The impact of production offshoring on the skill composition of manufacturing firms: evidence from Italy

In this work we explore how the international outsourcing of production impacts the skill composition of employment within Italian manufacturing firms. In particular, our aim is to assess whether the choice to offshore production activities to cheap‐labour countries implies a bias in the employment of skilled workers relative to unskilled ones.

Using a balanced panel of firms covering the period 1995–2003, we set up a counterfactual analysis in which, by using a difference‐in‐differences propensity score matching estimator, we compare the dynamics of skill demand for treated and control firms while addressing the possible problem of selection bias.

Our results identify a ‘potential’ skill bias effect of production offshoring. In particular, we find that treated firms tend to show an upward shift in the skill ratio with respect to the counterfactual sample, but coefficients are not significantly different from zero. When we look at the elements of the skill ratio separately, we find that the skill bias is driven by a fall in the employment of production workers (blue collars), rather than by the increase in the employment of non‐production workers (white collars), thus providing further evidence on the unskilled labour‐saving nature of international outsourcing.     

Conditional assessment of the impact of a Hausman pretest on confidence intervals

In the analysis of clustered and longitudinal data, which includes a covariate that varies both between and within clusters, a Hausman pretest is commonly used to decide whether subsequent inference is made using the linear random intercept model or the fixed effects model. We assess the effect of this pretest on the coverage probability and expected length of a confidence interval for the slope, conditional on the observed values of the covariate. This assessment has the advantages that it (i) relates to the values of this covariate at hand, (ii) is valid irrespective of how this covariate is generated, (iii) uses exact finite sample results, and (iv) results in an assessment that is determined by the values of this covariate and only two unknown parameters. For two real data sets, our conditional analysis shows that the confidence interval constructed after a Hausman pretest should not be used.     

Su di una politica di bonus

Si prende in considerazione una politica di Bonus attuata da una Compagnia di assicurazione e si studia l'andamento della perdita attesa della Compagnia al variare dell'entità del Bonus nei casi in cui:

1. la funzioneL(s), che esprime il livello minimo dell'entità dei sinistri non occultabili all'istantes, sia lineare ins;
2. la funzioneL(s) renda massima la previsione del guadagno di ogni singolo assicurato.

     

The food neophobia scale and young adults’ intention to eat insect products

In the coming years, the new EU Regulation on Novel Food is likely to facilitate the development of a niche market for insects and insect‐based ingredients in many European countries. In this research, the aim is to explore the relationship between willingness to try (WTT) and behavior of eating insects, where the independent variables are food neophobia, sensory property expectations, and previous consumption. In total, 88 Italian participants took part in the study. The food neophobia scale (FNS) was constructed using 9 of the 10 items from the original FNS, and a Structural Equation Modeling approach was used to test the research hypotheses. The results show that males are more open to trying insects than females, and food neophobia is negatively correlated with the willingness to eat insects. Findings also indicate that the first exposure to insects positively increases consumers’ sensory property expectations. Intention to try is a strong predictor of the behavior of eating insects. People who scored lower on the FNS were more likely to try (intention) and consequently eat insects (behavior). These findings enhance knowledge about factors which could lead to lower levels of negative prejudice and greater willingness to taste edible insects among Western consumers. Finally, some marketing implications are discussed, like the need of information campaigns to emphasize positive sensory attributes of edible insects to increase the WTT this unfamiliar food.     

Organizing the purchasing department for innovation

Innovation is by far one of the most important competitive priorities in the current business context. Companies increasingly rely on their supply base to support their innovation potential. As a consequence, the purchasing department might dramatically affect the firm??s innovation capability. This paper aims to investigate??using a multiple case study approach??how the organizational design of the purchasing department could determine a firm??s capability to foster and manage innovation. Seven highly innovative companies were visited and the structures of their purchasing departments were analyzed. Three different configurations for the purchasing department were identified and described.     

Drivers of Autonomy of Public Agencies in Italy

The creation of agencies has been and still is a widespread trend in the public sector: governments in many countries often establish semi‐autonomous single‐purpose organizations to carry out a wide range of functions and tasks. The trend to autonomization is problematic as it affects public sector's governance: several bodies operate partly autonomously from the core elective government, and are sometimes loosely coupled with their ‘parent’ administration. Consequently, analysing the drivers of agencies’ autonomy is a crucial issue for public management. This paper, in the light of some major contributions in organizational science, assumes that agencies’ autonomy is influenced by factors that affect post‐delegation relationships: agencies’ structure, culture and nature of the tasks executed. The study was aimed at testing a range of hypotheses about the autonomy of public agencies, using for this purpose the so‐far not investigated case of Italy–much in the spirit of the accumulation of knowledge in an area of public management. Results do not provide any strikingly counter‐intuitive finding, but a mix of confirmations and disconfirmations of previous findings that allow a finer‐grained analysis on the determinants of agency autonomy.     

Diversification Strategies and Corporate Coherence Evidence from Italian Leading Firms

This paper investigates the determinants of coherence and coherence change usinga sample of Italian leading firms in the period 1993–1996. Consistently with thehypotheses advanced by Teece et al. (1994), the econometric analysis highlightsthat relatedness between pairs of sectors and coherence of diversification strategiesare higher when firms are active in sectors sharing similar technological and marketingcharacteristics, and when they are positioned at different stages of the productive chain.Moreover, the findings that firms which enter the group of top 5 industry leaders aremore coherent than the average and that coherence is increasing for firms active insectors more sensitive to EU integration are consistent with the prediction that coherentfirms tend to outperform less coherent ones and that coherence is increasing in morecompetitive environments. Finally, the results show that a deepening of vertical integration strategies is good for coherence change, while an increase of diversification brings a reduction in coherence.     

The perceived probability of job loss and future labour market outcomes

Longitudinal survey data are used to test the degree to which worker expectations of future job loss are correlated with changes in labour market status. Three major findings are reported. First, perceived probabilities of expected job loss are only weakly related to both exogenous job separations and subsequent transitions to unemployment and inactivity. Second, while fears of job loss tend to persist across time and job spells, they do so at a highly diminishing rate. Third, quit intentions are strongly correlated with both voluntary separations and transitions to alternative employment, and do not diminish greatly across successive employment spells.     

Unit nonresponse errors in income surveys: a case study

A survey on the economic and social conditions of households in the city of Modena was carried out in 2002 and in 2006 (two waves) by the CAPP (Centre for Analyses of Public Policies). In the first wave of 2002, each designated sampling unit (i.e., the family) had three units as reserves. If the first refused to be interviewed, the interviewer contacted the three reserves, one after the other, until obtaining either one respondent or four non-participant units. At the end of the survey four categories of units were distinguished: interviewees, refusals, noncontacts, and unused reserves. All units were matched with their corresponding record in the databases of the Ministry of Finance of 2002 and the Census of 2001. The resulting data set permitted the analysis of unit or total nonresponses. The distribution of fiscal income showed different shapes for the four categories, implying a selective participation of the families. The interviewees yielded a positive bias of about 600?, holding constant other factors. The selection of the significant factors affecting nonresponse was performed via backward elimination in a logit model and with the lasso method. Participation increased as fiscal income and age increased and by education level (secondary school and university degree), while it decreased among entrepreneurs, independent workers, managers, and medium-to-low skilled workers.