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This paper presents the results of a choice experiment carried out from August to October 2000 on the visitors of the Galleria Borghese Museum, a worldwide known heritage site located in Rome. The main objective of this work is to study the relevancy of choice experiment techniques as a tool aimed at measuring economic values and assessing user preferences concerning the multi‐attribute and multi‐value services as supplied by cultural institutions. A set of alternative incremental changes in service attributes showing improvements in supply are designed and presented to visitors. Alternative conditional logit specifications are used for analysing stated choices over the hypothetical incremental changes in museum attributes. Willingness to pay for incremental variations concerning site attributes is positive and statistically significant for most changes. Conditional logit specifications, which incorporate heterogeneity by adding interaction socio‐economic terms, are generally robust and do not violate the IIA assumption. In addition, in the present case study, non‐IIA models do not outperform conditional logit models. Choice experiments confirm as being a practical and effective tool for non‐market valuation, and they should be used to provide information to decision makers for justifying demand led policies.

This paper seeks to examine the relationships between working conditions, innovation activities and industrial relations in two local production systems located in the northern Italy, exploiting data collected through ad‐hoc surveys in 2004 and 2006.

The paper follows a recent stream of literature, which is still quite scanty, that addresses the issue of the implication for workers derived from the introduction of organizational changes. This topic is addressed and extended, taking into consideration both the role of firm level industrial relations and the role of other innovation activities that may influence working conditions.

The results seem to support the position maintained by the advocates of organizational changes. Job empowerment is spurred by the form of organizational changes usually defined as high performance workplace practices. However, such typology of changes in the organization does not seem to be linked with positive trends in safety/security and stress. At the same time the positive role of cooperative industrial relations on the working condition emerges, also as complementary elements to innovation activities.

This work confirms some relevant empirical results obtained in international literature about the linkages between organizational changes and working conditions. At the same time it provides an original perspective of analysis taking into account other influencing factors of workers' well being: good quality industrial relations at firm level and innovation activities such as technological innovation and ICT.

Technical progress is an important technique within improving China’s comparative advantages, as new and renewable technologies will be beneficial for energy security. Productive technical progress and green technical innovation are necessary to improve working conditions and productivity of industries. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to study technical progress in China under such harsh competitive circumstances, as well as types of technical progress that can be promoted, productive technical progress or green technology progress, and how technical progress will affect China’s competitive advantages.

The authors perform a multi-index multi-factor constitutive model based on a sample of 468 Chinese industries, and divide the industries into four categories.

The results indicate that there is a “U”-shape relationship between green technology progress and comparative advantages and an inverted “U”-shape relationship between the intensity of market competition and comparative advantages.

China has crossed the inflection point of the “U”-shaped curve. This, coupled with the slowing of economic growth, demonstrates the need for advocating green technology in China to decrease the pollutant discharge. Establishing Chinese national brands within overseas markets and earning a profit through the downstream of production chain enhance China’s international competitiveness.

One of the most original findings of this paper points out that China is faced with a situation in which exports are severely decreased and domestic environment pollution is increased. Vigorous promotion of green technology progress, improvement of the quality and the technical content of exported products, the establishment of national brand within the overseas market, as well as enhancement of China’s international competitiveness, is needed.