Laura Resmini (p), Andrea Ascani, Luca Bettarelli

Jozsef Benedek

It has already been demonstrated that cross-border linkages among regions, companies and people may have large economic effects in terms of enhanced growth, innovation and productivity rates. However, it is not clear yet, whether and to what extent benefits generated by external connections remain circumscribed to the networked regions or may spill over borders, benefiting neighbouring regions too. This paper aims at filling this gap in the literature. Are spillovers generated by external connections localized or do they spread across space? Through which channels? Do spillovers occur within or across sectors? To provide an answer to these questions we investigate in a spatial panel setting with region, sector and year fixed effects whether and how network relations affect the performance of networked regions. We model external network relations at NUTS3 level by mapping linkages among Italian firms and their foreign subsidiaries. Preconditions for profiting from external networks are also explored.

Takashi Yano (p)

Laura Resmini

The development of information technology enables firms to disintegrate production process and place them in countries which have comparative advantage in the fragmented process. At present, the so-called global value chains (GVCs) form a standard structure of international trade particularly in the machinery sector. In contrast to its name, however, GVCs are not necessarily ‘global.’ Rather, it is a regional phenomenon. Moreover, the hypothesis of the smile curve in GVCs indicates that developed economies are involved in the upstream and downstream high value-added production tasks while emerging or developing economies engage in low value-added processes. This hypothesis shows that the position or role in GVCs is quite critical for the amount of value added the country can obtain. These indicate that GVCs do not benefit the countries equally. Also, in order to gain from international trade, the following two issues are exclusively important: 1) whether or not the country participates in GVCs and 2) which task in GVCs the country undertakes. Based on these observations, this paper tests whether GVCs spread income difference among countries. Should such be the case, we quantify the magnitude of the GVC effects on the international income difference by employing a structural equation model with global data.

Itsaso Lopetegui (p), Ikerne del Valle

Takashi Yano

This paper focuses on alternative theoretical and empirical specifications of risk and diversity in the fisheries domain, and the empirical correlation among them. Theoretically, risk and diversity are expected to be negatively correlated. The lower the diversity, the higher the concentration, dominance and dependency of that fishing sector to the evolution of the dominant fish species. Therefore, the higher the risk of a potential collapse in the fishing sector. Firstly, we study the country-level diversity of the EU fishing countries, using conventional diversity indices, namely Berger Parker, Concentration ratio, Simpson's index and Shannon index. Notice that each member-state has an individual marine sub-ecosystem comprised by different fish species, that besides, may change over time. Accordingly, special attention will be paid on checking whether there are potential differences between the diversity patterns of EU fishing countries by means of parametric and not parametric tests such as ANOVA and Kruskal Wallis. Secondly, based on financial risk analysis, we estimate the left-tail risk of landings in the EU fishing countries, a country level proxy variable for the risk inherent to the fishing activity itself, i.e. an empirical and probabilistic measure of the worst-case losss. Thirdly, we investigate the correlation between risk and diversity. However, surprisingly, our results reveal that risk and diversity patterns are positively correlated. This is because the risk of a country may be potentially determined not only by the diversity itself, but also by the specific distribution of the landings. Accordingly, it may well happen that it is the fish species risk shares what mainly determines the overall risk of the fishing countries.