The volatility of world trade in the 21st century: Whose fault is it anyway?

This paper explores the drivers of the volatility of international trade. It decomposes trade growth into six components that have gained attention in the literature and studies their contribution to overall volatility. It yields three main findings. First, trade volatility in the 1990–2015 period is mostly explained by a common factor, changes in the gravity‐related characteristics of a country's trading partners and country‐specific factors. Product composition and the identity of trading partners appear to be less important in explaining volatility. Second, the pre‐2009 decline in volatility and the post‐2009 increase in volatility appear to be driven by different factors. The former is mostly explained by a decline in the variance of country‐specific factors; the latter appears to be driven by an increase in the volatility of common factors. Third, diversification is a likely force behind the steady decline in the volatility stemming from country‐specific factors, especially in developing countries.     

Territorial dynamics and social differentiation among peasants in the northern highlands of Ecuador

This article addresses the process of social differentiation among peasants who were beneficiaries of the 1960s agrarian reform in the northern highlands of Ecuador. Although peasants obtained access to land that was previously in the hands of the haciendas, the incipient process of social differentiation that arose at that time was not halted. Today, peasants are incorporated into a commercial dynamic through milk production for agribusiness that has deepened the process of social differentiation between communities and within them. The supremacy of economic capital in the social field leads to a crisis in the traditional practices of reciprocity and to the incorporation of productive strategies and new “habitus” of consumption that have generated profound transformations in the territory.     

Why do They Come Back? The Effects of Winery Tourists’ Motivations and Satisfaction on the Number of Visits and Revisit Intentions

ABSTRACT

Few studies have examined the influence of winery tourists’ motivations and satisfaction on number of visits and revisit intentions. This study examined these relationships through 1602 online survey responses from former winery visitors. The data were analyzed through a series of multiple regression analyses. Findings show that among tourists’ motivations, the reputation, reviews, and perceived quality of the winery and its wines significantly affect the number of visits and revisit intentions, while media exposure affects revisit intentions. Further, visitors’ satisfaction with the winery significantly impacts revisit intentions. While visitors’ geographic proximity to the winery increased the number of visits, as expected, distance from the winery is shown to increase revisit intentions. Finally, the number of previous visits had a significant positive effect on revisit intentions.     

Assessing the effect of educational programs on public schools’ performance

This paper provides evidence on the effectiveness in the implementation of an educational program which offered public schools in Catalonia (Spain) the opportunity to improve the quality of educational provision. We employ a difference-in-differences approach on rich balanced panel data of public schools. The results confirm that the program did effectively improve students’ achievement and reduce absenteeism, albeit not for all modules and school types or across all years. Our results highlight that it is important to condition the delivery of resources upon specific academic goals depending on the characteristics of the treated population. Additionally, program results suggest the need to enhance educational program design in order to get better evaluation feedback.

Abbreviations: DoE: Department of Education; EU: European Union; PMQCE: Projecte per a la Millora de la Qualitat dels Centres Educatius; DiD: Differences-in-Differences; SFDC: Schools Facing Disadvantaged Conditions; OECD: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development; REA: Regional Educational Authority     

Hard and soft law approaches to addressing psychosocial risks in Europe: lessons learned in the development of the Italian approach

Psychosocial risks in the workplace have been identified as some of the most significant emerging risks, particularly since issues such as work-related stress, which is closely linked to psychosocial risks, are widely recognised as major challenges in modern occupational safety and health. This paper presents the policy framework and key initiatives that have been implemented for the management of psychosocial risks in the workplace in Europe. It discusses several approaches and initiatives, both from a hard and soft law perspective, that have been implemented at European Union and national level. Within this context, it discusses the key issues that pertain to the development of national approaches, focussing as an example on the Management Standards for work-related stress developed in the UK and their recent adaptation in Italy. The Italian approach is discussed in detail as an example that may highlight key process elements in the development of psychosocial risk management policies, and promote good practice in this area through lessons learned. It is concluded that it is more pressing now than ever for a critical evaluation of efforts employed so far to address psychosocial risks to be conducted, and an approach at European level to be developed that will allow both flexibility and a certain level of benchmarking across members states. Such an approach can be supported by European bodies, responsible for surveillance and promotion of good practice, working in collaboration with similar national bodies.     

The Media and Their Advertisers: Exploring Ethical Dilemmas in Product Coverage Decisions

Marketers are increasingly relying on promotional practices (variously labeled as stealth marketing, hybrid messages, covert advertising) based on the diffusion of product information by third parties that appear to be independent of advertisers. In this paper, we examine to what extent the media treat their advertisers favorably, providing these advertisers’ products extra visibility in supposedly neutral editorial content. Empirically, we model the determinant of media coverage of Italian fashion products in an extended dataset of consumer magazines in Italy, France, Germany, UK, and the USA. Research findings show that advertising is an important determinant of product placements in editorial content, and this result is consistent across countries and publishers. Our results imply that resource-rich advertisers engaging in compensatory advertising (that is, advertising investments that compensate poor product quality) might bias media coverage in their favor. Consumers will consequently be exposed twice to favorable messages about those products, in both advertisements and media content, resulting in higher purchases and reduced consumer welfare.     

Short- and long-term evaluation of efficiency and quality. An application to Spanish municipalities

This article analyses efficiency and quality levels in Spanish local governments and their determining factors through the application of the Data Envelopment Analysis methodology. It aims to discover to what extent inefficiency arises from both quality considerations and external factors beyond the organization's control, or alternatively, how much inefficiency is due to inadequate resource management. As a component of inadequate resource management, we test the existence of political-budgetary cycles in the temporal evolution of inefficiencies. The results show that on the whole there is still a wide margin within which local government efficiency and quality levels could be increased, although it is revealed that a great deal of inefficiency is due to exogenous or noncontrollable factors. In particular, it has been found that the size of the municipality, the per capita tax revenue, the per capita grants and the amount of commercial activity are some of the factors related with local government efficiency.     

Productive physical investment and growth: testing the validity of the AK model from a panel perspective

In this article, we analyse the relationship between productive physical investment and economic growth from a panel perspective for a sample of 61 countries spanning the period 1950 to 1992. The analysis can be thought of as two-fold. First, we test the empirical validity of AK models following the logic by Jones (1995 Jones, CI. 1995. Time series properties of endogenous growth models. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110: 495–525. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). For that purpose, we determine the degree of persistence of physical investment rates and growth by employing recently developed panel unit-root tests that enable us to make more reliable inferences about the existence of stochastic trends in the series. Second, we estimate the long-run effect of physical investment on growth by using panel data techniques rather than cross-section regressions. Overall, our findings cast doubts on the rejection of the empirical validity of the AK model, as suggested by Jones’ analysis.     

Decentralisation,clientelism and social protection programmes: a study of India’s MGNREGA

Abstract

Does decentralisation promote clientelism? If yes, through which mechanisms? We answer these questions through an analysis of India’s (and the world’s) largest workfare programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), in two Indian states: Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh (AP). The two states adopted radically different implementation models: Rajasthan’s decentralised one stands in contrast with Andhra Pradesh’s centralised and bureaucracy-led model. Using a mixed method approach, we find that in both states local implementers have incentives to distribute MGNREGA work in a clientelistic fashion. However, in Rajasthan, these incentives are stronger, because of the decentralised implementation model. Accordingly, our quantitative evidence shows that clientelism is more serious a problem in Rajasthan than in AP.     

Modeling CRS bounded additive DEA models and characterizing their Pareto-efficient points

Dealing with weighted additive models in Data Envelopment Analysis guarantees that any projection of an inefficient unit belongs to the strong efficient frontier, among other interesting properties. Recently, constant returns to scale (CRS) range-bounded models have been introduced for defining a new additive-type efficiency measure (see Cooper et al. in J Prod Anal 35(2):85–94, 2011). This paper continues such earlier work further, considering a more general setting. In particular, we show that under free disposability of inputs and outputs, CRS bounded additive models require a double set of slacks. The second set of slacks allows us to properly characterize all the Pareto-efficient points associated to the bounded technology. We further introduce the CRS partially-bounded additive models.