Job mobility and the gender wage gap in Italy

This paper investigates the contribution of gender differences in job mobility to the emergence of a gender wage gap in the Italian labour market. We show that over the first 10 years of labour market experience job mobility accounts for up to 30% of total log wage growth for men and only 8.3% for women, and that this difference is mainly due to differences in returns to mobility. The gender mobility gap is robust to the inclusion of individual, job and firm characteristics, to different ways of accounting for individual unobserved heterogeneity, and is mainly found for voluntary job moves. Looking at the characteristics of the jobs and the firms' workers move to, we find that moves to larger firms represent by far the main source of gender differences in returns to mobility. We offer two possible explanations for this finding; one which involves differences in bargaining behaviour and one which relates to the theory of compensating differentials.     

Alternatives to blanket guarantees for containing a systemic crisis

This paper seeks to explain how policy actions undertaken at the outset of recent crises—particularly the issuance of extensive liquidity support and government guarantees—absorb off-budget fiscal resources and inappropriately constrain officials’ subsequent options for restructuring their country’s troubled financial and corporate sectors. Empirical evidence supports the commonsense view that the damage a crisis works on a country’s financial sector and on its real economy is lessened by taking market-mimicking actions that promptly estimate and allocate losses during the early stages of a crisis. The most important steps are to plan to call a timeout to separate hopelessly insolvent institutions from potentially viable ones and to provide haircuts, guarantees, and liquidity support in ways that protect taxpayers and avoid subsidizing insolvent institutions’ longshot gambles for resurrection.     

Capturing the real value of patent analysis for R&D strategies

Patent information can be used for strategic planning purposes. Conventional patent analysis has commonly focused on factual information and, in particular, on information extraction, visualisation and interpretation. Less scholarly attention has been devoted to the strategic role of an integrated system of patent intelligence in supporting decision-making in R&D investments. Our paper addresses this gap and explores how patent analysis may benefit those firms that intend capturing the beneficial effects of Open Innovation. We also critically discuss the intrinsic limits of both patent information and patent analysis, which should be taken into account by systems of patent intelligence.     

Quantification of the environmental impacts of road conditions in Brazil

This study evaluates the impacts of Brazilian highway conditions on fuel consumption and, consequently, on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. For the purpose of this study, highway conditions refer to the level of highway maintenance: the incidence of large potholes, large surface cracks, uneven sections, and debris. Primary computer collected data related to the fuel consumption of three types of trucks were analyzed. The data were derived from 88 trips taken over six routes, each route representative of one of two highway conditions: better or worse. Study results are initially presented for each type of truck being monitored. The results are then aggregated to approximate the entire Brazilian highway network. In all cases, results confirmed environmental benefits resulting from travel over the better routes. There was found to be an increase in energy efficiency from traveling better roads, which resulted in lower fuel consumption and lower CO₂ emissions. Statistical analysis of the results suggests that, in general, fuel consumption data were significant at *P < 0.05, rejecting the null hypothesis that average fuel consumption from traveling the better routes is statistically equal to average fuel consumption from traveling the worse routes. Improved Brazilian road conditions would generate economic benefits, reduce dependency on and consumption of fossil fuels (due to the increase in energy efficiency), and reduce CO₂ emissions. These findings may have additional relevancy if Brazil needs to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to reach future Kyoto Protocol's emissions targets, which should take effect in January 2013.     

Diagnose: Lungenkrebs

Aufgaben der Pflege bei der Umsetzung moderner Therapieformen - Das Lungenkarzinom ist der h?ufigste b?sartige Tumor bei M?nnern und es geh?rt zu den h?ufigsten Krebserkrankungen bei Frauen. In aller Regel ist der histologische Befund und das Stadium entscheidend für die anschlie?ende Therapie.     

The new public corruption: Old questions for new challenges

This paper focuses on corruption in public procurement. It describes the contemporary face of corruption by investigating the role of public accountability in the fight against corruption. The paper describes a specific episode of corruption relative to the awarding of government contracts for big events, such as the celebration of the 150th anniversary of Italian unification. Relying on the philosophical insights of Rousseau, Popper, Kant and others, the study suggests the need for enabling a democratic control and constructing a public ethics for the common good.     

Disposition effect and analyst forecast dispersion

Behavioral finance theories posit that behavioral biases are more pronounced when there is higher information uncertainty about fundamentals. This paper examines the relation between the disposition effect, the tendency to ride losses and realize gains, and dispersion in financial analysts’ earnings forecasts for a sample of large U.S. discount brokerage accounts from January 1991 to December 1996. I find that the disposition effect is exacerbated in stocks with higher analyst forecast dispersion. In particular, the disposition effect is 10% in stocks in the highest forecast dispersion quintile and not significant in the lowest forecast dispersion quintile. The driving factor behind these findings is investors’ higher propensity to realize gains when facing higher information uncertainty. The results are robust to controlling for firm size, analyst coverage, idiosyncratic volatility, turnover, and past market-adjusted returns. The results provide supportive evidence for a behavioral bias explanation of the disposition effect consistent with mean-reversion beliefs for winners and loss actualization avoidance for losers.     

Net Foreign Asset Positions,Capital Flows and GDP Spillovers

Open Economies Review - This paper sheds light on global GDP spillovers in the context of external imbalances. We adopt a Bayesian time-varying panel vector autoregression framework to analyze the...     

Work and Volunteering: Longitudinal Relationships between Work‐Related Experiences and Volunteering Behaviour

This study examines the effect of work‐related experiences on employees’ engagement in community volunteering, using data from a British longitudinal panel of employees. Using a novel analytical approach that separates variation in volunteering due to within‐person changes in work conditions from variation due to between‐person work differences, we more robustly test existing and new hypotheses about the effects of work on volunteering. New to this literature, we find that commuting and satisfaction with job experiences are significant predictors of community volunteering, both the likelihood to volunteer and volunteering frequency. In turn, volunteering determinants previously explored with cross‐sectional data, such as managerial and professional jobs, employment sector and hourly paid contracts, are no longer statistically significant in the within‐person models. We discuss a number of important theoretical and practical consequences of these findings.