Massimo Florio

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Verified

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• Professor of Public Economics
• Professor Emeritus at University of Milan

After briefly reviewing the received doctrine prior to the waves of privatisations beginning in the 1980s, this Element offers a survey of various analytical frameworks on State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) from the perspective of applied welfare economics. The focus then shifts to a positive analysis of the comparative performance of private versus pu...

The chapter highlights the need for public understanding and support of scientific research, especially basic research with no immediate practical applications. It discusses the polarization in public attitudes towards science and emphasizes the importance of valuing curiosity-driven research for societal progress. An experiment conducted in 2022 i...

Large-scale projects in fundamental science, such as major particle colliders, radio telescopes, synchrotron light sources are promoted by scientific communities in the first place, mainly funded by governments, and ultimately by taxpayers. Little is known, however, about preferences of the latter except in the form of qualitative social attitudes...

Public investment in Big Science generates social benefits that can ultimately support economic growth. This paper implements a model for the social Cost – Benefit Analysis (CBA) of Big Science and relies on Monte Carlo methods to quantify the uncertainty of long-term projections. We evaluate social costs and benefits of the High Luminosity upgrade...

The coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic has forced us to reconsider the relationship between public and private research and development (R&D). The policy issue is whether, over the next years, governments’ only negotiating position on vaccines and biomedical technologies will be to sign one purchase contract after another and transfer val...

Over the past decade, an increasing number of satellite images and other earth observation (EO) data have become available to a wide range of final users, including economists and other social scientists, boosting the amount of information they can obtain to study, analyze, and manage different research topics in their fields. In turn, economists a...

After a brief analysis of the causes underlying the failure of both governments and the pharma industry in terms of preparedness for the COVID‐19 pandemic, and after a discussion of further risks of health emergencies in the coming decades, this paper proposes a new public policy approach. The proposal aims at a major European initiative for the pr...

The idea of assessing the costs and benefits of public and private projects is not new to Europe, dating back to studies at the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees (Paris) in the XIX century. Later on, in the last century, Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) in its current form has been more extensively used in the United States than in Europe. In the last two de...

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the most important laboratory for particle physics in the world. It requires cutting edge technologies to deliver scientific discoveries. This paper investigates the time span needed for technology suppliers of CERN to absorb the knowledge acquired during the procurement relation and develop...

The purpose of this chapter is to investigate and discuss the role played by the state in enhancing technological progress, creating knowledge and fostering radical innovation. This catalyst function may take place in different ways. The authors focus on two channels: (a) R&D of traditional state-owned or state-invested enterprises and (b) public p...

Science is not a free lunch. Worldwide, R&D expenditures per year, from basic research to product development by firms, are about USD1.7 trillion (according to UNESCO estimates for 2017). There are perhaps 7.8 million professional researchers globally, around one researcher out of one thousand inhabitants of the planet. In the OECD area, which incl...

Despite the wave of privatisation in recent decades, enterprises under government control still account for a large part of assets and employment in several countries and particularly continue to play a key role in certain network industries. We explore the potential role of State-Invested Enterprises (SIEs) as investors in innovation, with particu...

Investment in basic science is mainly supported by government funding, but little is known about citizens’ willingness to pay for large-scale projects. A survey to a representative sample of French taxpayers, designed as a contingent valuation experiment about a future particle accelerator for CERN, reveals that citizens’ willingness to pay is corr...

Large-scale research infrastructures such as particle colliders, radio telescopes, the International Space Station, are often funded through general taxation and taxpayers are called to contribute to scientific discovery. How much are people actually willing to pay for investments in science? What does drive such a giving behaviour? This paper expl...

A proposal for using cost-benefit analysis to evaluate the socioeconomic impact of public investment in large scientific projects. Large particle accelerators, outer space probes, genomics platforms: all are scientific enterprises managed through the new form of the research infrastructure, in which communities of scientists collaborate across nati...

The quality of public services is critically influenced by innovation and, ultimately, by advances in basic research, which however embeds the feature of a global public good. Two broad issues emerge. The first concerns the evaluation of the socio-economic impact of science. What are the benefits and spillovers that R&D investments, research infras...

We review the physics opportunities of the Future Circular Collider, covering its e+e-, pp, ep and heavy ion programmes. We describe the measurement capabilities of each FCC component, addressing the study of electroweak, Higgs and strong interactions, the top quark and flavour, as well as phenomena beyond the Standard Model. We highlight the syner...

This paper contributes to the literature on the impact of Big Science Centres on technological innovation. We exploit a unique dataset with information on CERN's procurement orders to study the collaborative innovation process between CERN and its industrial partners. After a qualitative discussion of case studies, survival and count data models ar...

This paper contributes to the literature on the impact of Big Science Centres on technological innovation. We exploit a unique dataset with information on CERN’s procurement orders to study the collaborative innovation process between CERN and its industrial partners, mostly European firms. Since 19 out of the 23 Member Countries of CERN belong to...

Tax-payers are usually the ultimate funders of large-scale research infrastructures (RIs), but the expected discoveries of such projects often do not have any known use-value. By interviewing 1,022 undergraduates, we study the drivers of preferences for paying for basic research, which are still little known. We focus on the LHC at CERN, where the...

Proxies for regulatory reforms based on categorical variables are increasingly used in empirical evaluation models. We surveyed 63 studies that rely on such indices to analyze the effects of entry liberalization, privatization, unbundling, and independent regulation of the electricity, natural gas, and telecommunications sectors. We highlight metho...

The quality of institutions is at the core of the differences in the growth of income and productivity of nations. A growing body of evidence shows how this is also true at the firm level. After taking stock of earlier theoretical and empirical literature on the efficiency of state-owned versus private enterprises, while we consider ownership as th...

We study the underlying mechanisms of technological innovation in SMEs in the context of ex-post evaluation of European Union’s regional policy. Our aim is to explain the observed change in firms’ innovativeness after receiving EU support for technological investment. To do so, we take an approach that is novel in innovation studies: a Bayesian Net...

Proxies for regulatory reforms based on categorical variables are increasingly used in empirical evaluation models. We surveyed 63 studies that rely on such indices to analyze the effects of entry liberalization, privatization, unbundling, and independent regulation of the electricity, natural gas, and telecommunications sectors. We highlight metho...

We study the way in which public procurement by big research infrastructures enhances suppliers' performance. Using survey data on 669 CERN's suppliers, we built a unique data set to analyze, through an ordered logit model and Bayesian networks, the determinants of suppliers' sales, profits, and development activities. We find that collaborative re...

This report summarises the results of the impacts of training that Early Career Researchers (ECR) experience during their activity in CERN’s LHC/HL-LHC programme. The report focuses on demonstrating the robustness of the findings by validating them using additional information such as the experience gained with an initial survey in the frame of the...

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, is the world's highest-energy particle accelerator. Its construction (1995–2008) required frontier technologies and close collaboration between CERN scientists and contracting firms. The literature on “Big Science” projects suggests that this collaboration generated...

This paper investigates the role of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in the context of the European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy. After presenting the EU policy framework and the CBA guidelines adopted by the European Commission, we perform an empirical analysis drawing from a dataset of around 1000 major project applications, submitted during the period...

Preliminary evidence on the long--run trajectory of the accelerator industry suggests that it may be close to the maturity phase of its cycle. If this is the case, how can we measure the benefits of an uncertain breakthrough in acceleration technology? Who are the main stakeholders interested by such a breakthrough? We identify these subjects and s...

Preliminary evidence on the long--run trajectory of the accelerator industry suggests that it may be close to the maturity phase of its cycle. If this is the case, how can we measure the benefits of an uncertain breakthrough in acceleration technology? Who are the main stakeholders interested by such a breakthrough? We identify these subjects and s...

Purpose This paper looks at state-owned enteprises (SOEs) from the angle of the Market for Corporate Control (MCC) and analyzes in detail the reported rationales of a sample of 355 M&A deals performed by SOEs as acquirers over the period 2002–2012. The aim, after having created a taxonomy of deal motivations, is to empirically test two alternative...

Regional innovation systems (RISs) are increasingly emerging in less developed areas. Based on the case study of the mechatronic cluster in the Italian southern region, Apulia, this paper analyses how institutions have managed to promote the establishment of a RIS in disadvantaged areas. Through a longitudinal analysis over more than half a century...

This paper presents and discusses some of the results of the ex-post evaluation of the contribution of the European Regional Development Fund 2007-2013 programmes to SMEs growth and innovation. Implemented during a harsh economic crisis, the ERDF provided € 47.5 billion of SMEs support, representing 16% of the total ERDF allocation during the 2007-...

We study the pre-deal characteristics of state-owned banks acquiring other companies, relative to their private counterparts. We build a unique international data-set of 3682 deals in the years 2003–2013. Econometric results highlight that those state-owned banks that are acting as acquirers have an ex-ante performance similar to their private benc...

More than 36 000 students and post-docs will be involved until 2025 in research at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) mainly through international collaborations. To what extent they value the skills acquired? Do students expect that their learning experience will have an impact on their professional future? By drawing from earlier literature on exper...

Questo articolo discute recenti contributi e propone alcuni temi di ricerca per una ‘comparative political economy’ dell’impresa pubblica. Si argomenta l’opportunita di mettere al centro dell’indagine la relazione fra politiche e organizzazioni, andando oltre il tradizionale confronto di performance fra controllo pubblico e privato. In questa prosp...

Some regulatory reforms do not change just a specific signal that can be represented by a quantitative continuous variable, such as a tax rate, a price cap, or an emission threshold. The standard theory of reform in applied welfare economics (going back to contributions by e.g. Ramsey, Samuelson and Guesnerie) asks the question: What is the margina...

Over the last decade, particularly after the Great Recession, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have been expanding their role in the global economy, including through merger & acquisitions (M&As). What are the characteristics of the firms targeted by SOEs? Are they different from firms controlled by private investors? By looking at a unique sample of...

The paper investigates how ownership affects the environmental performance in developed countries where environmental regulation is introduced in the form of market-based instrument. By looking at a cross-country panel dataset of 29 power markets around Europe over the period 1990-2012, we find empirical evidence that an increase of public ownershi...

Recent evidence suggests that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are increasingly taking over other firms. Such domestic or transborder acquisitions are the reverse of privatizations, where SOEs are the target of private investors. The question we ask is whether, because of the specific objectives and risks faced by governments, SOEs deviate from the b...

In 2015, the Regional Studies Association (RSA) celebrated 50 years and one of the keywords of this (hi)story is “impactful”. Having an impact requires to be able to bring research-based knowledge to policymakers moving out of the academic ‘Ivory Tower’ and engaging in policy debate, thus acknowledging the societal role of research. Yet, this requi...

More than 36,000 students and post-docs will be involved in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) until 2025. Do they expect that their learning experience will have an impact on their professional future? By drawing from earlier salary expectations literature, this paper proposes a framework aiming at explaining the professional expectati...

An increasing number of countries and institutions are investing in large-scale research infrastructures (RIs) and in basic research. Scientific discoveries, which are expected thanks to RIs, may have a non-use value, in analogy with environmental and cultural public goods. This paper provides, for the first time, an empirical estimation of the wil...

This paper presents the results and the lessons learned on how to apply ex-ante CBQ for major RDI infrastructures by a team of economists and scientists at the University of Milan and CSIL during a three-year research project supported by a EIBURS grant of the European Investment Bank Institute. Albeit the comprehensive conceptual framework present...

In this paper we develop a cost-benefit analysis of a major research infrastructure, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the highest-energy accelerator in the world, currently operating at CERN. We show that the evaluation of benefits can be made quantitative by estimating their welfare effects on different types of agents. Four classes of direct bene...

In this paper we develop a cost–benefit analysis of a major research infrastructure, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the highest-energy accelerator in the world, currently operating at CERN. We show that the evaluation of benefits can be made quantitative by estimating their welfare effects on different types of agents. Four classes of direct bene...

Governments, funding agencies and policy makers have high expectations on research, development and innovation (RDI) infrastructures in the context of science and innovation policies aimed at sustaining economic growth in the long term. The stakes associated with their selection and evaluation are therefore high. Cost-benefit analysis of RDI infras...

