Roberto Zotti

• Professor (Assistant) at University of Turin

Purpose This paper provides novel evidence on the role of gender in the performance of university students, which is particularly relevant to the debate on the performance of female students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects. Design/methodology/approach Our approach relies on the metafrontier approach proposed by...

This paper investigates the efficiency of Italian hospitals and how their performances have changed over the years 2007–2016, characterized by the great economic recession and budget constraints. We apply the Benefit of Doubt (BoD) approach to determine a composite index that considers the multi-dimensionality of the hospital outcome to be used as...

An important issue in economic geography is the link between higher education institutions and economic performance at local level. This paper exploits some aspects of the university funding system in Italy to estimate the effects of hosting higher education institutions on local productivity and furthermore tests whether local institutions have a...

Regulators should ensure the smooth functioning of the system and promote regional development. Making the health of financial institutions is therefore a prerequisite for a sustainable economic development. This paper contributes to the literature on the relationship between the financial stability and growth within the area of one country. This i...

The paper aims to explore the drivers of immigrants’ participation to cultural and leisure activities in host countries. First, we discuss how the main analytical approaches on cultural participation can be extended to incorporate factors specific to migrants’ characteristics and behaviour, namely cultural traits or proximity to the native populati...

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 investigates the efficiency of Italian hospitals and how their performances have changed over the years 2007-2016, characterized by the great economic recession and budget constraints. We apply the Benefit of Doubt (BoD) approach to determine a composite index that considers the multi-dimensionality of the hospital outcome to be used as...

Whether the increase in a region's economic activity could be attributable to the presence of a university is an important issue in economic geography. This paper uses the age of universities (some dating back to the 11th and 12th century) along with grants from private foundations and student's fees as instruments for human capital production, to...

This paper contributes to the empirical literature on the linkages be- tween decentralized government spending, public finances, and economic growth at the local level. The impact of local government spending on output growth is estimated using a panel of Italian Labor Market Ar- eas - a group of municipalities adjacent to each other, geographicall...

Using a survey on Italian graduates, we investigate whether universities’ degree production affects the economic development of the regions where academic institutions are located. To deal with suspected endogeneity between human capital development and economic growth, we employ an instrumental variable approach, using a global lump sum transferre...

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the relationship between bank market power and stability of financial institutions in Italy between 2001 and 2012. The authors first test the existence of a U-shaped relationship between market power and financial stability. Second, they regress the market share indicator on bank risk- taking to underline whethe...

This paper explores the firm-level relationship between product, process, organizational and marketing innovation activities and firm productivity. We propose a structural model that relates R&D decisions, innovation activities, and productivity by using a version of the model developed by Crépon et al. (1998) and empirically analyze the drivers of...

This paper tests the Wagner’s assumption of the one-sided directional flow moving from economic growth to public spending considering an international database over the 1996– 2012 period. By using indicators on the level of country control of corruption, government effectiveness, political stability, rule of law, regulatory quality and voice and ac...

We test whether there is a link between the performance of universities, measured through a concept of efficiency, and the economic development of the regions in which they operate. Indicators of teaching, research and third mission are considered as outputs. To handle endogeneity problems between the efficiency of universities and economic develop...

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...

Relying upon highly territorially disaggregated data taken at labour market areas, the paper explores the relationship between bank performances and finan- cial stability of the banking system taking into account the role of market concentration. The z-score is used as financial stability indicator, while the performance of financial intermediaries...

This paper investigates the regional innovation system (RIS) efficiency, and its determinants, in Italy through a stochastic frontier analysis and using the concept of a knowledge production function. The contribution of university, private and public sector resources devoted to research and development (R&D), in generating innovation, has been exa...

Financial stability is a prerequisite for sustainable economic development. Assuming that financial stability is a public good, with a negative effect on social welfare and on economic development when risks are not properly controlled, will make regulators ensuring the smooth functioning of the system, promoting regional development and making the...

In recent years more and more numerous are the rankings published in newspapers or technical reports available, covering many aspects of higher education, but in many cases with very conflicting results between them, due to the fact that universities’ performances depend on the set of variables considered and on the methods of analysis employed. Th...

This paper analyzes how national income (per capita real GDP) influences the environmental pollution (per capita CO2 emissions) using a very heterogenous sample composed by 120 countries during the 2000–2009 period. We first apply a panel unit root test suggested by Im et al. (J Econometr 115(1):53–74, 2003) to examine the stationarity properties o...

The main purpose of the paper is to estimate the efficiency of a big public university in Italy using individual student-level data, modeling exogenous variables in human capital formation through a heteroscedastic stochastic frontier approach. Specifically, a production function for tertiary education has been estimated with emphasis on inefficien...

We explore the relationship between bank performances and financial stability of the banking system taking into account the Italian context during the period 2001-2014 and relying upon highly territorially disaggregated data taken at municipality level, in order to better capture the differences across geographical areas. The z-score is used as fin...

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 this paper, we test whether there is a link between the performance of universities and the economic growth where they operate. We specify a growth model where the ratio at which universities are able to convert inputs into outputs has been measured taking into account the traditional role of universities (i.e. teaching and research) as well as...

