Employment Patterns of Husbands and Wives and Family Income Distribution in Italy (1977–98)

The pattern of employment among men and women has changed remarkably over the past decades. The growth in the participation in the labor market of women with high-income husbands has heightened concerns that wives' earnings may increase income inequality among married couples, especially in countries like Italy, the U.K., and the U.S., where more noticeable growth of income inequality during the past decade has accompanied changes in employment levels. In this paper we attempt to measure the impact of the changes of women and men's employment patterns on the distribution of income among Italian households, by considering regional differences, using micro data from the Historical Archive of the Bank of Italy Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) for the period 1977–98. Our results indicate that total income distribution would have been more unequal without women's labor income.     

The rise in comovement across national stock markets: market integration or IT bubble?

A stylized fact in the portfolio diversification literature is that diversifying across countries is more effective than diversifying across industries in terms of risk reduction. But with the rise in comovement across national stock markets since the mid-1990s, this no longer appears to be true. We explore if this change is driven by global integration and therefore likely to be permanent, or if it is a temporary phenomenon associated with the recent stock market bubble. Our results point to the latter hypothesis. In the aftermath of the bubble, diversifying across countries may therefore still be effective in reducing portfolio risk.     

Fiscal sustainability and dollarization: the case of Ecuador

This article tries to disentangle the dynamic relationships between fiscal variables and economic activity in a small emerging economy characterized by full dollarization, namely, Ecuador. We find that fiscal policy in Ecuador seems to be sustainable, explained by its policy of debt payment through oil revenues, rather than by a fiscal discipline that dollarization is supposed to encourage. The non-oil tax revenues variable is a purely adjusting variable. This result suggests that in a dollarized country that cannot benefit from the ‘seignorage’ revenues, the reliance on volatile oil revenues and on smoothing tax revenues leaves the economy’s fiscal sustainability vulnerable.     

Competitive collaboration and market contestability: cases in Mexican and UK banking, 1945-75

In this article we explore the emergence and evolution of collaboration agreements among different types of intermediaries in the UK and Mexican financial systems. Collaboration in the UK looks at agreements between non-bank and non-finance providers aiming to modify their competitive capabilities and circumvent barriers to enter deposit markets. Collaboration in Mexican banking considered agreements between commercial banks and small regional banks during the period of 1945 to 1975. Agreements in Mexican banking are benchmarked against collaboration in the UK. As a result, research in this article sheds light on the success of collaboration agreements through changes in competitive strength rather than the longevity of the transaction or the formality and structural visibility of the agreements. Evidence documented here also helps in remedying a shortage of research around financial institutions in less developed countries and the economic and business history of Latin America, while providing an international comparison.     

Evaluation of the Reggio approach to early education

We evaluate the Reggio Approach using non-experimental data on individuals from the cities of Reggio Emilia, Parma and Padova belonging to one of five age cohorts: ages 50, 40, 30, 18, and 6 as of 2012. The treated were exposed to municipally offered infant-toddler (ages 0–3) and preschool (ages 3–6) programs in Reggio Emilia. The control group either did not receive formal childcare or were exposed to programs offered by municipal systems (outside of Reggio Emilia), or by state or religious systems (in all three cities). We exploit the city-cohort structure of the data to estimate treatment effects using three strategies: difference-in-differences, matching, and matched-difference-in-differences. Most positive and significant effects are generated from comparisons of the treated with individuals who did not receive formal childcare. Relative to not receiving formal care, the Reggio Approach significantly boosts outcomes related to employment, socio-emotional skills, high school graduation, participation in elections, and obesity. Comparisons with individuals exposed to alternative forms of childcare do not yield strong patterns of positive and significant effects. This suggests that differences between the Reggio Approach and other alternatives are not sufficiently large to result in significant differences in outcomes. This interpretation is supported by a survey we conduct, which documents increasing similarities in the administrative and pedagogical practices of childcare systems in the three cities over time.     

Local Segregation and Well‐Being

This paper deals with the quantification of the well‐being loss/gain of a demographic group associated with its occupational segregation, an issue that has not been formally tackled in the literature. For this purpose, this paper proposes several properties to take into account when measuring this phenomenon. Building on standard assumptions of social welfare functions, it also defines and characterizes a parameterized family of indices that satisfy those properties. In particular, the indices are equal to zero when either the group has no segregation or all occupations have the same wage, and the indices increase when individuals of the group move into occupations that have higher wages than those left behind. In addition, ceteris paribus, the indices increase more the lower the wage is of the occupation left behind, and consider small improvements for many people to be more important than large improvements for a few.     

SOFT INFORMATION PRODUCTION IN SME LENDING

We analyze the determinants of soft information production on bank clients assuming that this information is collected through close contact with borrowers. After classifying contacts based on the initiator and the location of the lender–borrower meetings, we find that banks have more direct contact with firms characterized by low risk and low use of their banking products, indicating that there may also be commercial reasons for such contact. Our findings suggest that the production of soft information may follow a quality selection process in which banks prefer to strengthen relationships with clients characterized by low risk and low use of their products. We provide additional evidence of the role of soft information in ongoing interactions between banks and borrowers. Banks that initiate contacts at the firm location result in future lower risk, lower spreads, and increased product sales.     

Labor productivity growth: disentangling technology and capital accumulation

How much of the convergence in labor productivity that we observe in manufacturing is due to convergence in technology versus convergence in capital-labor ratios? To shed light on this question, we introduce a nonparametric counterfactual decomposition of labor productivity growth into growth of the capital-labor ratio (K/L), technological productivity (TEP) and total factor productivity (TFP). Our nonparametric specification enables us to model technology allowing for heterogeneity across all relevant dimensions (i.e. countries, sectors and time). Using data spanning from the 1960s to the 2000s, covering 42 OECD and non OECD countries across 11 manufacturing sectors, we find TEP and TFP to account for roughly 46 and ?6% of labor productivity growth respectively, on average. While technological growth at the world level is driven primarily by the US and a handful of other OECD countries, we find strong evidence of convergence in both technology and capital-labor ratios. Interestingly, very few of the usual growth determinants are found to enhance the process of technological catching-up.     

Dividends and Market Signalling: an Analysis of Corporate Insider Trading

This study tests the multiple‐signal theory of dividends of John and Lang (1991) in the context of a European market. Our evidence shows that investors are more sensitive to insider trading signals than to signalled changes in existing dividends. In effect, the insider sales signal is universally understood as bad news. After controlling for the quality of a firm's investment opportunities, investors are found to penalise dividend outflows by mature firms that exhibit more informed insider sales activity. Finally, we offer an innovative exploration of the role of earnings announcements in market reaction to the dividend signal.