Ornella Wanda Maietta

• Professor (Associate) at University of Naples Federico II

This paper explores the effects of innovation on firm survival by using data from a representative survey of small and medium manufacturing firms in the province of Salerno, Italy. We innovate upon the literature by (a) comparing the impact of different sources of internal and external knowledge (including universities) on the probability of firm s...

Universities have become key elements in building regional innovation systems. However, even though academic research is important when firms choose universities as collabora- tion partners, a still open question in the literature is whether only top-tier universities are relevant for firm innovativeness. This paper investigates the effect of the v...

This paper analyses the evolution and policy drivers of the productivity of farmers’ human capital in EU agriculture from 1986 to 2010. The empirical analysis employs farm data sourced from the Farm Accountancy Data Network Standard Results as well as Eurostat’s information on farm holders’ educational-attainment levels. Productivities of human cap...

This paper studies whether high-quality research in first-tier universities has greater local knowledge spillovers than that in lower-tier universities. First-tier universities are identified as those among the top 150, according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities. Several indicators of academic excellence are included among the contextu...

This paper aims to study the drivers of innovation and of university-industry collaboration in the European manufacturing sector, specifically focusing on the extent to which academic excellence may enhance the capacity of firms to develop new products and processes. It shows that academic research has an important direct impact on the firm's prope...

In the National Innovation System (NIS), knowledge is produced and accumu- lated through interactive innovation processes that are embedded in a national con- text, which in turn may help determine innovation. This paper investigates how product and process innovations in the European food and drink industry are affected by: (i) NIS structure; (ii)...

In National Innovation Systems (NIS), knowledge is generally understood to be produced and accumulated through an interactive innovation process that is embedded in a national context which in turn may help determine propensity for innovation. This paper aims to verify how product and process innovation in the European food and drink industry are a...

In this paper, we examine the main empirical contributions pertaining to the relationships between productive efficiency and proprietary forms in the care sector. International evidence indicates that non-profit organisations (NPOs) are likely to be less cost-efficient but more attentive to service quality. According to evidence from Italy, however...

The main aim of the paper is to examine the drivers of university-firm R&D collaboration while at the same time assessing the determinants,of innovation in a low-tech industry. This includes analysing firm R&D collaborations with partners Afferent from universities. The paper relies on a unique data-set where firm data were sourced from the Capital...

Objectives of this paper is to verify whether the relationship between the level of per capita income and the environment quality, for the Italian regions, follows the prescription of an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), taking into account the contribution of agriculture and rural areas. The Arellano-Bond two-step dynamic panel data GMM estimator...

This chapter highlights some features of the current structure of Italian agriculture by focusing on the regional patterns of agrarian change. These patterns are followed mainly by comparing the data of the 5th and 6th Census of Agriculture and the data of holdings registered to the Chambers of Commerce. The analysis confirms the Northern-Southern...

Objective of this paper is to analyse the presence of gender differences in the purchase motivations of Fair Trade (FT) food products sold in the Italian World Shops (WS). At the end of investigating FT purchase motivations, a questionnaire has been distributed to a sample of consumers in four Italian regions. A bivariate ordered probit analysis ha...

Understanding the determinants of the demand for goods, which have been produced according to ethical considerations and marketed accordingly, has become an important research area in business economics. Less clear is the role that the social environment plays in shaping the preferences for ethically produced goods. Our main objective is to fill th...

Objectives of this paper is to verify whether the relationship between the level of per capita income and the environment quality, for the Italian regions, follows the prescription of an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), taking into account the contribution of agriculture and rural areas. The Arellano-Bond two-step dynamic panel data GMM estimator...

Objective of this paper is to analyse the presence of gender differences in the purchase motivations of Fair Trade (FT) food products sold in the Italian World Shops (WS). At this end, a questionnaire has been distributed to a sample of consumers in four Italian regions. A bivariate ordered probit analysis has been performed in order to identify th...

Consumers in developed countries are increasingly interested in the consumption of food products incorporating ethical aspects, particularly fair trade products. These products are usually distributed in a network of World Shops and, more recently, in supermarkets and shopping centres. The fair trade product with the highest market share is coffee....

In this paper, we test the extent to which producers' cooperatives can experience an increase in technical efficiency following a tightening of financial constraints. This hypothesis is tested on a sample of Italian conventional and cooperative firms for the wine production and processing sector, using frontier analysis. The results support the hyp...

This paper analyzes the relatively novel concept of a downward-sloping demand for volunteer labour, using data from the Italian social services sector. Both descriptive and econometric evidence shows that the price of volunteer labour (proxied by its shadow price obtained through DEA) is negatively related to the number of volunteer hours. Furtherm...

Objective of the paper is to verify which are the determinants of innovations in the Italian food industry and which role R&D networking, through the cooperative nature of firm, plays among these determinants. The data used are the 9th (2001-2003) wave of Capitalia surveys based on a representative sample of manufacturing firms with information on...

