ABSTRACT La gestione dell’impresa basata sulla conoscenza ,è da tempo ,oggetto di attenzione ,negli studi e nelle prassi di tipo ,economico-aziendale poiché capace ,di sviluppare ,vantaggi ,competitivi difendibili e duraturi nel tempo (Barney 1986, Collis and Montgomery 1995, Penrose 1959,

Abstract Macroeconomic policies are designed to stabilize business cycle fluctuations. Usually, fiscal and monetary policies in industrial countries have been expansionary in response to weak domestic conditions. However, the cyclical properties of fiscal policies are a much more disputed issue among emerging market economies. Several researchers have attributed these differences in cyclical behavior to: (a) factors associated to a weak institutional framework that play a key role in explaining sub-optimal policy decisions, and (b) factors associated to weak integration (or access) to either domestic or international financial markets. The goal of the present paper is to empirically evaluate whether the ability of countries to conduct counter-cyclical fiscal policy is affected by the quality of their institutions and/or by the availability of financial resources either in domestic or internationalcapital markets. Our empirical evaluation yields a more nuanced interpretation to the existing evidence: (1) countries are unable to conduct counter-cyclical fiscal policies if they have poor institutions or lack wide access to credit markets at home and abroad, and (2) institutional factors have a larger weight than financial variables in explaining the differences in cyclical behavior of fiscal policy between industrial and developing countries. JEL Classification:E32, E62, C23

The South East of England's creative and cultural industries provide jobs for 560,000 people and contribute an annual turnover of £46.5 billion pounds. The sector has grown more than any other region with employment increasing by 28.4%, almost double the average for England as a whole. At the same time the rich heritage and cultural resources play an important part in our quality of life, contributing to the sustainability of the natural and built environment and developing a skilled and inclusive workforce (Creative and Cultural Industries 2002). As part of the support for this sector of the industry the South East England Development Agency (Seeda) has set up wired agencies across the region as a model of professional networking, brokerage, business advice and support. Wired Wessex is one of these business support agencies for some 500 small new-media businesses, all engaged in computing, software design, games development, web design, interactive TV and video etc in the Hampshire area. These businesses are all at the convergence of the computing, media and telecommunications industries and thus are at the cutting edge of skills needs and professional development. Wired Wessex delivers events and services to assist and support the development of individuals in this new industry with a strong use of web delivery, as befits the user group. This web delivery includes a site www.wiredwessex.com, specific focussed email delivery as well as forums for discussion. Currently, both Seeda and the European Union fund Wired Wessex.

Abstract: Keywords: Spinoffs, Key-employees, Organizational change, Excecutive mi-

We propose an economic and cultural explanation for the decline of human fertility during the demographic transition. We show that some transformations in the economic and/or cultural structure of a society can imply a fertility transition, that is to say a transition from a traditional high births rate regime to a modern low births rate regime. Furthermore the cultural structure of the population is not exogenous. It is the result of an endogenous cultural evolution mechanism. That mechanism could explain the fact that, at least for France and Great Britain, the fertility rates begun to fall before the mortality rates; it can still explain the actual persistence of high fertility rates in some Sub-Saharan African countries. Furthermore we will demonstrate that cultural heterogeneity is persistent in the long run. 1 I am gratefull to Professor Bertrand Wigniolle for his help during the construction of the …rst draft of this paper. Discussions with Victor Hiller have been very helpfull too.

Most economic decisions are made under uncertainty and yet very little is known about risk attitudes. This paper marks an important step forward in the study of individual risk attitudes. We use a novel set of survey measures, and a much larger sample than previous studies (roughly 22,000 individuals), to provide a representative picture of the determinants of risk attitudes. Our new survey measures also make possible the test of fundamental assumptions about the stability of risk preferences across different domains of life, and an exploration of how question-framing, from abstract to more concrete, affects stated risk attitudes. The paper contributes an additional, methodological in- novation by conducting a complementary laboratory experiment, and testing the ability of our survey measures to predict real behavior un- der real incentives. Ultimately, the analysis in the paper generates six robust facts about risk attitudes: (1) women are more risk averse than men, across various domains of life, independent of question- framing, and at all ages during adulthood; (2) risk aversion increases with age; (3) individuals with highly-educated mothers are less risk averse in some domains of life; (4) the assumption of a single risk pref- erence, stable across life domains, is a reasonable approximation; (5) the survey measures we use are valid predictors of actual behavior un- der uncertainty; (6) heterogeneity in trusting behavior is not explained solely by different risk attitudes, but rather seems to reflect different beliefs about the trustworthiness of others. Each of these findings has powerful implications for economic theory and policy.

We claim that the quality of table tennis club play can be increased if players are grouped together by skill level and encouraged to switch partners. To that end, we introduce a system aimed at realizing this style of club play. We give a brief summary and describe the general logistics of a typical day, then we explain in more detail how each step of the system is to be accomplished. 1. Motivation Table tennis is a fine sport. Playing with people of drastically dif- ferent levels could prove frustrating at times. This is evident in the rating system employed in the USATT tournaments. To encourage people playing with different partners of the same skill level, we shall adopt the following system. 2. Synopsis Players are divided into ordered partitions of size 4 by skill level. Each partition holds a round robin, which consists of 6 matches. The result of the round robin in each partition determines the relative rank- ing of the four players. The first and the fourth player will pair up and play the second and the third player in a doubles match. Combining the results from the singles and the doubles matches, a final ranking of the four players are determined. The first place of each partition (except the first partition) will advance and exchange ranking with the last place of the previous partition for the next club play. 3. Definitions The Coordinator is a nonempty set of people in charge of the CITTT Club Play System. The Coordinator is expected to keep the best inter- est of everyone else in mind. The Coordinator is allowed to participate as players. A game is a standard game up to 11 points. A match is a 1

We introduce a new approximation method for the distribution of functions of random variables that are real-valued. The approximation involves moment matching and exploits properties of the class of normal inverse Gaussian distributions. We show that the new method provides better approximations than Gram- Charlier and Edgeworth expansions. Further we provide an example on the usefulness of the approximation in relation to the temporal aggregation and unconditional distribution of the GARCH (1,1) process.