Experimental evidence on personality traits and preferences

Using an experiment, we test the relation between personality traits and revealed risk and ambiguity preferences, and we consider the effects of personality traits prevalence in a group on the decision making of each group member. In the experiment, subjects reveal their risk and ambiguity preferences through lottery choices. They then participate in an unstructured group chat. Afterwards, they are given the chance to revise their initial lottery choices. Results show that personality traits affect ambiguity but not risk preferences before the chat. Specifically, agreeableness is negatively related to ambiguity aversion. We also show that the probability of changing decisions after the chat is affected by the individual's personality traits but not by the traits of the other group members. The latter only affects the direction and the degree of the change.     

Regional differences in residential demand for very high bandwidth broadband internet in 2025

The future demand for data and the role of gigabit networks are central issues in the context of Next Generation Access (NGA) network roll-out. Based on a generic model, which allows to predict unconstrained future broadband demand in different regions and countries, the authors compare the results for Germany, the UK and the Flemish region, and discuss reasons for the different outcomes. The generic market potential model thereby allows to project the future demand for bandwidth from residential customers on the basis of applications and their bandwidth needs, user profiles and population structure on a household level. Despite a general trend towards an increasing need for broadband, there are clear differences. On the one hand, these point to the relevance of socio-demographic factors for broadband adoption. On the other hand, the relatively high proportion of refusals shows that there is still a need for further educational work on the part of public authorities and providers. Finally, it has to be stated, that our forecast relies on the assumption that connectivity and thus that the availability of area-wide gigabit capable broadband access does not represent a bottleneck.     

Marginal places and tourism: the role of Buddhist centers in Italy

Religious tourism in Italy has always been an attractor at an international level. For many centuries, it has been entirely represented by the Christian pilgrimage to St. Peter’s Basilica. In recent decades, however, the religious scenery has changed deeply, and now includes even non-Christian religions and spiritualities. In this paper we compare two (very different) Buddhist centers, both located in places of Italy where tourism is not (or is no more) a significant component of the local economy. Buddhist centers are increasingly becoming popular tourist attraction: our purpose is to investigate to what extent and under which conditions they can be actors of local tourism development. The most significant of these conditions seems to be the nature of the center itself, ranging from a hermitage relatively unconcerned about any quantitative development, to a structure where spiritual ends are reconciled both with expansion and with economic integration within the local community.     

Search for financial returns and social security privatization

I develop a general equilibrium model in which the quality of household financial decisions is endogenously determined by the incentives to exert effort in learning about financial opportunities. The model generates predictions for asset market participation and returns across households. Moreover, search for financial returns enables the model to generate a more skewed equilibrium wealth distribution. In this context, social security privatization affects household search effort, asset market participation and the competitiveness of the asset market. Privatization reduces average welfare and this reduction is somewhat magnified by the search friction. While some have suggested that household decision making could be important for the consequences of privatization, my analysis does not bear this out.     

Asymmetric trading by insiders – comparing abnormal returns and earnings prediction in Spain and Australia

This paper examines whether the ‘external governance’ imposed by comparative financial accounting standards reduces the trading advantage of insiders. We do this by directly comparing insider trading returns and insider’s ability to predict future earnings from accruals in Spain and Australia. Results show higher excess returns and greater prediction of future earnings from conditioned insider trading in Australia that is then utilized by financial analysts to lower forecast errors – particularly in contrarian‐based accruals trading. Possible explanations include: (i) a high asymmetric quality for market‐based accruals, (ii) information transfer from informed insiders to uninformed insiders and financial analysts and (iii) a more timely dissemination of financial information in Spain through different ownership and governance structures.     

IS E‐GOVERNMENT LEADING TO MORE ACCOUNTABLE AND TRANSPARENT LOCAL GOVERNMENTS? AN OVERALL VIEW

This paper seeks to assess to what extent e-government enables accountability and transparency in EU local governments. It also provides an overall view about how local governments are implementing ICTs initiatives to bring citizens closer to governments. Although the mere capacity of the Internet for the dissemination of information improves accountability and makes benchmarking easier, our results show that the expected benefits are far from being achieved because e-government projects are still in the early stages. The results also show that, at present, ICTs have not had a dramatic impact on EU local government accountability.