On the existence of involuntary unemployment equilibria

Conclusion We have proved the existence of equilibria implying involuntary unemployment of labour in non-competitive economies with fixed wage rate. We notice that model (II) and its extensions have not been presented as aninterpretation of Keynes' theory. We may define them as Keynesian models only in the sense that they admit involuntary unemployment equilibrium, which concept is basic to Keynes' theory. In any case, we think that these models are a first step in the development of more realistic microeconomic foundations for short-run macroeconomic theory.A first draft of this paper was presented in December 1972 at the Institute of Political Economy, Faculty of Economics and Banking, Siena University.     

Online Reputation Monitoring: An Exploratory Study on Italian Hotel Managers’ Practices

This study aims to understand current Italian hotel managers’ practices in monitoring online reviews included on travel websites and online travel agencies. Results obtained by a web survey indicate what hotel managers monitor (rating, rankings, guest comments regarding different service elements) and managers’ orientation in replying to customer reviews. Findings may support online reputation management tools providers and consulting firms by highlighting the degree of hoteliers’ interest in UGC monitoring and providing insights on possible factors that differentiate current management practices and should be considered in order to offer technical solutions coherent with the distinctiveness of Italian context.     

DIRECTED GRAPH THEORY AND THE ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF INNOVATION

This article applies digraph theory to the theory of technological regimes. The first part of the paper identifies a number of links between the evolutionary approach and a particular version of the neoclassical approach to the economic analysis of technological change. Both these approaches are shown to take the body of presently-available technological knowledge as a quantifiable magnitude allowing firms varying in strategy, structure and core capabilities to explore a range of feasible alternatives within the frontiers imposed by such knowledge. The second part of the paper therefore considers technological knowledge to be a cognitive empirical structure which can be better defined and calculated by using the theorems of digraph theory.     

Beta Regimes for the Yield Curve

We propose an affine term structure model which accommodatesnonlinearities in the drift and volatility function of the short-terminterest rate. Such nonlinearities are a consequence of discretebeta-distributed regime shifts constructed on multiple thresholds.We derive iterative closed-form formula for the whole yieldcurve dynamics that can be estimated using a linearized Kalmanfilter. Fitting the model on US data, we collect empirical evidenceof its potential in estimating conditional volatility and correlationacross yields.     

Criteri di sensitività in problemi di dominanza stocastica

Questo lavoro fornisce condizioni di dominanza stocastica di 1°, 2° e 3° ordine per problemi di decisione in condizioni d'incertezza, quando sia nota la funzione d'utilità solo in un numero finito di punti e quando le funzioni di ripartizione dei guadagni aleatori s'intersecano più d'una volta.     

On Sraffa's Standard commodity

The necessity of expressing the relative price of a commodityin terms of another commodity makes it impossible to distinguishthat part of any change that can be ascribed to the characteristicsof the commodity itself from the part of that change that isto be ascribed to the characteristics of the commodity of reference,i.e., the numéraire. Ricardo (1817) was the first topoint out this problem and the need to find an ‘invariablemeasure of value’, but he was not able to solve the problem.In 1960, Sraffa suggested using a bundle of commodities, thathe called ‘Standard commodity’, to accomplish thisfunction, claiming that it was a standard of value invariantwith respect to changes in the distribution of income. But inSraffa's book there is no explicit proof of this claim. Thisgave rise to many misunderstandings about the Standard commodityand its role as invariable measure of value. This paper proposesa proper definition of an ‘invariable measure of value’,and then proves that the Sraffa ‘Standard commodity’does fulfil the requirements of this definition.     

An algorithm for winning coalitions in indirect control of corporations

Decisions in Economics and Finance - We describe in this paper a variance reduction method based on control variates. The technique uses the fact that, if all stochastic assets but one are replaced...     

Price or quantity setting under uncertain demand and capacity constraints: An examination of the profits

This article considers price formation and quantity setting of a capacity-constrained risk-neutral firm facing uncertain demand. It is shown that the optimal price of a price-setting risk-neutral monopolist decreases with demand uncertainty. With a strictly convex demand function expected profits increase with uncertainty for a quantity-setting monopolist whereas expected profits decrease for a price-setting monopolist. Furthermore, similar results on the effect of uncertainty are derived for a differentiated goods industry.