Production Theory: Accounting for Firm Heterogeneity and Technical Change

The paper presents a new framework to assess firm level heterogeneity and to study the rate and direction of technical change. Building on the analysis of revealed short‐run production functions by Hildenbrand ( 1981 ), we propose the (normalized) volume of the zonotope composed by vectors‐firms as indicator of inter‐firm heterogeneity. Moreover, the angles that the zonotope's main diagonal form with the axes provide a measure of the rates and directions of productivity change. The proposed framework also accounts for n‐inputs and m‐outputs and, crucially, the measures of heterogeneity and technical change do not require many of the standard assumptions from production theory.     

Optimality conditions¶and bubbles in sequential economies¶and bounded relative risk-aversion

We provide specific qualifications in order that Kuhn–Tucker type Euler equations and transversality conditions at infinity hold in stochastic equilibrium models with heterogeneous agents and where assets are traded in sequential markets. It is not assumed that uncertainty is modeled as an event-tree structure or that preferences are necessarily bounded. We also describe an important class of preferences based on bounded relative risk aversion which yields relevant simplifications. Our results are used to establish conditions that rule out asset pricing bubbles. Specific examples of economies with bubbles are also discussed. Received: 28 January 2002 / Accepted: 19 July 2002 We are grateful to the editor and an anonymous referee for their valuable comments. This research was partially supported by MURST (Italy), National Group on “Nonlinear Dynamics and Stochastic Models in Economics and Finance”.     

Panel data and descriptor for energy econometrics – an efficiency,resilience and innovation analysis

Quality & Quantity - The work at hand presents a new extensive panel dataset for energy economics, econometrics and policy. The referred dataset is made of 5000 observations circa, including 6...     

Multiple aspect testing for case-control designs

When testing for the equality of two distributions in a case-control design with treatment effects presumed to act possibly on more than one aspect, different tests may be properly considered for testing for different features of a null hypothesis, leading to the multiple aspect testing issue. Two different aspects are therefore of interest: the location-aspect, based on the comparison of location indexes, and the distributional-aspect, based on the comparison of the empirical distribution functions. A simulation study shows that the combined testing procedure exhibits a good robust overall performance, and an application in biomedical research is also presented.     

Technological regimes and demand structure in the evolution of the pharmaceutical industry

This paper examines how the nature of the technological regime governing innovative activities and the structure of demand interact in determining market structure, with specific reference to the pharmaceutical industry. The key question concerns the observation that—despite high degrees of R&D and marketing-intensity—concentration has been consistently low during the whole evolution of the industry. Standard explanations of this phenomenon refer to the random nature of the innovative process, the patterns of imitation, and the fragmented nature of the market into multiple, independent submarkets. We delve deeper into this issue by using an improved version of our previous “history-friendly” model of the evolution of pharmaceuticals. Thus, we explore the way in which changes in the technological regime and/or in the structure of demand may generate or not substantially higher degrees of concentration. The main results are that, while technological regimes remain fundamental determinants of the patterns of innovation, the demand structure plays a crucial role in preventing the emergence of concentration through a partially endogenous process of discovery of new submarkets. However, it is not simply market fragmentation as such that produces this result, but rather the entity of the “prize” that innovators can gain relative to the overall size of the market. Further, the model shows that emerging industry leaders are innovative early entrants in large submarkets.     

Peer punishment in teams: expressive or instrumental choice?

A key question about human societies is how social norms of cooperation are enforced. Subjects who violate norms are often targeted by their peers for punishment. In an experiment with small teams we examine whether subjects treat punishment itself as a second-order public good. Results do not support this view and rather suggest a hard-wired taste for punishment; subjects are engaged in a cooperative task but ignore the public good characteristics of punishment.     

Does player specialization predict player actions? Evidence from penalty kicks at FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro Cup

Penalty kicks are analysed in the literature as ‘real life experiments’ for assessing the use of rational mixed strategies by professional players. However, each penalty kick cannot be considered a repetition of the same event because of the varying background conditions, in particular the heterogeneous ability of different players. Consequently, aggregate statistics over data sets composed of a large number of penalty kicks mediate the behaviour of the players in different games, and the properties of optimal mixed strategies cannot be tested directly because of aggregation bias. In this article, we model the heterogeneous ability of players. We then test the hypothesis that differently talented players randomize over different actions. To achieve this aim, we study a data set that collects penalties kicked during shoot-out series in the last editions of FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro Cup (1994–2012) where kickers are categorized as specialists and non-specialists. The results support our theoretical predictions.     

Survey measures of risk aversion and prudence

This paper utilizes a thought experiment conducted by the Bank of Italy to estimate absolute and relative risk aversion along with absolute and relative prudence for a broad cross-section of Italian households. Upper and lower bounds are calculated for each parameter, and comparisons are made across socio-demographic groups. Evidence is found of decreasing absolute risk aversion, decreasing absolute prudence, increasing relative risk aversion, and increasing relative prudence.     

The Zonal and Seasonal CO2 Marginal Emissions Factors for the Italian Power Market

Environmental and Resource Economics - This paper estimates the seasonal and zonal $${\mathrm{CO}}_{2}$$ marginal emissions factors (MEFs) from electricity production in the Italian electricity...