Political partisanship versus turnout in Italy’s 2016 referendum

Quality & Quantity - Italy’s 2016 referendum represents an opportunity to discuss the main hypotheses posited by current literature as to the determinants of referendums. The issue-voting...     

On prices’ cyclical behaviour in oligopolistic markets

We revisit the discussion about the relationship between price’s cyclical features, implicit collusion and the demand level in an oligopoly supergame where a positive shock may hit demand and disrupt collusion. The novel feature of our model consists in characterising the post-shock noncooperative price and comparing it against the cartel price played in the last period of the collusive path, to single out the conditions for procyclicality to arise both in the short and in the long-run. This poses an issue in terms of an antitrust agency’s ability to draw well defined conclusions on the firms’ behaviour after the occurrence of the shock, with particular reference for the litigation phase after a cartel breakdown.     

Transmitters and receivers' investment to avoid interference: Is there an optimal regime?

The management of interference has been, and still is, the main concern in spectrum policy. Historically, interference has been dealt with by heavy regulation under an administrative control regime. Over the last decades, a new approach has been put forward based on users' property rights, better able to cope with a rapidly changing technological environment. The issue of dealing with interference across bands, however, remains crucial: What obligations should be put on users so as to keep interference at a socially acceptable level? Also, given that some unwanted emissions are bound to occur, how can private parties be provided with the right incentives to invest in high-quality reception technology? This paper assesses how well different regulatory regimes can lead to efficient outcomes. It develops an economic model of spectrum interference and identifies the efficient solution. A regime where spectrum users have the power to enjoin intruding emissions beyond a predefined level (property rights protection) is compared with a regime where users are forced to bear with intruding emissions, but are entitled to economic compensation for the harm suffered (liability rules protection). The analysis suggests that different regimes may perform differently under different circumstances depending on the cause of interference and, critically, on whether the services are organised as an open- or a close-architecture system. This suggests that regulators should pay more attention to the specific features of the different bands, and that the appropriate spectrum management regime should be designed to recognise these differences.     

Do people respond to tax incentives? An analysis of the Italian reform of the deductibility of home mortgage interests

Before 1992 mortgage interests in Italy were fully tax deductible up to 3500 Euro (7000 for two cosigners). In 1992-1994 the government implemented a series of tax reforms whose ultimate effect was to eliminate the relation between the after-tax mortgage rate and the marginal tax rate. Using data from the 1989-2002 Survey of Household Income and Wealth we test if the elimination of incentives has affected the sensitivity of the decision to borrow and the amount borrowed with respect to the marginal tax rate. Regression analysis and difference-in-differences estimates indicate that tax considerations have not affected the demand for mortgage debt, neither at the extensive nor intensive margin. These results are consistent with lack of financial information and credit rationing during the sample period.     

The origin of money: A survey of the contemporary literature

Introducing money into a scheme of general economic equilibrium entails manifold problems, which have emerged in many contributions to the literature. Some of these problems have been adequately addressed at the level of micro-based approaches which can be traced back to the monetary theory of Carl Menger. In this survey we shall review such issues, after which we shall attempt to illustrate the contribution to solving the problem of the origin of money offered by the literature on transaction and information costs inspired by Menger's monetary theory. (JEL: E40, E42, D83) Although this paper is the fruit of a common effort, credit for Sections 1, 2, 3, 5, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 goes in particular to Giuseppe Mastromatteo, and for Sections 4, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 6 to Luigi Ventura. The authors would like to thank the referees for most useful comments and suggestions; the usual disclaimer applies.     

Cass transversality condition and sequential asset bubbles

Summary. The objective of this paper is to illustrate the connection existing between the asymptotic value of a certain random series and the absence of asset pricing valuation bubbles in stochastic economies with sequential markets. This series, in turn, is closely related to the one proposed by Cass to characterize efficient accumulation paths in Solow models.Received: 3 June 2003, Revised: 3 March 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: C61, C62, D51, G12.A first draft of this paper was presented at the V Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory, Ischia, Italy, 2001. I am grateful to S. Spear and an anonymous referee for their valuable comments. This research was partially supported by MIUR (Ministero dellIstruzione, Universitá e Ricerca).     

A public contracting evolutionary game with corruption

In this paper, firms are randomly matched from a continuous population to play a public contracting game (say, building a bridge). Price is given, so firms compete in quality; the higher the quality offer, the less the profit. According to the official rules of the contest, the firm bidding the highest quality wins; however, we consider the possibility that firms attempt to corrupt the public officer in charge in order to be sure to win even if bidding a lower quality (quality bids are not publicly observable). Whether or not firms attempt to corrupt depends on how rewarding corruption is w. r. t. being honest. Within a dynamic evolutionary framewark, we investigate how social conventions with or without corruption are established under various assumptions concerning the corruptability of the public officer and the possibility of an external monitoring of the officer's decisions by a super partes authority.     

A note on the diffusion of innovation

The paper deals with the process of substitution between technologies in a framework of increasing returns to scale. The approach stresses the interaction between capacity expansion and market demand as explanations of the diffusion of technologies into their niches. The demand and supply sides of the diffusion process are therefore brought together to determine simultaneously patterns of output and prices.It analyzes the dynamics of the substitution path, where a logistic diffusion process for the new technology is assumed, and determines the substitution curve between the old technology and the new one.