Competition Among Universities and the Emergence of the Élite Institution

We consider an environment where two education institutions compete by selecting the proportion of their funding devoted to teaching and research and the criteria for admission for their students, and where students choose whether and where to attend university. We study the relationship between the cost incurred by students for attending a university located away from their home town and the equilibrium configuration that emerges in the game played by the universities. Symmetric equilibria, where universities choose the same admission standard, only exist when the mobility cost is high; when the mobility cost is very low, there is no pure strategy equilibrium. For intermediate values of the mobility cost, only asymmetric equilibria may exist; the final section of the paper provides an example where asymmetric equilibria do indeed exist for a plausible and robust set of parameters.     

The Editorial Boards of Italian Economics Journals: Women,Gender, and Social Networking

In Italy, women's advancement in economics has been curtailed by the structure of editorial boards of Italian economics journals. In this paper, we examine the presence of men and women economists on the editorial boards of thirty-six Italian economics journals published since 1970 and analyze the gender distribution across different kinds of boards, roles, and fields. Because boards are hierarchically ordered, women work mostly in the lower positions, and the increase in women's participation has led only to more "editorial secretaries." Since men and women tend to have different scientific interests and men's standards of academic value prevail, women economists cannot build publication records as strong as those of their male colleagues, which, in turn, affects women's hiring, promotion, and wages, as well as the shape of the discipline.     

The Effect of Protest Votes on the Estimates of WTP for Use Values of Recreational Sites

Contingent valuation studies are often characterized by a considerable number of protest responses, which may cause selectivity bias on the final estimates for WTP. Sample selection models can detect and – if necessary – correct selectivity bias. In economic applications where the relevant dependent variable is continuous, sample selection models are generally estimated using Heckman's 2-step method rather than the FIML estimator. Either method has its own drawback: computational complexity for the FIML method, susceptibility to collinearity problems for the 2-step method. Using data on valuation of forest resources for recreational use, we analyse the performance of the two estimators. In this application, given the presence of some collinearity, the FIML is preferred to the 2-step method. A procedure is outlined to deal with selectivity problems in similar settings.     

Going up and down: rethinking the empirics of growth in the developing and newly industrialized world

Growth dynamics are remarkably heterogeneous, in particular when one focuses on developing countries. Economic miracles and failures are embedded within extended phases of either growth or decline. In this paper, we analyze the growth patterns of developing and newly industrialized countries on the basis of structural breaks and growth regimes experienced. Emphasizing the presence of broken trends, we focus on the difference between expansionary and recessionary regimes of medium length, and we show that models of takeoffs and exponential growth are inadequate to characterize the majority of observed growth dynamics. Then, we move to a systematic classification of different patterns and we isolate an additional stylized fact characterizing the process of growth and development. In particular, our results show that expansionary regimes are associated with convergence and positive correlation between growth and (short run) volatility. By contrast, in recessionary regimes, poorer countries face deeper failures and a negative correlation between growth and volatility is found, indicating that output fluctuates less around the trend during strong rather than mild recessions. Catching-up phenomena are infrequent but more likely to occur across categories of growth patterns rather than within. Finally, we discover that regimes of growth and recession show similar average length (about 16 years). Although recessions are, on average, remarkably pronounced (14% loss of GDP per capita), the magnitude of growth is much larger during expansions. In sum, our results underline that stable positive growth is hardly achieved in developing countries, which rather alternate long phases of expansions with equally long phases of recession. Moreover, cross-sectional empirical regularities are found to differ between regimes of positive and negative growth.     

COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY AS INSURANCE: THE INVESTMENT BEHAVIOUR OF NON‐PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS

ABSTRACT ** : We provide a new explanation for commercial activities by non‐profit organizations whose primary concern is to supply mission output. Starting from the observation that donations to individual non‐profits are often highly volatile, we show how investment in commercial activity can constitute a form of insurance for mission activity. Although investment in commercial activity has an opportunity cost in terms of capacity to produce mission output, if donations turn out to be low the commercial revenue will enable cross‐subsidization of mission output. The equilibrium commercial investment is (weakly) positively related to the degree of risk aversion.     

Modelling the influence of caring for the elderly on migration: estimates and evidence from Indonesia

In a society where children are expected to support the elderly, the ill health of an elderly parent is likely to influence an individual's propensity to migrate. Using data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey, we examine the manner in which the responsibility to care for an elderly parent who is in poor health affects the migration decisions of working-age adults. Our analysis suggests that individuals will be less likely to migrate if they have elderly parents who are in poor health. These findings are robust to specifications using alternative measures of poor health.     

Unlocking the potential of Italian broadband: Case studies and policy lessons

A number of regional initiatives have recently revived the Italian broadband sector, although their fortunes vary depending on governance, market and geographical issues. However, all these initiatives jointly succeeded in sparking a heated debate on how public–private interplay can facilitate the deployment of broadband networks in a country still lagging behind European frontrunners such as Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands. In the light of European Union regulation and recent case law, the paper examines three regional initiatives (Progetto Banda Ultra Larga Lombardia, Trentino Network and Lepida Emilia Romagna) by using the conceptual model on public private interplay developed by Nucciarelli, Sadowski, and Achard (2010). Thereafter, the paper elaborates on initiatives' ups and downs to focus on conditions and trigger events that have made them a success or a failure story. Lessons learnt conclude.     

How does technological innovation and diffusion affect inter-industry workers’ mobility?

Does technological change amount to accumulation of general, and so transferable, human capital? To approach this question I rely on a theoretical framework in which the “technology distance” between industries reduces inter-industry transferability of workers’ skill. Empirically, I use US panel data on individual intra-industry and inter-industry mobility decisions between 1982 and 1990, a period of rapid technological change in all manufacturing sectors, to estimate a mixed logit econometric specification that does not rely on the IIA assumption. I find support to the main idea that technological innovation and diffusion have different effects on workers’ industrial mobility patterns. “Knowledge spillovers”, differently from “rent spillovers”, indeed boost the chances of workers’ inter-industry mobility. Surprisingly, this is more consistently so in low-tech industries than in high-tech industries. Consistently with the expectations developed in the theoretical framework, in low-tech industries skilled workers respond more sharply to technology diffusion than unskilled workers.     

Restructuring the Alitalia business model

This paper analyzes the performance of the Italian airline company, Alitalia, after the deregulation in the air transport industry in the European Union. Company performance is analyzed using Tornqvist indices. The evidence shows as Alitalia productivity slowdown has been caused by the company failure to support an increase in input with a supply-oriented strategy.