Customer satisfaction and service domains: a further development of PROSERV

Quality & Quantity - This paper aims to represent that levels of customer satisfaction of tourist accommodation are an important prerequisite when the goal is building a loyal relationship with...     

Quantitative methods for the economic valuation of a cultural tourism destination: case study of the Pisa Charterhouse

Quality & Quantity - This paper aims to provide an economic valuation of the Pisa Charterhouse, a renowned monastic complex built in the fourteenth century, located in the Tuscany region of...     

Fiscal rule compliance,poverty and social exclusion in the Eurozone

This paper develops a simple model of the effects of fiscal adjustments on poverty. Our theory suggests that in richer countries the effects of fiscal adjustment are stronger the more complex is the poverty measure. By examining a panel of 16 EU countries in the period 2005–2015, the paper finds that structural public balance adjustments may harm the welfare of poorer individuals. The empirical estimation hinges on a comprehensive index of poverty and social exclusion, the AROPE index. The results suggest that rigid fiscal rules require specific alternative policies to sustain the welfare of poorer individuals during downturns.     

How limiting deceptive practices harms consumers

There are two competing sellers of an experience good, one offers high quality, one low. The low‐quality seller can engage in deceptive advertising, potentially fooling a buyer into thinking the product is better than it is. Although deceptive advertising might seem to harm the buyer, we show that he could be better off when the low‐quality seller can engage in deceptive advertising than not. We characterize the optimal deterrence rule that a regulatory agency seeking to punish deceptive practices should adopt. We show that greater protection against deceptive practices does not necessarily improve the buyer welfare.     

Limits to creative destruction and technologies in practice: the case of ham radio

Drawing on the structurationist notion of ‘technologies-in-practice’, this article analyses the different types of technological actions that users perform, after technological change, in order to keep a declining technology alive over time. The research question of the article is: How do technologies-in-practice based on the application of new technology hamper the creative destruction of old technology? The case study of ham radio technology and amateur radio operators is explored. The results of the investigation support the development of a technology-in-practice ‘experimentation’ and four inductive research propositions.     

Accomplice Witnesses and Organized Crime: Theory and Evidence from Italy

We develop an agency model of organized crime accounting for the main trade‐offs involved in the introduction of an accomplice‐witness program. We characterize the optimal policy and identify its main determinants in a framework where public officials can be dishonest. Our predictions are tested by using data for Italy before and after the introduction of the 1991 accomplice‐witness program. As predicted by the model and the earlier antitrust literature, the program appears to have strengthened deterrence and enhanced prosecution. Moreover, consistent with a novel prediction of our theory, the evidence suggests that the program efficacy is affected by the judicial system efficiency.     

Government Size,the Role of Commitments*

We explore the hypothesis that long‐term commitments affect the dynamics of government expenditure. With the aid of a simple median‐voter model we interpret the pattern of increasing‐then‐constant tax rates observed in OECD countries in the second half of the last century: persistence of public expenditure and a lower bound on new interventions will push government size upward, and preferences of the electorate put a halt to this growth at some point. In this view, the fiscal policy variable is seen to consist of only a part of the total expenditure, the rest being predetermined by its past level.     

Risk-type density diagrams by crash type on two-lane rural roads

The research presented here aims to plot density diagrams per road crash risk type to identify all possible scenarios where driving is less than safe. The starting point was the prediction of injury crash rate on horizontal homogeneous segments of two-lane rural roads for three main injurious crash types (head-on/side collisions, rear-end crashes, and single-vehicle run-off-road crashes) as observed on the network. A careful analysis of the database shows that a wide variety of factors appear to be influenced or associated with the crash dynamic, as follows: the road scenario (combination of infrastructure and environmental conditions found at the site at the time of the crash), mean lane width, the horizontal curvature indicator (measurement of the curvature change rate), and mean speed. Crashes recorded from 2003 to 2010, of which 1597 were injurious, and 645 resulted only in damage to property, were analyzed on more than 3700?km of road network in Southern Italy. Generalized estimating equations with a negative binomial distribution were implemented. Risk-type density charts were plotted to thoroughly identify all possible combinations of existing explicative variables producing hazardous conditions on the road. The different shades in the diagrams represent different ranges of injurious crash rates: the white band shows low levels, while a black band shows high values. It is not possible to consider working on an explanatory variable to reduce hazardous conditions on the road network without also considering how this variation might affect the influence of the remaining explanatory variables on crash phenomena and, consequently, on the predictive model. The risk maps make it possible to keep under control in a simple and immediate approach the way each variable as a result of variations of a part or of all.     

On Crop Biodiversity, Risk Exposure, and Food Security in the Highlands of Ethiopia

This paper investigates the effects of crop genetic diversity on farm productivity and production risk in the highlands of Ethiopia. Using a moment-based approach, the analysis uses a stochastic production function capturing mean, variance, and skewness effects. Welfare implications of diversity are evaluated using a certainty equivalent, measured as expected income minus a risk premium (reflecting the cost of risk). We find that the effect of diversity on skewness dominates its effect on variance, meaning that diversity reduces the cost of risk. The analysis also shows that the beneficial effects of diversity become of greater value in degraded land.