Francesco Paolo Cantelli

Francesco Paolo Cantelli made fundamental contributions to the foundations of probability theory and to the clarification of different types of probabilistic convergence. He is remembered through the Borel–Cantelli Lemma, the Glivenko–Cantelli Theorem, and Cantelli's Inequality. He also made seminal contributions to actuarial science.     

Consumers un-tethered: A three-market empirical study of consumers' mobile marketing acceptance

This study examines factors influencing consumers' acceptance of mobile marketing across three influential markets, namely U.S., China, and Europe. The authors develop an integrative conceptual model on consumers' attitudes and behaviors toward mobile marketing. The authors incorporate three individual-level characteristics, namely personal attachment, innovativeness, and risk avoidance and investigate how permission-based acceptance influences the relationship between consumers' attitude and mobile marketing activity. Focusing on Generation Y consumers, the model is empirically tested with data from U.S., China, and Europe. The findings illustrate several cross-market differences and similarities regarding the relationships between individual-level characteristics, attitude, and mobile marketing activity. Research and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.     

The Impact of EU Preferential Trade Agreements on Foreign Direct Investment

Although North–South preferential trade agreements (PTAs) are expected to affect foreign direct investment (FDI), there is not much evidence to date on the impact of EU PTAs on the pattern of FDI. The aim of this study is to assess the impact of EU PTAs on the outward stocks of FDI of the EU. We estimate a model based on the knowledge‐capital theory of the multinational enterprise over the period 1995–2005 using a sample of 173 host countries. Explanatory variables include measures of the level of bilateral protection and a dummy to capture the impact of deep integration provisions of PTAs. A dynamic panel model with fixed effects is used in order to take into account the dynamic behaviour of FDI and the heterogeneity bias. Results show that EU FDI is both horizontal and vertical. The level of EU protection affects FDI negatively, while the impact of the tariffs applied by host countries varies across groups of partner countries. Deep integration provisions affect EU FDI positively.     

Institutions Meet Mind: The Way out of a Deadlock

The crucial importance of institutional analysis in economics and the social sciences in general is well understood. Yet, institutional economists have only a limited understanding of individual behavior in institutional settings, the emergence and spread of innovative behavior, and of how individual behavior influences the creation of norms, and vice versa. This paper elaborates on the work of Douglas North, who emphasized the importance of the connection between the evolution of the mind and the evolution of institutions, and highlights the need to investigate the cognitive mechanisms of individuals. We focus, therefore, on the field of modern cognitive science and discuss some of its findings. This approach should be given priority in the development of institutional analysis. Research results in the cognitive sciences, and in particular cognitivism and connectionism, are of vital interest here. In this context, the work of the Austrian school, especially Hayek's The Sensory Order, is extremely relevant and seems to foreshadow future developments. It thus deserves reappraisal.     

On certainty equivalent

Riassunto Come noto, una funzione continua e strettamente monotona individua una media associativa di una variabile aleatoria (v.a.)X.Nel presente lavoro si confrontano due medie associativeM _f eM _g , indotte da due diverse funzionif eg, allo scopo di individuare, nella classe delle v.a.X limitate, l'estremo superiore della loro differenza in modulo.Sotto alcune ipotesi, in particolare chef sia una trasformazione crescente e concava dig, si forniscono condizioni necessarie e/o sufficienti di estremo superiore della differenza in questione.Da un punto di vista applicativo, qualoraf eg siano interpretabili come funzioni di utilità e quindi le medie associative considerate assumano il significato di certi equivalenti, l'estremo superiore della loro differenza può rappresentare il margine di contrattazione (sul prezzo) che un venditore ed acquirente potenziali hanno a disposizione. Se poig è lineare ef è concava allora la differenza considerata è il premio di rischio.

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Partially supported by M.U.R.S.T. and C.N.R.     

Subjective Diversity and Social Learning: A Cognitive Perspective for Understanding Institutional Behavior

This paper deals with a controversial problem in the economics of institutions: how do regularities emerge and evolve out of the social interaction of various agents? Referring to arguments developed in a previous work (Rizzello and Turvani 2000) in which the Austrian Economics' views about the spontaneous emergence of institutions is connected to and enriched by recent findings in the cognitive sciences, the authors here extend the institutional-cognitive approach by incorporating the social cognitive theory of Albert Bandura. Accordingly, rather than being described as ‘instruments’ for social coordination, institutions are depicted as ‘structures’ emerging from the subjective process of generation of knowledge within a social context. Institutional behavior, its emergence and evolution is thus anchored to the mechanisms creating subjective diversity and those producing social learning.     

The Liberalisation of Tariff Rate Quotas under Oligopolistic Competition

Several proposals for liberalising agricultural tariff rate quotas (TRQs) have been proposed within the WTO Doha Development Round. The literature suggests that the effectiveness of liberalisation depends upon which of the three elements of a TRQ constrains imports. Most contributions assume perfect competition. This article uses an oligopoly two‐stage capacity constrained model, in which the mode of competition is endogenous, to investigate the impact of different liberalisation options of TRQs, that is, the reduction in the in‐quota and out‐of‐quota tariffs and the expansion of the quota. This article shows that consideration of the nature of competition between traders may provide unconventional conclusions about the effectiveness of the various TRQ liberalisation options; furthermore, the article shows how an increase in the number of rivals, under certain circumstances, may be more effective in increasing trade than reducing tariffs.     

Standardization vs. adaptation: consumer reaction to TV ads containing subtitled or English dubbed ads

The aim of this study is to gain a better insight into the effect of using linguistically standardized (in English) TV adverts as opposed to two types of linguistically adapted commercials (dubbed in the local language or subtitled in the local language) on attitude-towards-the-ad and attitude-towards-the-brand. We ran a between-subjects experiment in three countries (Italy, Germany, and Spain) with three different versions of commercials (English only, dubbed in the local language, and subtitled in the local language) and assessed the effect of three different versions of the ads on attitude-towards-the-ad and on attitude-towards-the-brand. Results indicate that English-only adverts were less preferred than the alternatives and led to lower brand attitudes as well. This result was consistent for three advertised products (mobile phone, canned drink, and automobile) and replicated in all three countries, showing that this effect is robust.     

Development and validation of an Integrated Organizational Safety Climate Questionnaire with multilevel confirmatory factor analysis

Meta-analytic and traditional reviews on safety climate reveal theoretical and methodological safety climate issues still open. The main aim of this study is to propose a questionnaire which combines recent and different approaches to safety climate, trying to give a contribute about these issues. The present research led to the development of a new questionnaire to measure safety climate, suitable for blue-collar workers, and to the evaluation of its psychometric properties, and usefulness to measure safety climate in the industrial sector. Multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (MCFA) was used to properly evaluate the factor structure underlying the safety climate questionnaire composed of three scales: organizational safety climate scale, supervisor’s safety climate scale and co-workers’ safety climate scale. The clear distinction, made with the use of three different scales, among safety agents (organization, supervisor, co-workers), allows the assessment of workers’ perceptions focused on each level, and allows to deeply explore, for instance, lateral relationships of supervisor’s safety climate and co-workers’ safety climate, analysing the interactions between the roles of these two safety agents. A two-level design was used, considering the individual level and the work-group level. Data collection involved 1,617 blue-collars from eight Italian manufacturing companies. The MCFA results demonstrated the importance to use proper analysis to study the factor structure of a multilevel construct as safety climate, and confirmed the theoretical structure of safety climate purposed from Griffin and colleagues, using not only psychological climate (i.e., the individual level), but also the group level safety climate.