The actorness of the President of the Republic in Italian foreign policy: a quantitative narrative analysis of two case studies (1999–2013)

In this paper, we address the topic of policy actorness in Italian foreign policy to characterize the understudied role of the President of the Italian Republic (PoR). We apply quantitative narrative analysis (QNA) as the methodological tool of our study, answering two research questions to which the academic literature has so far produced limited responses: (a) whether the PoR can be considered a relevant actor in Italian foreign policy and (b) which factors can affect the Italian PoR’s relevance in foreign policy. Considering the Italian PoR’s Diary as the unit of analysis and source of data, we study the two crucial cases of Ciampi’s presidency (1999–2006) and Napolitano’s first presidency (2006–2013). QNA allows us to quantify and compare, while maintaining an actor-centred approach, the relations of the two PoRs with the most relevant actors in foreign policy. The results of our analyses highlight the relevance of the Italian PoR figure, identifying the main areas of influence of the Italian head of state and their changes over time. We conclude providing a few hypotheses to interpret the outcomes of our analyses on the PoR’s role in Italian foreign policy.

     

Impact of CO2 Emission Variation on Firm Performance

The quantifying and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions is one of the most important tools for monitoring and auditing proposed to mitigate climate change, and it also directly affects business. It is thus vital that at this time we learn in detail whether firms actually report on greenhouse gas emissions and make the account entries that must be included within it. This research is twofold: first to analyse the reports on greenhouse gas emissions of international firms in the 2007 and 2008 period and to see what kind of variation occurs in CO₂ emissions between 2006–2007 and 2007–2008, and second to determine the impact that this variation (2006–2007) can have on firm performance in four time periods (t, t + 1, t + 2 and t + 3) that correspond to 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010, taking two variables as a measure of firm performance, ROE and ROA, and considering a time period affected by a financial crisis. The results obtained show that there was a reduction in CO₂ emissions in the 2006–2007 period, and also in the 2007–2008 period. As regards the impact that the variation in CO₂ emissions has on ROE and ROA, CO₂ emission variation is a significant but negative variable only for ROA_2007 and for the rest of the years it is not statistically significant either for ROE or ROA. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

A composite policy tool to measure territorial resilience capacity

The 2007–2008 global recession and consequent slow recovery have revealed considerable heterogeneity in economic performance across countries and regions. This study contributes innovatively to existing resilience literature by identifying a life cycle resilience framework and computing a “handy” composite Regional Economic Resilience Indicator. We analyse economic resilience by means of a cluster and exploratory spatial data analysis, revealing well-defined spatial patterns in the EU. National resilience trends dominate in the EU-15, while a more heterogeneous spatial pattern is present in the EU-13. Our findings can support the monitoring of economic resilience at regional level and facilitate a common understanding of this complex and dynamic process for policy purposes.     

Comparing German and Italian Public Universities: Convergence or Divergence in the Higher Education Landscape?

In this paper, we examine and compare the efficiency of Italian and German public universities and its evolution in the period 2001–2007. This topic is particularly important because of two main reasons: (i) as the universities are funded through public money in both countries, it is necessary to assess whether it has been used efficiently; (ii) the comparison among (similar) European countries can stimulate a benchmarking exercise that can be useful for managerial and policy making purposes. The results show that German universities are more efficient than their Italian counterparts are, using data envelopment analysis. However, the latter are catching up: in the period 2001–2007, their efficiency has improved more rapidly. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

AN ENVIRONMENTAL/INPUT–OUTPUT LINEAR PROGRAMMING MODEL TO REACH THE TARGETS FOR GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS SET BY THE KYOTO PROTOCOL

The Kyoto Protocol contains legally binding targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for industrialized countries. The importance of this agreement and the elaboration of a climate change policy make it necessary to define and establish national policy measures and to bring into force environmental regulations that will reduce GHG emissions. Extending our knowledge of the economic-ecologic relationships that exist within the production sphere can assist in defining and implementing successful environmental policies. In this paper, an Environmental/Input–Output linear programming model is proposed. To develop the model we consider the input–output model as a linear programming problem combining two types of restrictions: environmental restrictions establishing GHG emission targets, and economic restrictions. The model shows how targets for the emissions of GHGs may be reached and can affect production activity composition.     

Youth labour market performances in the Russian and Italian regions

The focus of this paper is on youth unemployment in Italy and Russia: in both countries, youth unemployment rates (YURs) are higher than adult (or total) ones. Despite these general trends, there are significant regional differences in YURs and above-average YUR regions tend to cluster close to each other. Moreover, a distinction between “North” and “South” regions seems appropriate for both countries. The purpose of this study is to identify key determinants of YURs in the Russian and Italian regions, for the period 2000–2009. We also search for the existence of distance spatial effects. In particular, we estimate a modified Arellano–Bond model for the regional YUR, including some explanatory and control variables (e.g. regional GDP in PPP, regional population density, regional total unemployment rate), together with year dummies and North/South dummies. The use of distance matrixes enables important analysis to be conducted on the role played by spatial effects, which turn out to be significant. Also the negative impact of the 2008–2009 crisis is statistically confirmed (at least in the case of Italy). The relevant policy implications are highlighted in the conclusions.     

Measurement of development and regional disparities in Greek periphery: A multivariate approach

The identification of regional disparities and regional growth patterns is an important factor affecting policy formulation. Single indicator, usually GDP-based, approaches have revealed significant shortcomings. In this work we provide a methodology and the respective tools to analyse regional disparities and development patterns. Aiming at capturing the different aspects of development and quality of life our approach is multi-dimensional: we, first, develop a composite index; we, then, apply multivariate clustering for identifying regions with similar socio-economic profiles. The methodology is applied to examine Greek regions. The results do not provide strong evidence for convergence of Greek regions during the period 1995–2007.     

High-growth firms: does location matter?

The challenge for economies lies in boosting employment growth, not just by fostering entrepreneurship, but also by improving the growth potential of existing firms. Consequently, many studies have focused on assessing the dynamism of firms, and especially the capacity of high-growth firms (HGFs) to generate employment. This study aimed to identify HGFs in Spain during two periods, 2003–2006 and 2007–2010 and to analyse their characteristics and territorial distribution during the initial years of the economic crisis. Accordingly, a key area of inquiry of the study was the influence of agglomeration (in metropolitan areas, industrial districts and technological districts) on the locations of HGFs. To analyse the influence of location on the probability of firms being HGFs, a logit model was estimated. The main results supported the study’s hypotheses that technological districts and large urban areas are significantly associated with the probability of firms being HGFs, because firms profit from comparative locational advantages offered by these areas. The importance of HGFs requires special emphasis in relation to Spain’s context of economic crisis and high unemployment levels because of their significant contribution to employment generation.     

Economic reforms and income distribution in Turkey

The aim of this paper is, first, to find out the income sources of the improvement in income inequality in the reform period between 2002 and 2007. s, we aim to assess the distributional impacts of macroeconomic policies over the 2002–2007 reform period by examining the contributions of different income groups to overall inequality. Income data obtained from the Household Budget Surveys of TurkStat covering the 2002–2013 period are used. The results show that there have been significant improvements in the income distribution after 2002. The extent of this improvement seems to have been higher during the 2002–2007 reform period than for the rest of the period after 2007. Entrepreneurial and financial income groups were the most distinctive for this improvement. The results also indicate that the contribution of transfer payments was very small, but surprisingly positive in both the 2002–2007 and 2007–2009 periods, and expectedly negative in the 2009–2013 period.     

COMMODITY MARKET REGULATION AFTER FINANCIAL CRISIS: A COMPARATIVE APPROACH

The United States Federal Government has imposed remarkably similar regulations on commodity markets after financial crises, particularly after the Great Depression and the recent financial crisis beginning in 2007. A comparison of these two great economic recessions will help identify the changes in commodity regulation policy over the past century.     

Efficiency of Regional Public Investment: An NPV-Based Spatial Econometric Approach

This paper develops a new methodology of spatial econometric modelling for regional public investment in local economies. The approach, based on the financial concept of net present value of cash flows, can be applied in the analysis of regional public investment with long-term financial inputs and outputs. With local public revenues related to spending in the model, one can observe economies of scale of investment with possible saturation effects and a marginal investment multiplier, explaining the extent to which public investment costs translate into public revenues. The main advantage of the proposed model is to behave counter-cyclically due to accumulation over the periods and to cover multi-period investments as well as postponed effects. This paper gives an example of public investment efficiency in Polish NUTS-5 municipalities regions.     

Do environmental regulations hamper small enterprises' market entry? Evidence from China

Due to the serious increase of environmental pollution in China, environmental regulations have become significantly stringent. Such regulations are playing an increasingly important role in the development of small enterprises (SEs) in China, especially in SEs' market entry. However, existing studies pay little attention to this issue. This paper investigates for the first time the effect of environmental regulations on SEs' market entry and the mechanism of environmental regulation effects in China. We consider two sets of panel data for the periods 2003–2010 and 2012–2015 in China. We also use the fixed effect model and the instrumental variable method to explore the role of environmental regulations in SEs' market entry. The results show that, overall, environmental regulations play a significantly positive and robust role in SEs' market entry. However, the mechanisms associated with the effect of environmental regulations on different innovative types of SEs differ. Environmental regulations promote the market entry of SEs with product innovation, but this impact is not significant for SEs with research and development (R&D) activities and R&D institutions. Our findings indicate that China's SEs prefer product innovation, which is a lower level innovative type, over R&D innovation, as a means to avoid the negative impact of stringent environmental regulations.     

The evolution and determinants of Chinese property insurance companies’ profitability: A DEA-based perspective

The property insurance industry grows fast in China and it is necessary to further investigate the profitability of the Chinese property insurance industry. This study investigates the evolution and determinants of the profitability of 53 Chinese property insurers during the year 2013–2017. Profitability is measured by profit ratio efficiency by data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology and a profit ratio change index is applied to compare the performance of these insurers over different periods. Tobit regression models are used to investigate several influencing factors of profitability. The empirical results show the importance of proper arrangement of costs and revenues for an insurer and help to better understand the effect of firm size, age, and product specification on profitability. Some policy implications and suggestions are also proposed.     

Cohesion Policy Funds and local government autonomy: Evidence from Italian municipalities

In this article we investigate the effect of the European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy funds dedicated to administrative capacity building on the local government autonomy for the Italian case focusing on municipalities taking part to the programming cycle 2007–13. From an empirical perspective, the causal impact is estimated using a Difference-in-Differences (DiD) design with continuous treatment combined with a Propensity Score Matching approach. We exploit a unique database developed by the open government initiative on cohesion policies in Italy (OpenCoesione), which collects detailed information at municipality level on financed EU projects. Our results show that the specific Cohesion Policy funds have a positive and significant effect on the local government autonomy measured in terms of taxation autonomy.     

Regional Inequalities in Consumption Patterns: A Multilevel Approach to the Case of Italy

The main aim of this paper is to evaluate the disparities in the Italian regions on the demand side. In more detail, an attempt will be made to find if the consumption behaviour of Italian households is different in the regions. With this in mind, Istat's 2000 Italian Family Budget data set was analysed. The data in question, which were collected through a two‐stage sample over Italy's 20 regions, contains information regarding the expenses of approximately 23,000 households. In this analysis, both households and regions are considered as units: households are nested in the regions so that the basic data structure is hierarchical. In order to take this hierarchical structure into account, a multilevel model was used, making it possible for parameters to vary randomly from region to region. The model in question also made it possible to consider heterogeneity across different groups (regions), such as stochastic variation. First, regional inequalities were tested using a simple model in which households constituted the first level of analysis and were grouped according to their region (the second level). As a second step, and in order to investigate the interaction between geographical context and income distribution, another model was used. This was cross‐classified by income and regions. The most relevant results showed that there is wide fragmentation of consumption behaviour and, at the same time, various differentiated types of behaviour in the regions under analysis. These territorial differentials become clear from income class and items of consumption.     

Deviations from rules-based policy and their effects

Rules-based monetary policy evaluation has long been central to macroeconomics. Using the original Taylor rule, a modified Taylor rule with a higher output gap coefficient, and an estimated Taylor rule, we define rules-based and discretionary eras by smaller and larger policy rule deviations, the absolute value of the difference between the actual federal funds rate and the federal funds rate prescribed by the three rules. We use tests for multiple structural changes to identify the eras so that knowledge of subsequent economic outcomes cannot influence the choice of the dates. With the original Taylor rule, monetary policy in the U.S. is characterized by a rules-based era until 1974, a discretionary era from 1974 to 1985, a rules-based era from 1985 to 2000, and a discretionary era from 2001 to 2013. With the modified Taylor rule, the rules-based era extends further into the 1970s and there is an additional rules-based period starting in 2006. We calculate various loss functions and find that economic performance is uniformly better during rules-based eras than during discretionary eras, and that the original Taylor rule provides the largest loss during discretionary periods relative to loss during rules-based periods.     

