capital has remained relatively underexplored in innovation literature due to the lack of consensus on the most suitable operationalisation for the analysis of innovative dynamics. This paper aims to fill this gap by looking at social capital as propensity towards civicness and prosocial...

This paper investigates the link between environment related innovation and job creation at firm level. Employing Italian data on 4,507 manufacturing firms, matched with patent records for the period 2001-2008, we test whether “green” innovation, measured using the number of environment...

Social capital has remained relatively underexplored in innovation literature due to the lack of consensus on the most suitable operationalisation for the analysis of innovative dynamics. This paper aims to fill this gap by looking at social capital as propensity towards civicness and prosocial...

Do knowledge externalities from FDI foster local innovative performance? Employing manufacturing data for the period 2001–2006 this paper investigates the impact of inward FDI on the generation of innovation. Adopting a Knowledge Production Function approach (KPF), we find that in the case of...

The well known Italian dualism in terms of development disparities between the North and the South has been one of the most debated issues in economics over the last few decades. In the aftermath of the Unification of Italy, the gap between North and South in terms of human capital stock was...