This research analyses the issue, unexplored to date, of the causal relationship between women politicians and selective waste collection. Differing attitudes towards environmental issues between men and women may affect waste management at the municipal level, so an increase in women's political representation can be expected to enhance the effectiveness of selective waste collection. The analysis tests for this in Italy, exploiting a gender quota measure (Law 215/2012) as an exogenous shock to the percentage of female municipal councilors. Difference-in-differences instrumental variable analysis finds that an increase of one standard deviation in the percentage of female councilors increases the percentage of selective waste collection by 2.18 percentage points and the total tonnage of selective waste by 447.86. At the same time it reduces the amount of non-selective waste collection by 491.22 tonnes. The study comprises a number of sensitivity analyses for different model specifications, different definitions of dependent variables, different size of municipalities and different geographical areas.

In this paper we analyze whether R&D cooperation improves firms' performance, and which variables would boost R&D cooperation the most. We contribute to the literature linking two different branches: using a sample of Italians firms, we analyze which are the main determinants of R&D cooperation and whether R&D cooperation improves firms' performance. Thus, we conduct a two-step analysis: in the first step we investigate the significant determinants of cooperation, and in the second we employ these determinants to test the effect of R&D cooperation on firm performance, measured by ROA, Ebitda, and value added per capita. The analysis focuses on four relevant disaggregations: (i) small, medium, and large firms; (ii) Pavitt (1984. “Sectoral Patterns of Technical Change: Towards a Taxonomy and a Theory.” Research Policy 13 (6): 343–373) sectors; (iii) location (North, and Center-South); and (iv) public and private partners. Although the determinants of cooperation can vary depending on the type of disaggregation, we find that R&D cooperation always boosts firm performance, that is, on average, profitability and productivity are higher among cooperating firms compared to those that do not cooperate. Identifying the determinants of cooperation allows management and policymakers to understand which strategies should be implemented to stimulate cooperation and, consequently, to improve firms' performance.

In this paper, we provide evidence on the determinants of R&D cooperation in Italy. Using data concerning firms already engaged in R&D, we find that at least one between public subsidies to R&D and public orders crucially determine firms propensity to cooperate in R&D, whatever the sector, the size or the geographic area. On the contrary, the impact of other determinants (emphasized by previous literature) depends on the kind of data disaggregation – in particular the private orders are not significant in the South of Italy and highly significant in the rest of the country.

We analyse the determinants of R&D cooperation for SMEs in Italy. We introduce in the literature human capital as one of the main determinants of R&D cooperation, concentrating on its moderating role, and specifically focusing on the high-tech sector. Using an extremely rich dataset, we improve the literature, building robust explanatory variables, and disaggregating the cooperation by partner. We find that human capital facilitates cooperation, but its moderating role depends on the type of disaggregation and/or the partner.

This study evaluates the effectiveness of a novel cultural policy to recover the valorization function of Italian state museums by increasing managerial autonomy. The policy is part of the Franceschini reform, introduced in 2014, that concerns the governance of cultural institutions and was justified by the severe budget constraints resulting from economic crisis and a spending review. Given the staggered implementation of the reform across 32 museums that obtained special autonomy, we apply a difference-in-differences strategy that allows to properly investigate the causal effect of the policy reform on museums’ outcome measures of exhibition function, as visitors and revenue from admissions. Our findings robustly support the effectiveness of the cultural policy reform in terms these outcomes. Although we provide some suggestive evidence of the efficacy of museums’ management (through a number of communication and supplementary services), this study suffers of the limitations due to the lack of more appropriate measures on how successful changes in management have been. However, results aim to offer policy recommendations in favor of greater managerial and financial autonomy of state museums that, while preserving their conservation function, can promote the widespread utilization of collections ensuring museums’ greater sustainability.