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This book presents tools and principles of information theory as a solution to analyse insufficient information for inference, model and theory building. Info-metrics is a term that was coined in 2009 by the author for an approach based on maximum entropy for constrained optimization. This book is a good mixture of theory and practical applications. It could be of interest for researchers, university professors and graduate studentsintheareaofprobabilityandstatisticsand their applications, such as neural networks, data mining and ‘big data’ analysis.

none 3 no This paper assesses whether there might be complementarities between different types of innovation activities (product, process and organizational) and how these effects may be linked to the likelihood that a firm will export. Complementarity is addressed through the properties of supermodular functions, and firm heterogeneity by export destination is explored. A new econometric strategy to test for pairwise complementarity in a function with three independent variables and a binary dependent variable is proposed. Exogenous and endogenous innovation variables are considered by using bootstrapping for hypothesis testing, propensity score matching and treatment effects models. The empirical analysis shows that complementarity relationships between innovation strategies are more likely to exist when firms export to multiple foreign markets. mixed Bernardini Papalia, R.; Bertarelli, S.; Mancinelli, S. Bernardini Papalia, R.; Bertarelli, S.; Mancinelli, S.

This paper deals with heterogeneity and nonlinearities in the growth process by developing a two-stage strategy to identify and estimate a club convergence model with threshold externalities. Because of identification and collinearity problems, we develop an entropy-based estimation procedure which simultaneously takes account of ill-posed and ill-conditioned inference problems. First, clubs are identified by introducing a mapping structure in a conditional convergence model. Finally, we estimate a multiple club convergence model, where clubs correspond to subsets of total observations. Our procedure is applied to assess the existence of club convergence for a large sample of countries (1965–2008).

The objective of this paper is to test for the importance of local agglomeration externalities in determining inward foreign direct investment (FDI) intensity, viewed as a measure of regional attractiveness to FDI. The links between the degree of FDI inflow penetration into Italy and its determinants at the regional level are examined using alternative fixed effects panel data model specifications, also extended to include spatial effects. It is found that sectoral and regional specificities are relevant in attracting inward FDI into Italy and the different effects of intra‐sector and inter‐sector spillovers can be distinguished. There is also evidence that the importance of agglomeration spillovers connected to the geographical distance varies across regions, indicating both substitution and complementarity effects from FDI inflows into neighboring regions.

In this study we examine regional data on per worker GDP, disaggregated at sectoral level, by focusing our interest on the role of differences in the sectoral composition of activities, and in productivity gaps that are uniform across sectors, in explaining the catching-up process, which is realized through physical and human capital as well as technological knowledge accumulation. Our objective is to investigate how much of the interregional inequality in aggregate productivity per worker is imputable to each component. A methodology for identifying and analyzing sources of inequality from a decomposed perspective is developed in the growth framework by combining a shift-share based technique and a SUR model specification for the conditional-convergence analysis. The proposed approach is employed to analyze aggregate interregional inequality of per worker productivity levels in Italy over the period 1970–2000. With respect to the existing empirical results, our approach provides a more comprehensive and detailed examination of the contribution of each identified component in explaining the regional productivity gaps in Italy. It is argued that region-specific productivity differentials, uniform across sectors, explain a quite large share of differences in productivity per worker. However, sectoral composition plays a non negligible role, although decreasing since the end of 1980s, and very different productivity patterns emerge within geographical areas.