The Italian airport industry in transition: a performance analysis

This paper analyzes the impacts of Italian government actions on the efficiency of 36 airports between 2001 and 2003. The changes have included privatization, enlargement of the services provided directly by airport management companies, through the modification of the concession agreements, and the creation of two hubs. The analysis, using the consolidated two-stage data envelopment analysis with bootstrapping, indicates that airports with a majority public holding are on average more efficient and the presence of two hubs is source of inefficiency.     

Financial development and economic growth: long‐run equilibrium and transitional dynamics

We analyze the impact of financial development on economic growth. Differently from previous studies that focus mainly on balanced growth path outcomes, we also analyze the transitional dynamics of our model economy by using a finance‐extended Uzawa–Lucas framework where financial intermediation affects both human and physical capital accumulation. We show that, under certain rather general conditions, economic growth may turn out to be non‐monotonically related to financial development (as suggested by the most recent empirical evidence) and that too much finance may be detrimental to growth. We also show that the degree of financial development may affect the speed of convergence, which suggests that finance may play a crucial role in determining the length of the recovery process associated with exogenous shocks. Moreover, in a special case of the model, we observe that, under a realistic set of parameters, social welfare decreases with financial development, meaning that even when finance positively affects economic growth the short‐term costs associated with financial activities more than compensate their long‐run benefits.     

Specialisation,localisation, and trade value in the wake of cross-border production sharing. The Central Eastern European Countries' case

We focus on five among the sectors in which most of the CEECs’ trade in middle products with EU-15 is concentrated. Over the second half of the 1990s, we observe remarkable changes in both production and trade specialization as well as a significant relocation of industries within CEECs. Using jointly trade and production data we outline co-movements in the adjustment of specialisation patterns. We also show that the redistribution of activities at the regional level reflects the relocation of industries at the global level. Finally, we try to detect the scope of fragmentation of production characterizing each industry and the ways in which CEECs are moving along the “internationally sliced-up value chain”. (JEL: F10, F14, F15)     

Integer programming on domains containing inseparable ordered pairs

Using the integer programming approach introduced by Sethuraman et al. (2003), we extend the analysis of the preference domains containing an inseparable ordered pair, initiated by Kalai and Ritz (1978). We show that these domains admit not only Arrovian social welfare functions “without ties,” but also Arrovian social welfare functions “with ties,” since they satisfy the strictly decomposability condition introduced by Busetto et al. (2015). Moreover, we go further in the comparison between Kalai and Ritz (1978)’s inseparability and Arrow (1963)’s single-peak restrictions, showing that the former condition is more “respectable,” in the sense of Muller and Satterthwaite (1985).     

France in the global economy: a structural approximate dynamic factor model analysis

This study identifies the main shocks that cause fluctuations in French output and their channels of transmission. It uses a large-dimensional structural approximate dynamic factor model. There are three main findings. First, common shocks, especially demand shocks, which seem to originate from the U.S., play an important role in explaining French economic activity. While international trade, relative prices, and foreign direct investment (FDI) flows are the main channels of transmission, the stock market, consumer confidence, and interest rates also matter. Second, France’s integration with the rest of the world has increased over time. Third, there is some tentative evidence of regional components in explaining French output fluctuations; country-specific components also contribute. The predominance of exogenous factors affecting French output, the asymmetry in the transmission of shocks, and France’s participation in a currency area argue for making French goods, services, and labor markets as flexible as possible.     

OPTIMAL GROWTH, GENUINE SAVINGS AND LONG-RUN DYNAMICS

Green accounting theories have shown that negative genuine savings at some point in time imply unsustainability. Consequently, recent studies advocate the use of the genuine savings measure for empirical testing: a negative index implies that sustainability be rejected. However, this criterion cannot ascertain sustainability, because positive current genuine savings do not rule out genuine dissaving in the future. This paper derives a one‐to‐one relationship between the sign of long‐run genuine savings and the limiting condition for sustained utility in the capital‐resource growth model, assuming technical progress and resource renewability. This result suggests to extend the genuine saving method to include a test of the limiting condition: if this condition is empirically rejected, positive current genuine savings are delivering a false message.     

Alternative approaches for the reformulation of economics

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination -