Market liberalization and integration of maize markets in Malawi

The paper studies the extent of market integration of maize markets in Malawi in order to understand how it has been affected by market liberalization. Several measures of integration are introduced to analyze both the comovement of prices and the price adjustment process over time. Monthly retail prices of maize at eight main locations over the period January 1984 to December 1991 are considered. The main conclusion is that liberalization has increased market integration.     

The New Economy in Europe, 1992-2001

Despite the fast catching up in the diffusion of informationand communication technologies (ICT) experienced by most EUcountries in the last few years, information technologies haveso far delivered few productivity gains in Europe. In the secondhalf of the past decade, the growth contributions from ICT capitalrose in six EU countries only (the UK, Denmark, Finland, Sweden,Ireland, and Greece). Unlike in the USA, this has not generallybeen associated with higher labour or total factor productivity(TFP) growth rates, the only exceptions being Ireland and Greece.Particularly worrying, the large countries in Continental Europe(Germany, France, Italy, and Spain) showed stagnating or mildlydeclining growth contributions from ICT capital, together withdefinite declines in TFP growth compared to the first half ofthe 1990s. It looks as though the celebrated ‘Solow paradox’on the lack of correlation between ICT investment and productivitygrowth has fled the USA and come to Europe.     

Su alcunieffetti dell'adozione di iniziali finitamente additive quando il modello di base appartiene alla classe esponenziale troncata

In questo lavoro si adottano particolari iniziali finitamente additive volte a massimizzare l'associazione tra gli elementi di un processo scambiabile e vengono discussi effetti e significato complessivo di tale adozione (par. 1 e 2).Nell'ipotesi che tali distribuzioni si riferiscano al parametro di un modello appartenente alla classe esponenziale troncata si ottiene (par. 3) la corrispondente espressione per la legge di probabilità congiunta di un vettore di osservazioni (teorema 1).Nel par. 4 si suggerisce un metodo alternativo di prova per risultati di supporto al teorema 1.Nel par. 5, sotto ipotesi assai blande, si ottengono risultati relativi alla previsione in alcuni casi particolari. Interessanti sono le conseguenze sulla distribuzione predittiva e sulla distribuzione finale del parametro di troncamento.

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Summary In this paper we use finitely additive prior distributions with the aim of maximizing the association between the elements of an exchangeable process and we discuss the effects and the meaning of this assumptions (§1 and §2).Applying these distributions to the canonical parameter in elements of truncated exponential family of distributions we obtain (§3) the expression for the joint distribution of a vector of observation (theorem 1).In § 4 a different method of proof is suggested for some results pertaining theorem 1.In § 5, under mild hypotheses, we obtain some results about the expectation of the predictive distribution. We examine some droll consequences of our assumptions on the predictive and posterior distributions.

     

On the road to industrialization: nutritional status in Saxony, 1690–1850

Saxony was one of the pioneer regions in the German modern economic growth. We analyze the Saxon nutritional status to infer the effects of early industrialization on the population standard of living. We find that the nutritional status in the eighteenth century was relatively high and heights fluctuated mainly because of wars. From the 1770s the average nutritional status declined steadily, with the exception of the Napoleonic period, until the mid of the nineteenth century. The decline, particularly accentuated after 1815, is related to the high share of urbanization, the increase in the relative price of food, and the strong dependence on food imports.

Conditional cooperation in a sequential move game

Cooperation is a pervasive social phenomenon, but more often than not economic theories have little to say about its causes and consequences. In this paper, we explore the hypothesis that cooperative behaviour might be motivated by pure self-interest when the “social” payoff in a game is increasing. We report the results of a series of experiments on the Centipede game. The experiments are organised in two subsequent steps. Subjects first participate in a 2-period trust game, randomly matched with unknown partners. We apply the strategy method in order to elicit their social preferences. On the basis of their pre-game behaviour, individuals are divided into three main social groups: selfish individuals, pure altruists and reciprocators. At the second step of the experiment, subjects play a repeated 6-move Centipede game with an increasing final payoff. Each subject plays twice, in a low and in a high-stake Centipede game, and he/she is informed about his/her co-player social preferences. We provide statistical evidence to identify the origin of cooperation within homogeneous and heterogeneous social groups. We construct a Poisson regression model to assess the determinants of the duration of conditional cooperation in the Centipede.     

Market concentration, macroeconomic uncertainty and monetary policy

This paper studies the effect of market structure and macroeconomic uncertainty on the transmission of monetary policy. We motivate our analysis with a simple model which predicts that: (1) investment and production in more concentrated sectors are more affected by demand shocks and (2) high uncertainty makes investment and production more sensitive to demand shocks. The empirical analysis estimates the effect of monetary shocks on sectoral output for different sectors in the US using a structural vector autoregressive (VAR) approach. The results are generally consistent with the theoretical predictions.     

Emerging models of organizational buying processes

The purpose of this article is to assess past and current trends in the literature on buying decisions by organizations and to look constructively toward future problems and developments. Until recently, organizational buying behavior has been largely ignored. There are, however, a number of promising developments, and we might be at the threshold of moving from alchemy to the beginning stages of scientific understanding.The article starts with a brief discussion of the “methodological” and “substantive” choices that can be made in studying organizational processes that underlie buying behavior. An appreciation of these choices is necessary for the examination of the past and current literature. The major trends in the study of organizational buying behavior are then identified and evaluated. Building upon these trends, we sketch the basic dimensions of the organizational buying processes and highlight some of the major problem areas to be faced in future research and model development. Throughout the article we assume some familiarity with the professional and academic literature in industrial buying.     

Should governments fund basic science? Evidence from a willingness-to-pay experiment in five universities

ABSTRACT

Tax-payers are usually the ultimate funders of large-scale research infrastructures (RIs), but the expected discoveries of such projects often do not have any known use-value. By interviewing 1,022 undergraduates, we study the drivers of preferences for paying for basic research, which are still little known. We focus on the LHC at CERN, where the Higgs boson was discovered. Income, awareness, and positive attitudes towards science drive a positive willingness-to-pay for science. Students in social sciences and the humanities are willing to contribute to scientific curricula at least as much as their peers. Findings offer support to government funding of basic research as a public good.     

Regression-based measure of urban sprawl for Italian municipalities using DMSP-OLS night-time light images and economic data

ABSTRACT

Night-time light can be used in order to evaluate the degree of urbanization and urban sprawl in a specific territory. In fact, at the local level, the lower the urban density, the higher the per-capita length of collector roads and the area covered by buildings and infrastructures. It follows that the lower the urban density, the higher the municipal luminosity. Urban sprawl is determinant in defining the mobility condition in a specific territory and the service and infrastructure needs. This paper uses regression analyses in order to estimate a ‘relative’ measure of urban sprawl that takes into account also demographic and economic characteristics. We apply this technique to a panel of Italian municipalities over the period 2004–2012 and compare the resulting measure to the ‘absolute’ measures provided by the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research in order to evaluate the contribution of our measure to the knowledge of the sprawl phenomenon.     

Strategic Monetary Policy with Non-Atomistic Wage Setters

Monetary policy analyses usually assume an atomistic private sector, thereby ignoring potential interactions between policy and wage-setting decisions. Yet, non-atomistic wage setters are a key feature of several industrialized economies. We study the economic consequence of non-atomistic agents and show that this qualifies previous results on the effects and desirability of a conservative central banker. In particular, the central bank aversion to inflation may have a permanent effect on structural employment, while no such effect emerges with atomistic agents.