The main goal of this paper is to analyse the single and joint impact of regulation policies and research network policies on environmental innovation. Our theoretical framework combines the open eco-innovation mode approach with the Porter Hypothesis, by adapting them to the knowledge production function where green patents are the dependent variable. We focus on the factors that influence the production of green patents as a proxy of new "environmental" knowledge for a panel of European countries over time. We find that both marked-based regulation policies and participation in green European research networks (in particular with universities and public research centres) positively affect environmental innovation. Moreover, the two policy tools have a complementary effect. This suggests that the effectiveness of environmental regulation policies can be increased by combining them with appropriate innovation policies.

This paper presents a detailed comparison of the most significant methods developed to compute lower bounds on the structured singular value. The objective is to characterize the behavior of these robustness analysis tools on the basis of a common framework constituted by a wide set of various real-world applications.

This paper investigates the impact of participation in European scientific networks on the stock of knowledge and on economic growth. We use scientific links in FP programmes to weight foreign R&D in order to construct two different measures of foreign R&D spillovers and we assess their impact on the production of knowledge (patents) and on economic growth in a panel of countries participating in FP over the period 1994-2005. We find that participation in EU funded projects is an important channel of knowledge transfer. However, while for countries with high levels of R&D expenditure R&D spillovers contribute to the generation of new knowledge, for low R&D spenders knowledge spillovers facilitate technological imitation and catching up

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Objective This study aims to analyse the impact of the pandemic on the amount of use and new medication dispensation for chronic diseases in the Italian population aged 65 years and older (almost 14 million inhabitants). Methods The “Pharmaceutical Prescriptions database”, which gathers data on medications, reimbursed by the National Health Service and dispensed by community pharmacies, was employed. Data were analysed as amount of use (defined daily dose—DDD per 1000 inhabitants); variation in DDD between 2020 and 2019 was calculated for the 30 categories with major consumption in 2020. Trends in prevalence and incidence of dispensations between 2020 and 2019 were calculated for four categories: antidiabetics, antihypertensives, antidepressants and drugs for respiratory diseases. Results All medications showed a negative variation in DDD/1000 inhabitants between 2020 and 2019 except for anticoagulants (+ 5%). The percentage variation ranged from − 27.7% for antibiotics to − 6.4% for antipsychotics in 85 + year-old persons, but increased for most classes in the youngest (65–69 years). On the other hand, a decrease of the dispensation incidence of antidiabetics, antihypertensives, antidepressants and drugs for pulmonary disease was high, especially in the two extreme age groups, the youngest and the oldest one. Conclusions and relevance Great variation in medication use between 2020 and 2019 was observed probably reflecting the low rate of infectious diseases due to the widespread use of protective devices and self-isolation, reduced healthcare access because of the lockdowns and the fear of going to hospital, and the reduction of screening and diagnostics due to health-care system overload.

This paper investigates the role played by the position of European regions in research networks on their rate of innovation and economic growth. The analysis is based on a panel of EU-28 NUTS2 regions participating in EU Framework Programmes observed over the 2004-2014 period. We find that regions that are more central in the network (higher strength centrality) and those that are surrounded by highly inter-connected regions (higher clustering index) show higher rates of innovation and higher economic growth. We also find heterogeneous effects of centrality and clustering for peripheral and central regions. We conclude that a more interconnected network (an increase in centrality for peripheral regions and of clustering for urban areas) would create benefits both at the periphery and at the core of Europe.