http://hdl.handle.net/1889/575 Wed, 22 May 2013 03:45:08 GMT 2013-05-22T03:45:08Z http://dspace-unipr.cilea.it:80/retrieve/3035/globi.gif http://hdl.handle.net/1889/575 http://hdl.handle.net/1889/992 Title: Environment and Official Statistics: Data Needs and Data Availability Authors: Pierantoni, Isabella; Cammarota, Mara Abstract: Environment is an ambitious challenge, at European and national level, demanding innovative responses. In the Sixth Environment Action Program (6th EAP) of the European Community four target sectors were designated as areas for priority actions, climate change, nature and biodiversity, environment and health and quality of life, natural resources and waste. This choice was motivated principally by the close relation between these areas and economic growth, competitiveness and employment objectives, and the necessity to direct European efforts towards a sustainable development. This paper describes and discusses the political basis underpinning the so called Lisbon strategy and sustainable development strategy of the European Community; data needs and data availability through main indicators, selected in order to monitor the strategy according to environmental issues and some economic and social sector. Results are discussed according to EU25, EU15 and Italy, with some further deepening when possible. Some considerations on how in Italy statistical data availability could meet the environmental policy’s engagement and how cope with some data gaps are finally presented. Thu, 09 Apr 2009 10:43:22 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1889/992 2009-04-09T10:43:22Z http://hdl.handle.net/1889/959 Title: The economics of Theocracy Authors: Ferrero, Mario Abstract: This paper models theocracy as a regime where the clergy in power retains knowledge of the cost of political production but which is potentially incompetent or corrupt. This is contrasted with a secular regime where government is contracted out to a secular ruler, and hence the church loses the possibility to observe costs and creates for itself a hidden-information agency problem. The church is free to choose between regimes – a make-or-buy choice – and we look for the range of environmental parameters that are most conducive to the superiority of theocracy and therefore to its occurrence and persistence, despite its disabilities. Numerical solution of the model indicates that the optimal environment for a theocracy is likely to be one in which the “bad” (high-cost) state is disastrously bad but the probability of its occurrence is not very high. A broad review of the historical evidence yields some suggestive support to the predictions of the model. Finally, the model is shown to be applicable to the make-or-buy-government choices of other groups, such as organized labor and the military. Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:01:10 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1889/959 2008-07-10T15:01:10Z http://hdl.handle.net/1889/907 Title: Migrants’ transfers and educational expenditure: empirical evidence from Albania Authors: Cattaneo, Cristina Abstract: The present paper analyses the consumption behaviour of Albanian families. In particular the empirical work aims to cast some light upon the relationship between consumption in education and the volume of remittances, sent internally and from abroad by households members. The empirical question is whether remittances positively contribute to higher consumption in education and whether these transfers represent a distinct source of welfare from other components of total household income. Moreover, the available data set allows us to distinguish between internal and international remittances and this contributes to important insights into the understanding of the reasons to remit. In fact the different motivations behind remitting may influence the expenditure pattern out of transfers. The empirical estimation accounts for the censored nature of the education consumption through using Tobit, Heckman two-step as well as semiparametric models for sample selection are applied. A final econometric aspect that deserves concern is the possible endogeneity one of the regressors. To account for this problem, instrumental variable estimation is employed. Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:52:53 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1889/907 2008-06-06T15:52:53Z http://hdl.handle.net/1889/906 Title: Are the New Economy Stocks Independent of the Economy: A Comparison of USA and India Authors: Chakrabarti, Gagari; Chakrabarti, Anjan; Sarkar, Amitava Abstract: With the information and communication technology revolution, the global economy is transforming from a low productive, manufacture based ‘old’ economy to a knowledge based, service oriented and highly productive ‘new’ economy. In this new era, composition of stock market has changed significantly with the new economy sector adding values to the stock markets. This article inquires whether this is the initiation of a new era of changed stock price behaviour at least in the context of the new economy stocks that characterizes all the financial markets experiencing e-revolution irrespective of their level of development. It confirms a special characteristic of new economy stocks that holds across countries. Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:50:39 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1889/906 2008-06-06T15:50:39Z http://hdl.handle.net/1889/905 Title: Post-socialist transformation and growth regime: some comments about the Chinese case Authors: Charles, Sébastien; El Karouni, Ilyess Abstract: This article attempts to show that Chinese post-socialist transformation has involved a deep change in its growth regime. China's current growth strategy is the consequence of institutional changes that operated from the end of the seventies. Thus, since its transition is gradual, the economic system is "hybrid" with both capitalist and socialist elements. During the Maoist era, the growth strategy took the form of a "forced growth" as theorized by Kornai (1972). Today, it is not the case anymore since China follows an export and investment-led growth regime. Indeed,"investment hunger", inherited from the socialist system, is still standing and the economic opening of China results in an increase of its exports. This new situation could be particularly difficult to manage with respect to inflation stabilization and China’s dependence on external demand in a context of low domestic-demand. In particular, the main difficulty to which this export-led growth regime could be confronted with concerns the occurrence of an external contraction in the US. We then try to assess why such an event may appear by providing a list of external risks and their possible outlets in order to emphasize the economic vulnerability of China. Finally, we conclude on the difficulty to switch regimes and to adopt a more balanced growth strategy. Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:49:06 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1889/905 2008-06-06T15:49:06Z http://hdl.handle.net/1889/904 Title: Why Decolonization? Authors: Bonfatti, Roberto Abstract: This paper investigates the economic factors underlying decolonization, an institutional development of paramount importance in the history of most developing countries. I build a simple trade model of colonialism linking decolonization to the evolution of world factor endowments. In the model, a labour (or land) intensive colony and its capital intensive colonizer trade, creating gains from trade. These are then shared according to the balance of power existing between the two countries: while the colonizer control formal political power, the colony can stage a successful revolution at some stochastic cost. The allocation of gains from trade is also determined by the fact that the rest of the world is interested in trading with the two countries. The more similar is the rest of the world to the colonizer in terms of factor endowments, the higher the incentives for the colony to stage a revolution, the larger the probability that the colonizer must surrender gains from trade and, possibly, grant independence. Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:47:01 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1889/904 2008-06-06T15:47:01Z http://hdl.handle.net/1889/903 Title: Production offshoring and the skill composition of Italian manufacturing firms: a non-parametric analysis Authors: Antonietti, Roberto; Antonioli, Davide Abstract: This work explores the effects of production offshoring on the workforce skill composition of manufacturing firms. Its aim is to assess if the firms’ strategy to offshore production determines a domestic employment bias in favor of high-skilled workers. Using three repeated cross-sections of firm-level data over the period 1995-2003, we test the effect of production offshoring on the skill composition by looking at different measures of skills by occupational title and by employing a quasi-experimental analysis based on propensity score matching. Our results point to a modest,and in some cases down-skilling, impact of offshoring on the skill composition of Italian manufacturing: in particular, we find that firms that farmed out production activities in 1998-2000 generally employ a lower share of skilled, non manual, workers with respect to the counterfactual of non-delocalizing firms. Despite the usual findings about the negative impact of international delocalization on low-skilled employment, we find that middle-managers are the most affected category. Such evidence may find a twofold explanation: on the one hand, skilled workers can decline more than unskilled workers because of a substitution effect that is driven by the will of reducing not only redundant activities, but also to outsource complementary skill-intensive activities such as control and coordination for which middle-managers are employed for. On the other hand, skilled workers may decline in absolute terms, because of a quantity effect that occurs when firms decide to transfer managerial staff in order to coordinate and supervise the activities shifted abroad. Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:46:07 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1889/903 2008-06-06T15:46:07Z http://hdl.handle.net/1889/902 Title: Labor Market Regulation and Retirement Age Authors: Magnani, Marco Abstract: The present paper analyzes the determinants of political consensus on relevant aspects of the Social Security System and focus on the choices over employment protection and retirement age; a theoretical model is build where an equilibrium setup results from a political process involving three social groups: young, low and high productivity old. Hypothesis and results of the model are tested using macro data. The aim of the analysis is to provide some insight on the reasons why some institutional setups are supported by voters and implemented while others don’t. Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:43:23 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1889/902 2008-06-06T15:43:23Z http://hdl.handle.net/1889/901 Title: Import, Export and Turnover in Morocco Authors: Bottini, Novella; Gasiorek, Michael Abstract: International trade is commonly view as an useful tool to remove market distortions, to promote competition among firms and hence increase welfare. However, trade openness is not costless and unavoidably creates gainers and losers (Wood (1995, 1998)). Hence, a complete evaluation of the gain from trade should consider both efficiency benefits and adjustment costs. Indeed, to enjoy of the gain from trade liberalisation, some adjustment processes are required. Increasing trade will induce reallocation of resources from less efficient firms to more productive one, with a final positive effect on growth and uncertain consequences for the labour market. With increasing competition, the less efficient firms will exit from the market and the others should increase their productivity to strengthen their position. The first attempts to analyse the impact of trade on labour market focused on the net change in wage and employment levels (Bottini (2005) and Hoeckman and Winters (2005) for a review of the literature). However, further analysis have highlighted that looking at total levels of employment is likely to conceal important dynamics in the labour market and in the economic analysis (Davis and Haltiwanger, 1996). Indeed net change in total employment is derived by adding up new places available through the entry of new firms and expansion of existing firms and employment losses over shrinking and exiting establishments. Studying the link between trade liberalisation and job dynamics is hence a way to examine how increasing trade impacts on job turnover and input reallocation. Furthermore, it is important to detangle the effect of trade on labour market by dealing separately with import and export flows. The available literature shows that trade liberalisation will lead to labour reallocation, with jobs moving away from import-competing industries toward export industries (Davidson and Matusz (2001)). Intuitively, import and export flows have an opposite impact on labour market. Increasing import competition worsen market condition for domestic firms and causes firms exit and downsizing with a final negative effect on employment. On the other side, increasing exports creates more opportunities for domestic firms, induces sector expansion and creation of new jobs. Finally, trade liberalisation. has been also blamed for a “race to the bottom” in the labour market in the form of lower compliance with labour market standards, more extensive use of part-time and temporary labour, and a decrease in the job quality for the neo-employed (Goldberg and Pavcnik, 2004). Hence, it would be interesting to investigate whether trade liberalisation impact in a different way on temporary and permanent workers. The purpose of this paper is to study how import and export flows impact on job reallocation in the Moroccan economy. Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:42:12 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1889/901 2008-06-06T15:42:12Z http://hdl.handle.net/1889/900 Title: Redundancies in an industry in transition: who gets fired and why? Authors: Rinaldi, Gustavo Abstract: Does employee productivity explain why during a period of crisis firms fired relatively more blue-collar than white-collar workers and why, when conditions improved, they began to hire relatively more blue collars? Are redundancies targeted towards the least productive workers? Was firms’ behaviour profit maximising? These questions are investigated in the extreme circumstances of the footwear industry in Russia in the period 1994-2000. Firms in this industry underwent a major upheaval in these years. Part of their response was to downsize the blue-collar workforce more severely than the whitecollars. Was this because (a) white collar employees had higher marginal productivity or (b) because the technical rate of substitution of white collar labour with blue collar labour was greater than the factor price ratio of these two inputs If it turns out that the marginal productivity of white collar employees was the higher, we could conclude that they were embodying more human capital (Becker, 1962); if they were no more productive than blue collars, this could mean that they had been privileged during downsizing for some institutional reasons, e.g. a prior commitment towards higher-ranking staff (Lazear, 1979; Lazear and Rosen, 1981). If it turns out that the technical rate of substitution of white collar labour with blue collar labour was greater than their factor price ratio, this would suggest that the firms’ downsizing policies were consistent with profit-maximising precepts. Russian footwear is a suitable industry for investigation because there are many units, which use a standard technology, and with relatively little political interference. The paper uses Translog and Cobb Douglas production functions with ordinary least squares, two-step least squares and stochastic frontier analysis, both in a panel and in a cross-section setting. Results show that white collar employees were not only more productive than blue collar employees but also the technical rate of substitution of white collar labour with blue collar labour was greater than the factor price ratio of these two inputs. This suggests that even in a turbulent period and with a Soviet heritage, the firms behaved as profit-maximising agents. Institutional factors may also have operated, but they do not need to be invoked in explaining the data. Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:39:31 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1889/900 2008-06-06T15:39:31Z