Disequilibrium,Reproduction and Money: a Classical Approach

We consider a bisector reproduction model in which money is introduced as a pure means of exchange issued by a bank at the producers' requests. Each capitalist aims at maximizing accumulation in his own sector. Their plans are based on available quantities and expected prices. Effective prices are determined by a market mechanism. Temporary disequilibria occur in both physical and monetary terms. The settlement of the monetary balances is operated by means of a transfer of capital goods. Final allocations and effective productions are thus determined. The dynamics of the economy are those of a sequence of temporary disequilibria and let appear several possibilities (local or global stability, cycles) depending on the values of the parameters.     

On the statistical identification of DSGE models

Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models are now considered attractive by the profession not only from the theoretical perspective but also from an empirical standpoint. As a consequence of this development, methods for diagnosing the fit of these models are being proposed and implemented. In this article we illustrate how the concept of statistical identification, that was introduced and used by Spanos [Spanos, Aris, 1990. The simultaneous-equations model revisited: Statistical adequacy and identification. Journal of Econometrics 44, 87–105] to criticize traditional evaluation methods of Cowles Commission models, could be relevant for DSGE models. We conclude that the recently proposed model evaluation method, based on the DSGE–VAR(λ)$\left(\lambda \right)$, might not satisfy the condition for statistical identification. However, our application also shows that the adoption of a FAVAR as a statistically identified benchmark leaves unaltered the support of the data for the DSGE model and that a DSGE–FAVAR can be an optimal forecasting model.     

Distributional Effects of Price Reforms in the Italian Utility Markets*

In this paper, we analyse some distributional effects of the reforms to water and energy services in Italy. We first document the new regulation setting in these services, illustrating the dynamics of utility prices and of household expenditure in the period 1998‐2005. We then propose a way to measure the affordability of public utilities, in order to investigate how many households would incur a potentially excessive burden if they consumed a minimum quantity of utility services. Finally, we calculate this index on data from the Survey on Family Budgets (Indagine sui consumi delle famiglie). Our results show how the affordability of utility bills varies from region to region depending on climate, income, family endowment and family size. The analysis ‐ also based on a counterfactual exercise ‐ finds that so far, utility reforms do not seem to have produced any negative effects on weaker households.     

Killing off cohorts: Forecasting mortality of non-extinct cohorts with the penalized composite link model

Mortality forecasting has crucial implications for insurance and pension policies. A large amount of literature has proposed models to forecast mortality using cross-sectional (period) data instead of longitudinal (cohort) data. As a consequence, decisions are generally based on period life tables and summary measures such as period life expectancy, which reflect hypothetical mortality rather than the mortality actually experienced by a cohort. This study introduces a novel method to forecast cohort mortality and the cohort life expectancy of non-extinct cohorts. The intent is to complete the mortality profile of cohorts born up to 1960. The proposed method is based on the penalized composite link model for ungrouping data. The performance of the method is investigated using cohort mortality data retrieved from the Human Mortality Database for England & Wales, Sweden, and Switzerland for male and female populations.     

Stock Returns,Productivity, and Corruption in Eight European Fast-Emerging Markets

This article addresses the impact of productivity, corruption, and trade openness on the stock returns of 265 industrial companies listed in eight Eastern European fast-emerging markets, over the 2004-2013 period. Through a three-factor model that includes both measures at firm level and macro-level control variables, our findings suggest that country corruption index is negatively correlated with the total annual return of the stocks of the listed industrial companies of our sample. Moreover, the most productive firms are featured by higher stock returns, while leverage seems not to be a key predictor of stock returns. In addition, the article uncovers innovative evidence about trade openness that is negatively correlated with stock returns due to its connection with the recent financial crisis. That is, firms operating in markets that are more open to trade show a higher degree of interconnection with other economies and are more likely to undergo the effects of negative fluctuations from foreign markets during the economic crisis. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Defining Supply Chain Management: In the Past,Present, and Future

The article titled “Defining Supply Chain Management” published in 2001 in the Journal of Business Logistics has been cited over 4,900 times in the last 17 years. In this paper, we first provide a historical review of how the article originated and the contributions the article made to both the theory and practice of supply chain management (SCM). Next, we highlight the key market and technological changes that have emerged in SCM followed by how the theory proposed in the 2001 article can still be relevant to support SCM research and practice going forward. We also propose ways of configuring a supply chain and partnering across companies to serve customers in an optimal way. We conclude with a call for research on developing new frameworks to better describe, explain, predict, and shed light on the evolving nature of SCM.     

THE INFLUENCE OF DIFFERENT FORMS OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING ON DISTRIBUTION AND GROWTH

This paper deals with the influence of different types of government expenditure on growth in a post‐Keynesian framework. The analysis considers a government sector with a balanced budget and an autonomous and non‐linear investment function, interpreted along a Kaleckian and a Classical‐Harrodian line. It shows under which conditions different types of government expenditure are beneficial or detrimental for economic growth, comparing some results with those reached by Barro in his 1990 Journal of Political Economy article, and points out the emergence of phenomena like multiple equilibria, hysteresis and low growth traps.     

Capital–skill complementarity and the redistributive effects of Social Security Reform

This paper analyses the general equilibrium implications of reforming pay-as-you-go pension systems in an economy with heterogeneous agents, human capital investment and capital–skill complementarity. It shows that increasing funding, by raising savings, delivers in the long run higher physical and human capital and therefore higher output, but also higher across-group wage and income inequality. It also shows that the general equilibrium effects induced by this reform affect groups' sizes in a way that the higher across-group inequality generated by more funding goes with a larger share of the population against redistribution.