We study the effectiveness of the 'Technological Credit' (TC) instrument in supporting innovation in Polish SMEs. Our research question is: to what extent does providing credit to SMEs tied to technological investment affect capital expenditure and how does this change the innovativeness of firms? So far, the evidence on the impact of this policy i...

An increasing number of countries and institutions are investing in large-scale research infrastructures (RIs) and in basic research. Scientific discoveries, which are expected thanks to RIs, may have a non-use value, in analogy with environmental and cultural public goods. This paper provides, for the first time, an empirical estimation of the wil...

This paper analyzes deals involving private and public enterprises, i.e. State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) worldwide since 2004. We consider four types of deals: privatizations of SOEs, public enterprises acquiring private ones (public-private deals), private reorganizations (i.e private firms acquiring a private target) and public reorganizations. (i...

This paper explores some of the methodological issues involved in a cost-benefit analysis framework for large scale capital-intensive research infrastructures. We propose a conceptual model based on the estimation of quantities and shadow prices of cost aggregates, and of six main categories of economic benefits: technological spillovers, human cap...

This paper shows that there are asymmetric effects of regulatory reforms within two country groups in the EU. We consider the EU27 countries, and update and enlarge the OECD/ETCR regulatory country indicators up to year 2011. When distinguishing between EU15 countries and New Member States (NMS), we find that market liberalization reduces the price...

Social cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of projects has been successfully applied in different fields such as transport, energy, health, education, and environment, including climate change. It is often argued that it is impossible to extend the CBA approach to the evaluation of the social impact of research infrastructures, because the final benefit to...

Si assiste recentemente ad una ripresa di interesse per le imprese pubbliche, soprattutto per quelle operanti su scala internazionale. Per valutare la loro performance, inizialmente adottiamo la definizione usata dall'OCSE, che si limita a considerare come pubbliche quelle imprese dove il controllo dell'azionista pubblico è superiore al 50% (Christ...

This note provides preliminary results from a survey of 384 fellows and students previously or currently working and studying at different experiments on particle accelerators at CERN. The aim of the survey was to understand the impact, in terms of both monetary and non-monetary outcomes, of a research and study period at CERN. The first results su...

This note provides preliminary results from a survey of 384 fellows and students previously or currently working and studying at different experiments on particle accelerators at CERN. The aim of the survey was to understand the impact, in terms of both monetary and non-monetary outcomes, of a research and study period at CERN. The first results su...

Between 2003 and 2013, according to Zephyr (BvD) data, 22% of M&A deals between banks have involved state-owned banks, either as targets (12%) or as acquirers (10%). The behavior of state-owned banks in the market control is, however, under-researched. The standard Inefficient Management Hypothesis suggests that more efficient managerial teams targ...

Firms' productivity is influenced by internal and external institutions. Ownership is the core internal institutional feature of the firm, while the most important external institutional feature is the quality of government, which shapes the environment in which firms operate. We explore the relative role of these factors and their interaction in d...

This paper offers a discussion of positive theories of the public enterprise (PE), in the global perspective, i.e. without reference to specific country or region, and presents some fresh evidence potentially supporting or rejecting alternative theories. It also concludes with some policy implications. Our research question is: Why do governments s...

Public enterprises (PE) are important players in the global economic arena. Recent empirical evidence confirms that more than 10% of the giant multinationals are government owned; that European PE successfully compete with their private counterparts in network industries such as electricity, gas and telecommunications; and that worldwide PE are fou...

When decision-makers consider pure and applied research infrastructures, such as genomics platforms, astronomic observatories, nanoelectronic laboratories, oceanographic vessels, or particle accelerator facilities (just to mention some examples) are faced by this question: what is the net social benefit of these costly scientific ventures and of th...

To what extent have the European households benefited from the energy reforms of the last two decades in the EU.? The core ingredients of change have been, in different proportions and timing across countries: privatization of formerly state-owned enterprises, unbundling of networks, market liberalization and regulation. This paper summarizes some...