Work in Progress

• Smart Specialization and Regional Knowledge Spaces: how to overcome the gap between vision and reality (with D.F. Kogler and K. Kim).

We evaluate whether these Smart Specialization Strategies (S3) policy initiatives are adequately designed to match local knowledge capabilities is still missing. The objective to illustrate the potential gap between S3 policies and regional capabilities is pursued via two perspectives. On the one hand, the analysis focuses on how much regional specific S3 policies target ‘important’ technologies as indicated by their respective regional knowledge spaces. On the other hand, the investigation highlights, based on established methods, to what degree S3 policies also target ‘potential’ sectors of technological knowledge production in the specific regional setting.

• The Evolution of Scientific Knowledge Production and Regional Dynamics in China (with D.F. Kogler, J. Lee and K. Kim).

We explore the drivers of novel science in Chinese regions, with the objective of unveiling the patterns over time of the scientific production and the determinants of scientific innovation.

• The impact of economic resistance on political discontent in the Italian Local Labour Markets (with V. Celli), Special Issue in Journal of European Public Policies.

We assess whether the Italian Local Labour Markets (LLMs) most affected by the Great Recession expressed more consensus towards populist or anti-European parties, driven by feelings of frustration and discontent. We exploit a recent econometric technique in the counterfactual framework, which adopt a non-parametric generalization of the difference-in-differences estimator. Our findings show that people living in the LLMs that suffered the most the effects of the Great Recession used their vote to protest against the party they deemed responsible for the economic consequences, with a persistent payback effect.

• What explains institutional trust in Latin America? Understanding the role of the urban-rural divide (with C. Dalle Nogare, N. Pontarollo and J. Segovia).

The aim of our paper is to verify whether this is the case also in Latin America, and to assess whether urban-rural-based differences in institutional trust primarily result from differences in observable attributes or from differences in returns of otherwise equivalent characteristics. We employ survey data from the 2019 Latin American Public Opinion Project and apply the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition approach. Our evidence highlights that institutional trust is higher in rural areas than in urban ones in Latin America. Our analysis also highlights that the different levels of trust in urban and rural areas are in large part due to differences in the levels of income and education in the two contexts.