Virtual forms for the organization of production: A comparative analysis

In the present competitive environment, excellence in each phase of the productive process and flexibility are critical requirements in every business. Virtual enterprises have been proposed as an inter-organizational model characterized by both strong incentives to suppliers’ performance and high flexibility. Nonetheless, virtual enterprises are not ubiquitous as some suggest they should be. This paper compares virtual enterprises with other models for the organization of production: Markets, vertically integrated firms and networks. We formulate hypotheses that virtual enterprises are suitable for firms producing complex, modular products, with frequent changes in components, but low knowledge specificity. Virtual enterprises are suitable for a group of industries that is limited, but of growing importance.     

Preferenza sociale non transitiva e teorema di Arrow

Questo lavoro estende il teorema di impossiblità di Arrow al caso di preferenza sociale stretta non transitiva. In particolare, si dimostra che se una Funzione di Decisione Sociale (FDS) soddisfa le condizioni di dominio universale, indipendenza dalle alternative irrilevanti, transitività della relazione di indifferenza sociale, il principio di Pareto forte e la regola di indifferenza paretiana, allora la FDS deve essere dittatoriale. Vengono inoltre illustrate le implicazioni di tale risultato per il caso in cui la FDS soddisfa la condizione di dualità.

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Summary This paper extend's Arrow's impossiblity theorem to the case where strict social preference may be intransitive. The main result of the paper is that if a Social Decision Function satisfies Unrestricted Domain, Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives, Transitivity of Social Indifference, the Strong Pareto Principle, and the Pareto Indifference Rule, then there exists a dictator. An application of this result is a new impossibility theorem concerning SDF obeying the condition of Duality. As a by-product of this analysis, the relationships between Neutrality and Duality are somewhat clarified.

     

Measuring ‘indirect’ investments in ICT in OECD countries

ABSTRACT

ICT components, such as microprocessors, may be embodied in other capital goods not recorded as ICT in National Accounts. We name ‘indirect ICT investment’ the value of embodied ICT components in non-ICT investment. The paper provides estimates of ‘indirect ICT investment’ based on detailed and unpublished Supply-Use tables (SUT) in 12 OECD countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Our main finding is that ICT investment appears significantly higher when considering its indirect component, the average increase being about 35%. The inclusion of indirect ICT investment, excluding software (for which firms’ expenditures are difficult to measure), changes significantly the relative position of countries with respect to the ICT intensity of their investments. The inclusion of software further increases indirect ICT investment but the increase is smaller (in percentage) than without this inclusion. A final result, but concerning only three countries, it that the diagnosis of a stabilisation, or even a decrease, of ICT investment in percentage of GDP or of total investment, observed from the beginning of the century, is not modified if we take into account the indirect ICT investment.     

Private versus public consumption within groups: testing the nature of goods from aggregate data

We study the testability implications of public versus private consumption in collective models of group consumption. The distinguishing feature of our approach is that we start from a revealed preference characterization of collectively rational behavior. Remarkably, we find that assumptions regarding the public or private nature of specific goods do have testability implications, even if one only observes the aggregate group consumption. In fact, these testability implications apply as soon as the analysis includes three goods and four observations. This stands in sharp contrast with existing results that start from a differential characterization of collectively rational behavior.     

A signaling model of environmental overcompliance

We present a theory of unilateral regulatory overcompliance as a signaling device. Firms that have a competitive advantage in the use of a cleaner but more costly technology overcomply in order to signal to an imperfectly informed, benevolent government that compliance costs are low, thereby triggering tougher regulation. We identify the conditions under which such an overcompliance signaling equilibrium arises, showing that there may be over-overcompliance in that firms may overcomply even when tougher regulation is not socially desirable. We also discuss the differential implications of the signaling theory as compared to other theories of unilateral regulatory overcompliance.     

Health provider choice and implicit rationing in healthcare: Evidence from Mozambique

An analysis of health provider choice together with a model of implicit rationing in healthcare is presented using Mozambique as a case study. We make use of the Mozambican Household Surveys on Living Conditions 2002/3 and 2008/9. Updated and sometimes contrasting results with respect to similar analyses on older Mozambican data are obtained. In particular, we find that the role of income is more important in 2002/3 and in 2008/9 than it was in 1996/7. In consequence, we further expand the analysis by studying how socioeconomic disparities among other factors influence implicit rationing in healthcare. When using the 2008/9 survey only, moderate evidence that some sort of implicit healthcare rationing is in place is found; that is, some people do not seek care because they foresee they will not be granted quality healthcare access or treatment.     

A Hausman-type test to detect the presence of influential outliers in regression analysis

In regression analysis, classical estimations may be excessively influenced by a few atypical observations. We propose a Hausman-type test to balance robustness and efficiency and to check whether a robust method should be implemented. An economic application is presented.     

The impact of fiscal-monetary policy interactions on government size and macroeconomic performance

This paper analyzes the relationship between inflation, output and government size by reexamining the time inconsistency of optimal monetary and fiscal policies in a general equilibrium model with staggered timing structure for the acquisition of nominal money à la Neiss (Neiss, Katharine S. (1999), Discretionary Inflation in a General Equilibrium Model, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 31(3), pp. 357–374.), and public expenditure financed by means of a distortive tax. It is shown that, with predetermined wages, the equilibrium rate of inflation is above the Friedman rule and the equilibrium tax rate is below the efficient level. In particular, the discretionary rate of inflation is nonmonotonically related to the natural output, positively related to government size, and negatively related to the degree of central bank conservatism. Finally, a regime with commitment leads to welfare improvements over a regime with discretion.