This paper analyses how national income (per capita real GDP) influences the environmental pollution (per capita CO2 emissions) using a very heterogenous sample composed by 120 countries during the 2000-2009 period. We firstly apply a panel unit root test suggested by Im et al. (2003) in order to examine the stationarity properties of CO2 emissions...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of religious involvement on subjective well-being (SWB), specifically taking into account the implication of selection effects explaining religious influence using the British Household Panel Survey data set. Design/methodology/approach In order to measure the level of religious involv...

In assessing the performance of universities, the most recent literature underlined that the efficiency scores may suffer from the presence of incidental parameters or time-invariant, often unobservable, effects that lead to biased efficiency estimates. To deal with this problem, we apply a procedure developed by Wang and Ho (2010), for estimating...

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...

By employing a Granger causality methodology in a panel data framework, this article explores the relationship among efficiency, capitalization and credit risk within the local Italian banking system. Focusing the attention on cooperative banks, we specifically test whether managers take more risks in highly concentrated markets (i.e. monopoly) tha...

In this article, we test whether economic growth depends on human capital development mainly operating through an upgrading of human capital stock in the area where the universities are located. We specify a growth model where a qua- litative measure of human capital development, university efficiency, is considered in conjunction with a customary...

This paper applies data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess technical efficiency in a big public university. Particular attention has been paid on two main activities, teaching and research, and on two large groups, Science and Technology (ST) sector and Humanity and Social Science (HSS) sector. The findings, based on data from 2005 to 2009, sugge...

In assessing universities’ performances, the most recent literature underlined that the efficiency scores may suffer from the presence of incidental parameters or time-invariant, often unobservable, effects that lead to biased efficiency estimates. To deal with this problem, we apply a procedure developed by Wang and Ho (2010), for estimating the e...

In recent years more and more numerous are the rankings published in the newspapers or technical reports available, covering many aspects of higher education, but in many cases with very conflicting results between them, due to the fact that universities‟ performances depend on the set of variables considered and on the methods of analysis employed...

This paper investigates the regional innovation system (RIS) efficiency, and its determinants, in Italy through a Stochastic Frontier Analysis and using the concept of a knowledge production function. The contribution of universities’, private and public sectors’ resources devoted to research and development (R&D), in generating innovation, has bee...

This paper applies a data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to assess technical efficiency of both private and public universities in Italy. A directional distance function approach has been applied in order to handle both desirable (i.e. number of graduates) and undesirable (i.e. number of dropouts) outputs. The findings based on a panel from acad...

Using a difference-in-differences approach, we exploit a quasi experiment occurred in a large public university located in southern Italy to examine whether the introduction of a selective admission test affects students’ performances. Our analysis on this unique data set shows that a change of regime to a restrictive admission policy reduces the d...

In this paper, we test whether economic growth depends on human capital development using data disaggregated at territorial level and propose the use of efficiency estimates, measured using a non-parametric technique, as an alternative quality measure of higher education institutions (HEIs). The nature of knowledge spillovers is also taken into acc...

Using the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) data set, we investigate the effect of religion on subjective well-being (SWB), specifically taking into account the implication of selection effects explaining religious influence. In order to measure the level of religious involvement, we construct different indices on the base of individual religio...

Using the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) data set, we investigate the effect of religion on subjective well-being (SWB), specifically taking into account the implication of selection effects explaining religious influence. In order to measure the level of religious involvement, we construct different indices on the base of individual religio...

This paper explores the use of a data envelopment analysis approach to decompose student's under-attainment in a part attributable to the Faculties they are enrolled in and a part attributable to the students themselves. The mean measure of each Faculty's teaching efficiency is calculated using both individual and aggregate data. The results show t...

This paper applies a data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to assess technical efficiency of both private and public universities in Italy. Moving from the traditional context where inputs and outputs are assumed to be non-negative, a directional distance function approach has been applied in order to handle both desirable (i.e. number of graduate...

This paper applies a data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to assess technical efficiency of both private and public universities in Italy. Moving from the traditional context where inputs and outputs are assumed to be non-negative, a directional distance function approach has been applied in order to handle both desirable (i.e. number of graduate...

By using a heteroscedastic stochastic frontier model, this paper focuses on how students' exogenous characteristics (such as personal demographic information, pre-enrollment educational background and household economic status) affect faculties’ inefficiency. Using individual data on freshmen enrolled at a public owned university in Italy over the...

Using a difference-in-differences approach, we exploit a quasi-experiment occurred in a large public university located in Southern Italy, to study whether the introduction of a selective admission test affects two indicators of students’ performances: dropout rate and grade point average (GPA). Our analysis shows that a change of regime to a more...

This paper applies data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess teaching efficiency at University of Salerno, focusing on the use of individual versus aggregate level data. Using individuals as Decision Making Units (DMUs), the student's under-attainment has been decomposed in a part attributable to the faculties they are enrolled in and a part attrib...

Using a difference-in-differences approach, we exploit a quasi-experiment occurred in a large public university located in Southern Italy, to study whether the introduction of a selective admission test affects two indicators of students" performances: dropout rate and grade point average (GPA). Our analysis shows that a change of regime to a more...

This paper applies data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess the efficiency, technical and scale, of both departments and faculties at University of Salerno in the South of Italy. Particular attention has been paid on two main activities, teaching and research, and on two large groups, science and technology (ST) sector and humanity and social scie...

We use a difference-indifferences method exploiting a natural experiment occurred in a large public university located in Southern Italy to study whether the introduction of a selective admission test affects two indicators of students' performances (dropout rate, grade point average). Our analysis shows that new admission policy improves college p...