Financial development and remittances: Micro-econometric evidence

We estimate a behavioural model of household’s remittances to investigate to what extent the level of financial development in the home country affects decisions on whether and how much to remit.     

Between Wicksell and Hayek

A bstract Mises' Theory is grounded on the "ultra-Wicksellian" idea that the pure credit system represents the working of a modern monetary economy, and that forcing banks to raise the rate of money interest does not need to operate through some binding bank-liquidity constraint. It is the rise in the relative price of consumption goods against production goods that accounts for the end of inflation. According to Mises, it is in the power of the banks to resist this readjustment; in this event, the only end to hyperinflation comes from the breaking of the monetary system. Hayek develops the second side of Mises'argument, the capital-allocation effect, while the first side, the ultra-Wicksellian picture of the monetary economy, is either weakened or taken for granted. Wicksell's 1914 reaction to Mises'book is recalled. Some criticism of Mises'readjustment mechanism from a Keynesian-Schumpeterian point of view is offered in the concluding remarks.     

Modelling Determinants of Participation,Number of Trips and Site Choice for Outdoor Recreation in Protected Areas

This is a study on demand for outdoor recreation in a national system of environmentally protected areas. The exercise is based on a nationwide survey carried out in 1996 from a stratified random sample of 5,574 Italian households. Data on socio‐economic characteristics and recreational choice behaviour of respondents were collected and this information was supplemented by a second data‐base containing information on 193 Italian EPAs in order to characterise the different outdoor destinations on the basis of their recreational attributes. These data sets are used here to model choices of outdoor recreation within environmentally protected areas, using a sequence of three different models: (i) a dichotomous choice logit model for the probability of participation conditional on household covariates; (ii) a count data Poisson model to estimate the household's expected number of trips per year; (iii) a conditional logit model to estimate the probability of site selection conditional on site attributes. We report the estimated per‐trip welfare changes derivable from an actual policy proposal which would extend the area under environmental protection by ten per cent.     

A top-down approach and a decision support system for the design and management of logistic networks

This paper presents an original top-down approach, made of original models and solving methods, and a decision support system (DSS) for the execution of the strategic planning, the tactical planning and the operational planning in a multi-echelon multi-stage multi-commodity and multi-period production, distribution and transportation system. The DSS is a software platform useful for the design, management and control of real instances. It can efficiently supports the decision making process of logistic managers and planners of large enterprises as multi-facilities companies and production–distribution networks. A significant case study is illustrated. The results obtained by the application of different problem settings are compared and discussed.     

The Nature and Causes of Effective Human Resource Management

Abstract : Four models of the causes of effective human resource management were tested using a large sample of national health service (NHS) provider trusts and districts. The four models, labelled organizational integration, policy integration, functional integration and process integration, were operationalized and tested in a regression analysis against a range of qualitative and quantitative measures of HRM effectiveness. The results reveal little or no association between the qualitative and quantitative measures of effectiveness and show that the models are better at explaining qualitative effectiveness. The most strongly supported models are organizational integration, reflected particularly in the formalization by senior management of HRM policy, and process integration, reflected in the quality and efficiency of personnel service and support. There is little support for policy integration — the idea of a coherent policy focus — and none at all for functional integration, that is, the view that a personnel department generously staffed by professional specialists will enhance effectiveness. The theoretical and policy implications of these results are discussed.     

Public goods, merit goods, and the relation between private and government consumption

In this paper, we investigate the relation between public and private consumption, by constructing a general government spending data set, by function, for 12 European countries. In particular, we split government consumption into two categories. The first category—“public goods”—includes defence, public order, and justice. The second category—“merit goods”—includes health, education, and other services that could have been provided privately. Equations from a relatively general permanent income model are estimated by GMM. The estimates are fairly robust in showing that public goods substitute while merit goods complement private consumption. However, the relation between merit goods and private goods turns out to be stronger than that between public goods and private goods. Thus, in the aggregate government and private consumption are complements.     

Author Index Volume 23 2002

Authors Index

Author Index Volume 23 2002     

The relationship between firm growth and labor demand

Gibrat's Law is tested on a sample of Italian firms. The results are similar to those recently obtained on various sets of U.S. data and confirm that departures from Gibrat's Law are modest, also when firms' age is accounted for.     

Banks' Inefficiency and Economic Growth: A Micro‐Macro Approach

This paper offers a methodological contribution to the empirical analysis of the relationship between banking and economic growth by suggesting a new indicator for the state of development of the banking system based on a measure of bank microeconomic efficiency. This choice helps to overcome the problem of causality and to capture the effects of banks' activity on growth. This new approach is then applied to analyse the relationship between the banking system and economic growth in the Italian regions, through a dynamic panel technique. The empirical results show the existence of an independent effect exerted by the efficiency of banks on regional growth.