This book provides a preliminary attempt to understand the impact investors' preferences and characteristics. It offers an empirical insight of the main features characterizing social risk of Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) and explores the correlation existing between social risk and financial return. It assesses case studies of social impact investment architectures and their legal and operational limits. It also analyzes new trends in social impact measurement, focusing on the Spanish and Swedish experiences. The book concludes with a road map of priorities and policy strategy for social impact investments development.

This book investigates the relationship between corporate governance, market structure and innovation. The editors observe that a number of radical mutations are occurring in industries that have played a crucial role in sustaining and fostering the pace of technological progress. Specifically, three classes of institutional discontinuities are discussed: privatisation processes, mergers and acquisitions and liberalisation of the market. The authors aim to show that the effects of such institutional discontinuities may seriously affect, in the short term, the market value of the firm, and in the medium/long term, the performance of the national system of innovation as a whole. The book outlines the theoretical background to the empirical analyses that are later developed and illustrated using original longitudinal data set from US and European markets. It goes on to present selected empirical evidence drawn from different industries, which provide the reader with an interesting insight into how major changes in corporate governance and in market structures have affected innovation activities in high tech sectors. Finally, the authors discuss the technology policy implications that are derived from the evidences illustrated.

This book provides a preliminary attempt to understand the impact investors' preferences and characteristics. It offers an empirical insight of the main features characterizing social risk of Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) and explores the correlation existing between social risk and financial return. It assesses case studies of social impact investment architectures and their legal and operational limits. It also analyzes new trends in social impact measurement, focusing on the Spanish and Swedish experiences. The book concludes with a road map of priorities and policy strategy for social impact investments development.