We test the underinvestment hypothesis (the so-called Furubotn–Pejovich effect) from the specialized literature on co-ops by comparing the shadow price of capital and the dual capacity utilization index for a panel of Italian cooperative and conventional firms, 1996–2003. The results do not show any difference between co-ops and conventional firms...

In this paper, we analyse the nature of the relationship between market power and technical efficiency for producers’ cooperatives. More specifically we test two hypotheses: first, we evaluate the extent to which increasing market pressure may help producers’ cooperatives to improve technical efficiency to guarantee positive profits; second, we tes...

Objective of this paper is to analyse the motivations in the purchase of Fair Trade (FT) food products sold in the World Shops (WS) in order to characterize WS consumer profiles according to the ethical content of their motivations. A questionnaire has been distributed, at this end, to a sample of consumers in Emilia Romagna, Puglia and in Campania...

This paper tries to identify under which conditions increasing market competition may help cooperatives to improve technical efficiency to guarantee positive profits. This hypothesis is first formalized in a partial equilibrium framework and then is tested on a sample of Italian conventional and cooperative firms, using frontier analysis. Technical...

This paper analyses the mechanisms through which profit-sharing schemes may induce debt constrained firms to improve technical efficiency over time to guarantee positive profits. This hypothesis is first formalised in a partial equilibrium framework and then is tested on a sample of Italian traditional and cooperative firms. Technical efficiency ch...

Economic literature recognises human capital as a key factor in productivity growth. The objective of the present paper is to verify whether and how human capital influenced the growth of total factor productivity in Italian agriculture. Analysis is performed on a panel of the Italian provinces over the 1951-91 period, the empirical production func...

We propose a model of the volunteering organisation, allowing a very general definition of the production set in the non-profit sector. Subsequently, we measure technical efficiency throughout a sample of 643 Italian volunteering organisations. As most output measures turn out to be ordinal variables, we propose and utilise a non conventional effic...

The shadow cost model can be estimated by adopting two different normalizations of the input price distortions. However, the normalization suggested by Balk [Econ. Lett. 55 (1997) 45] produces estimates not invariant to the choice of the shadow input price chosen as numeraire in order to obtain linear homogeneity of the cost function.

Empirical evidence on the productive efficiency of non-profit organisations is at present scarce and not conclusive. In the present work, we analyse this issue by relying on a new data-set about Italian for-profit and non-profit organisations engaged in the provision of communal services. While most of the existing evidence relates to health-care o...

This paper considers the decomposition of cost inefficiency into its technical and allocative components. First, the relevant literature is surveyed, showing that the shadow price approach has significant computational advantages over alternative procedures. To illustrate this approach, a shadow cost model is applied to a panel of dairy farms in No...

Some indicators of natural resource quality, relevant for agricultural production, have recently been reintroduced in the literature on multilateral agricultural productivity comparisons. Objective of this paper is to perform a sensitivity analysis of the impact on the specification of a stochastic frontier production function and on the measuremen...

Objective of the paper is to verify which are the determinants of the innovation process in the Italian food industry and whether they are different according to firm property rights. The data used are the 9 th (2001-2003) wave of Capitalia surveys based on a representative sample of manufacturing firms with information on firm characteristics, emp...

Summary Objective of this paper is to analyze the motivations in the purcha se of Fair Trade (FT) food products sold in the World Shops (WS) in order to characterize WS consumer profiles according to the ethical content of their motivations. At t his end, a questionnaire has been distributed to a sample of consumers in Emili a Romagna and in Campan...

Consumers in developed countries are increasingly interested in the consumption of products incorporating ethical aspects, particularly fair trade products. They are usually distributed in a network of World Shops and more recently also introduced in supermarkets and shopping centres. The fair trade product with the highest share on the total is co...

This paper empirically highlights the important role of structural social capital in enhancing the propensity to innovate of firms. Specifically, it investigates, through a probit analysis, the causal effect of the set of relations owned by producers on their propensity to innovate. A case study is presented from the South of Italy. It concerns a s...

This paper analyses the mechanisms through which increasing market competition may help cooperatives to improve technical efficiency to guarantee positive profits. This hypothesis is first formalised in a partial equilibrium framework and then is tested on a sample of European investor owned and cooperative firms, belonging to the dairy industry, u...

Objective of this paper is to analyze the motivations in the purchase of Fair Trade (FT) food products sold in the World Shops (WS) in order to characterize WS consumer profiles according to the ethical content of their motivations. At this end, a questionnaire has been distributed to a sample of consumers in Emilia Romagna and in Campania. A princ...

This paper focuses on an important issue currently debated in literature: the role of public research institutions in helping to promote the processes of technological and economic catch up, development and growth. Objective of the paper is to verify whether and how Universities and other public research institutions influence the innovation proces...