0000000000421348
AUTHOR
Auci S.
Defining Smart Cities: a relative and dynamic approach
Although the level of interest in smart cities is growing, the main issue – the smart city concept – is still open. The definition of smart city is not shared as well as the way to measure city’s smartness. The main approach has developed the concept of an “ideal” city which every city should tend because it represents the optimal standard. In this context, the aim of our paper is to break with the traditional point of view in favour of a new concept of smartness which identifies a city specific value of smartness, based on the efficient use of its own resources and related to the different context in which a city is situated. Thus, in this way, the concept of smartness becomes relative. Mo…
Public Choices and Decision-making Processes: A Case Study on Sustainable Mobility
The definition of a decision process, which implies the capacity to implement and realize an action involving all the actors interested, is crucial not only for taking adequate political decisions but even mainly for getting a democratic control of the decisions themselves. From a strategic planning point of view, decision process on public issues should be essentially considered as a process of participation, which involves political decision-makers as well as all the administrative organizations which have to realize the decisions taken and citizens and more generally all the stakeholders who will be impacted in a positive or negative way by such decisions. If this is the case, important …
Smartness, City Efficiency and Entrepreneurship Milieu
The definition of smart city and its measurement are not shared. Different characteristics define a city as smart, which is strictly linked to urban efficiency and to entrepreneurship spirit in a multifaceted way as well as to citizens’ well-being. On the basis of the comparison between city and entrepreneur behaviour and on the definition of Giffinger et al. (2007) of smart city, this chapter verifies the efficiency of a sample of European cities using a stochastic frontier approach. Departing from this analysis, the chapter develops the relative smartness definition based on the efficient use of its own resources and related to the different context. Moreover, as a city becomes close to t…
Institutions, firms and environment in a framework of innovation
The aim of the paper is the analysis of innovation and institution as the key elements for reaching a higher social welfare and environmental quality. To determine a social optimum or a Pareto improvement, we consider the interaction between institution and firm in the short and in the medium/long run. Using a static comparative analysis, the interaction of these two agents, institution and market, is examined. Within the market an entrant and an incumbent firm are present, where the entrant firm represents the firm who radically innovates. Even if in the short run results show that the market alone is able to realize a Pareto improvement, however, whenever institution intervenes through an…
Il contrasto all’economia sommersa: un’analisi comparata di policies
SOMMARIO: 1. L’economia non osservata. – 2. Economia sommersa e corruzione. – 3. La consistenza del sommerso. – 4. Le motivazioni e le dinamiche sociali collegate all’economia sommersa. – 5. Gli approcci per la lotta al sommerso in Europa: deterrenza e incentivo. – 6. Conclusioni.
Agricultural and Biotechnology Patents as an Adaptation Strategy to Climate Change: A Regional Analysis of European Farmer’s Efficiency
This chapter analyses the effect of innovation encouraged by climate change challenges on European farmers’ technical efficiency. Using the stochastic frontier approach, we estimate the impact of agri-cultural patents on farmers’ technical efficiency by taking into account both unobservable heterogeneity and heteroscedasticity in the inefficiency term. Our findings suggest that European farmers remain quite far from the maximum frontier and irrespective of the country in which they reside; farmers who innovate are more efficient than those who do not. Thus, the inefficiency of agricultural agents in the European context leaves space for policies that incentivise firms to adopt climate chang…
Smart Cities and Eu growth strategy: a Comparison among European Cities
The level of interest in smart cities has been growing during these last years. The academic literature (Holland, 2008; Caragliu et al., 2009, Nijkamp et al., 2011 and Lombardi et al., 2012) has identified a number of factors that characterise a city as smart, such as economic development, business-friendly, environmental sustainability, social innovation, information and knowledge process, and human and social capital. Thus, the smartness concept is strictly linked to urban efficiency in a multifaceted way as well as to citizens’ wellbeing through the use of appropriate technologies. Instead, from a “political perspective” smartness is mainly related to the ability of using ICT (Informatio…