The risk of inappropriateness: An analysis of the hospitalisations in the Italian geriatric wards

In the last years, the issue of health care for the elderly population is becoming increasingly relevant. Italy could be considered one among the oldest countries in Europe: in 2018 the population aged 65 and over is 22.6% of the Italian population with an aging index of 168.7%. Moreover, a high percentage (49.6%) of elderly people shows at least one of chronic/chronic degenerative disease. This situation, considering an increasing 65-year-old life expectancy, will lead the Italian Health System to cope with a significant increase in healthcare consumption. This work will analyse the ordinary acute admissions in the geriatric wards of the Italian hospitals using the Hospital Discharge Data with the aim is to identify the risk of inappropriateness of the hospitalisations.     

Analyzing the emotional impact of COVID-19 with Twitter data: Lessons from a B-VAR analysis on Italy

The novel coronavirus 2019 revolutionized the way of living and the communication of people making social media a popular tool to express concerns and perceptions. Starting from this context we built an original database based on the Twitter users’ emotions shown in the early weeks of the pandemic in Italy. Specifically, using a single index we measured the feelings of four groups of stakeholders (journalists, people, doctors, and politicians), in three groups of Italian regions (0,1,2), grouped according to the impact of the COVID-19 crises as defined by the Conte Government Ministerial Decree (8^th March 2020). We then applied B-VAR techniques to analyze the sentiment relationships between the groups of stakeholders in every Region Groups. Results show a high influence of doctors at the beginning of the epidemic in the Group that includes most of Italian regions (Group 0), and in Lombardy that has been the region of Italy hit the most by the pandemic (Group 2). Our outcomes suggest that, given the role played by stakeholders and the COVID-19 magnitude, health policy interventions based on communication strategies may be used as best practices to develop regional mitigation plans for the containment and contrast of epidemiological emergencies.     

Estimating floating voters: a comparison between the ecological inference and the survey methods

There are two main approaches to estimating the proportion of the electorate who are floating voters: the survey method and the ecological estimate method. Both the methods have their advantages and their problems. The main difficulties with the survey method are the coverage of the sample and the problems introduced by reliance on the quality of memory of the subjects. Ecological estimates have different problems, the principal of which is known as the ecological fallacy. The aim of this paper is to assess whether the survey and ecological estimates of voter swing between two elections are significantly different. For this purpose I will consider the 2006 and 2008 Italian Parliamentary elections. Given the short temporal gap between these two elections, both the methods should give reliable estimates, as the shorter the time between the two elections, the fewer the problems which will be encountered by subjects recalling the party they voted for in the previous one, and the fewer the changes which will have taken place in the composition of the population between the two elections. The ecological data I will employ comprise all the votes cast in both of the elections under consideration (2006 and 2008), at the polling station level. In Italy there are about 60,000 polling stations, and I will analyse the data from these using the Goodman Model. The survey data has been provided by Italian National Election Studies (ITANES), and consists of a large representative sample, obtained by interviews conducted by CATI.     

Forecasting economic and financial variables with global VARs

This paper considers the problem of forecasting economic and financial variables across a large number of countries in the global economy. To this end a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) model, previously estimated by Dees, di Mauro, Pesaran, and Smith (2007) and Dees, Holly, Pesaran, and Smith (2007) over the period 1979Q1–2003Q4, is used to generate out-of-sample forecasts one and four quarters ahead for real output, inflation, real equity prices, exchange rates and interest rates over the period 2004Q1–2005Q4. Forecasts are obtained for 134 variables from 26 regions, which are made up of 33 countries and cover about 90% of the world output. The forecasts are compared to typical benchmarks: univariate autoregressive and random walk models. Building on the forecast combination literature, the effects of model and estimation uncertainty on forecast outcomes are examined by pooling forecasts obtained from different GVAR models estimated over alternative sample periods. Given the size of the modelling problem, and the heterogeneity of the economies considered–industrialised, emerging, and less developed countries–as well as the very real likelihood of possibly multiple structural breaks, averaging forecasts across both models and windows makes a significant difference. Indeed, the double-averaged GVAR forecasts perform better than the benchmark competitors, especially for output, inflation and real equity prices.