Crowdfunding for the development of smart cities

In recent years, many cities have experienced new forms of collaboration that have an impact on citizens and entrepreneurs. The integration of this field of study with civic crowdfunding can influence economic growth and community building, which may be beneficial for both policymakers and practitioners alike. Civic crowdfunding is a financial model through which citizens, in collaboration with government and local authorities, fund projects to provide a community service. The development of smart cities is related to civic engagement, empowerment, and participation intended to be part of crowdsourcing or entrepreneurial activities. In this sense, cities play a vital role as drivers of (open) innovation and entrepreneurship. Based on these considerations, this study proposes an explorative and qualitative approach to investigate the civic crowdfunding phenomenon and its ability to promote community development. Our exploratory analysis of six projects highlights the challenges and opportunities of civic crowdfunding for the creation, development, and improvement of more inclusive cities.     

EXIT, CHOICE OR LOYALTY: PATIENT DRIVEN COMPETITION IN PRIMARY CARE

ABSTRACT ** :  This paper analyses the potential costs and benefits from patient driven competition between GPs and specialists by comparing gate-keeping with direct access to specialist care. The two access rules are compared under fee-for-service and capitation, on their performance at minimizing both total financial costs and patients' opportunity cost of time in care. To analyse the social cost of patients' potential access mistakes, two types of illnesses are considered, with two levels of severity and an equal probability for each of the four events. The results generated under information symmetry show that gate-keeping always dominates in terms of minimizing financial cost. Results are extended to show that under patients' heterogeneity with respect to time preferences, allocative efficiency can be enhanced in gate-keeping by giving the patient the option to seek a specialist directly, provided he bears the extra cost. When turning to information asymmetry, results are reversed, and direct access is shown to be more cost effective. This is due to patients' ability to constrain providers' opportunistic behaviour by 'voting with their feet'. Beyond increasing allocative efficiency, patient choice is therefore found, under certain conditions, to contribute towards enhancing productive efficiency. Finally, introducing co-payments to share the financial risk associated with direct access potentially weakens patients' ability to curb providers' strategic behaviour. Under information asymmetry, direct access to specialist care should therefore remain free if patient's disutility in time in care is linear. When it is instead increasing, we show that a co-payment becomes necessary to curb specialists' information rent. Finally, under information asymmetry, the mixed solution (gate-keeping with optional direct access) improves on pure gate-keeping but is still suboptimal.     

The optimal bid/ask spread in a Specialist System

In this work we propose a simple market model where some features of the Specialist System are analyzed. In particular, the specialist's obligation to display bid/ask quotes on the book within the bounds imposed by the Exchange is considered. The proposed model allows to analyze the effects of the specialist's interventions on the short term dynamics of bid/ask prices and address a relevant market design issue, that is determination and analysis of the optimal endogenous upper bound that - according to economic conditions - should be imposed by Stock Exchange on the quoted bid/ask spread. The institutional details are summarized in a few structural parameters and the focus is on the aggregate effects of excess demand/supply.     

Skills and labour incomes: how unequal is Italy as part of the Southern European countries?

This paper performs a comparative investigation of the effects of the Great Recession on the labour market structure and wage inequality in certain countries in Southern Europe (Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain). By exploring the intensity of the decline of middle-skill jobs during the years 2005–2013, which makes it possible to sketch what the labour market structure has set for itself (i.e., job polarisation, upgrading or neither), the objective is to relate these changes to wage inequality and its leading determinants. Through the Recentered Influence Function regression of the Gini index on EU-SILC data, Italy is compared to each selected country in order to evaluate how much of the spatial inequality gap is accounted for by the endowment in employee characteristics (composition effect) rather than the capability of each country’s labour market to reward these characteristics (wage structure) and, second, to identify those factors that are quantitatively more significant in making differentials. In brief, Italy is less unequal than the other Southern European countries. A larger amount of its “inequality advantage” depends on the wage structure. That is, the capacity of the country’s labour market in rewarding individual endowments is more important than the ways in which they are distributed across space.     

Optimal payment schemes for physicians

Increasingly, physicians payment schemes are being reformed to enhance performance and to ensure an optimal allocation of scarce medical resources. The empirical evidence points towards the use of mixed payment schemes that appear better at achieving efficiency than either lump sum payments (such as capitation) or piece rates (fee for service). Yet, this alleged superiority remains to be established from a theoretical standpoint. The Principal-Agent model developed in this paper offers a contribution in this line, with a primary care physician as agent and a public regulator as principal. Alternative specifications of the principals objective function are considered in the model (efficiency versus fairness). Uncertainty is introduced by two random variables that represent the probability for an individual of being ill and his productivity parameter which determines the amount of resources (the physicians effort in particular) necessary to restore health. The relationship is characterised by information asymmetry since the physician is assumed to observe both variables after the contract has been signed, but before choosing his effort level. Both selection and moral hazard issues are addressed in the model and the results show that, under GP risk neutrality, mixed payment schemes fully correct for both types of information asymmetry.Received: June 2002, Accepted: May 2003, JEL Classification: I18, I11, D82Rosella Levaggi: Correspondence toThe authors would like to thank participants to the LEA Barcelona Workshop, November 2001, to the Second Health Economics Workshop, Lisbon, February 2002 and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Would less regional income distribution justify the present call for devolution?

We model a local public good with spillovers, in a framework where devolution is socially inefficient. Nevertheless, we show that decentralisation may be preferred by one region if it implies a reduction in regional income redistribution. This result is due to the inter-regional mechanism of the equalisation grant. For an expenditure-based grant, we define a threshold for regional income disparity above which decentralisation is preferred, while for a resource-based grant the threshold depends on the spillover and the difference in preferences for the local public good. Finally, for given levels of regional income disparity we show which grant form may minimise the claims for decentralisation.