Electricity Prices as Signals for the Evaluation of Reforms: An Empirical Analysis of Four European Countries

This paper looks at price trends as signals for the evaluation of utility reforms. A specific example is considered: electricity prices in four countries, namely France, Germany, Italy and UK. These countries offer a natural experiment in different patterns of public/private ownership and liberalisation of electricity industry. Electricity prices are mainly influenced by the mix of energy inputs, their costs, and by consumption per capita. Under different institutional settings, prices for business users are often more cost‐reflective than prices for residential users. Beyond these common features, the evidence does not support the view that there is clear dominance of one industry pattern in terms of welfare change for the representative consumer. This conclusion tends to question the widely held idea that one specific ‘orthodox’ reform should be preferred: privatisation with liberalisation and vertical disintegration. Utility reforms should be flexible and country‐specific.     

Civil economy: definition and strategies for sustainable well-living

The civil economy paradigm presented in this paper has two main characteristics. First, it identifies the philosophical roots of the limits of our socioeconomic system in the reductionist views of human beings, corporations, and well-being. The three reductionist views not only fail to capture an important part of the reality, but also produce poverty of sense of life (also defined as eudaimonic well-being) and of life satisfaction, thereby generating a suboptimal level of well-being. The civil economy paradigm proposes an alternative where it is acknowledged that (1) part of the individuals depart from purely self-regarding preferences and develop other-regarding and relational skills enabling them to overcome social dilemmas, (2) part of the productive system depart from the profit maximization paradigm and aim to satisfy the interests of a wider range of stakeholders beyond shareholders, and (3) well-being is, beyond GDP, the stock of cultural, environmental, spiritual, and economic resources that a community can enjoy. The second qualifying point of the civil economy paradigm is that it proposes a richer four-hand approach to political economy (as an alternative to the traditional two-hand approach) where actions of the traditional invisible hand of the market and the visible hand of institutions in solving failures are complemented and supported by the complementary action of the two additional hands of grassroot citizens’ participation and socially and environmentally responsible companies. In our paper, we explain and document that these two additional hands are already at work, thereby confirming that the reductionist hypothesis on individuals and corporations is rejected by empirical evidence. In the paper, we argue that the civil economy paradigm, by increasing social participation and generativity of all actors, has the power of bridging the gap between the current suboptimal and the socially optimal sense of life (well described in the concept of “common good”). We as well provide evidence showing that the paradigm is far from being unrealistic and that its sprouts are already working in several fields of our society, preparing a more thorough transformation and full replacement of the old paradigm at a theoretical level that is near to come.     

FAILING FIRM DEFENCE WITH ENTRY DETERRENCE

Under the principle of the failing firm defence a merger that would be blocked due to its harmful effect on competition could be nevertheless allowed when (i) the acquired firm is actually failing, (ii) there is no less anticompetitive alternative offer of purchase, (iii) absent the merger, the assets to be acquired would exit the market. We focus on potential anticompetitive effects of a myopic application of the requirement (iii) by studying consequences of a horizontal merger on entry in a Cournot oligopoly with a failing firm. Entry is deterred if the merger is cleared and, when the industry is highly concentrated, consumer welfare is higher under a prohibition because long‐run gains due to augmented competition exceed short‐run losses due to shortage of output.     

CHOQUET INSURANCE PRICING: A CAVEAT

We show that, if prices in a market are Choquet expectations, the existence of one frictionless asset may force the whole market to be frictionless. Any risky asset will cause this collapse if prices depend only on the distribution with respect to a given nonatomic probability measure; the frictionless asset has to be fully revealing if such dependence is not assumed. Similar considerations apply to law-invariant coherent risk measures.     

Anti-poverty competences in a multilevel government: an empirical analysis of citizens’ preferences in Europe

This article aims to investigate individuals’ perceptions about institutions that should be primarily responsible for reducing or preventing poverty, which is a dramatic phenomenon that became a crucial issue in European countries over recent years. We propose an empirical analysis based on European survey data and investigate some citizens’-level and country-level variables that potentially affect individuals’ attitudes. Our results suggest that country-level economic and institutional characteristics do significantly affect individual preferences for the governance of anti-poverty policies.     

The impact of successful cross-competencies on a career in tourism in Italy: the meeting point between the students’ perceptions and the requirements for professionals

ABSTRACT

The paper aims to understand how the changes occurring in the tourism sector are affecting the labor market in Italy, with a special focus on the relevance of successful cross competences (SCC). It focuses on comparing the relevance of these competencies in the perception of both students preparing to enter the tourism field and tour operators. The two-step study combined qualitative analysis that put forth specific characteristics of the tourism labor market in Italy through interviews with experts, and quantitative analysis that correlated the requirements of the tour operators to the ideas students have of what competencies tour operators entering the field should have. The results evinced differing perceptions of SCC and their relative importance in professional fields. Students manifest to miss awareness of the importance of SCC for their future careers. Furthermore, organizational ability, self-control and self-esteem were perceived by tour operators as the most important competencies to be acquired.     

Financial systems in financial crisis — An analysis of banking systems in the EU

This Forum aims to systematically describe and analyse the evolution of national financial systems within the EU over the past three decades. It analyses the processes of financialisation that have dominated this period as well as the causes and consequences of the financial crisis from the perspectives of five individual member states — Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Spain. Furthermore, policy proposals which could change the role of the financial system to better serve economic and social objectives are also put forward.     

Productivity and profitability analysis of large Italian companies: 1998–2002

The determinants of profitability and productivity for large Italian companies operating in industrial sectors are investigated in this paper. Data were taken from one of the most important Italian business surveys, and furthermore two cross-section surveys for the years 1998 and 2002 are compared. The results highlight the importance of financial management and organisational complexity in order to explain the development of profitability and productivity ranking during 1998–2002. This paper identifies the important enterprise behaviour in terms of the variables considered. Large Italian companies remain competitive in the more traditional sectors (e.g. mechanics, textiles, etc.). In general, the Italian enterprises are not dynamic enough to compete in the most technological and innovative sectors. Moreover, there is the necessity for greater investments in order to foster the national economy.