Size and Performance of Local Clusters of Firms

The aim of this paper is to propose an econometric application in order to detect the factors that affect the size and the performance of local clusters of small and medium firms (SMEs) such as industrial districts. Our purpose is to extend some basic issues of models in economic geography in order to account for further micro components that seem fostering the rise and performances of local clusters. We succeed in stating that, in addition to the home market effect and transport costs, firms belonging to industrial districts improve their competitiveness by exploiting some assets, such those involved by ad-hoc services, generated inside the district by the co-operation among firms. Moreover looking for fixed effects in the study of firms' competitiveness allows us to determine that sectorial differences do not affect substantially the behavior and performance of SMEs.     

The generational perspective of gender gap in wages and education in southern Europe

This paper aims at investigating gender differentials in wages and education from an intergenerational perspective across four developed countries of southern Europe, considering the generational transmission of preferences and the gender equality systems and policies. Measures of gender inequality in wages and education permit exploring the different extent to which gender gaps depend on unobserved factors, such as discrimination. A first set of discrimination indexes is computed starting from the estimation of extended Mincerian log-earnings equations, whereas a second set is based on the estimation of ordered logistic regressions on a range of personal characteristics considered to be linked to education, controlling for family background. The main results show that family background affects the degree of gender inequality more than the gender equality policies do. Gender disparities in professional outcomes can be partly due to women’s preferences vs. lower-paid jobs because of the incomplete efficacy of national systems.     

Regulating internal markets for hospital care

Internal markets have been created in an attempt to shift power from producers to consumers in a context where consumers have very weak incentives to seek out low-cost producers and have little knowledge about the quality of health care. The idea is that by establishing public agencies to act as the sole purchasers on behalf of consumers in their area of jurisdiction, the asymmetry of information can be moderated and a more competitive environment created in which costs will be minimized and quality enhanced. Whether these aspirations can be fulfilled will depend on how the internal market is organized. In this article the cost-minimizing properties of alternative market structures where hospitals do not share the same objectives are examined. The scheme is designed from the standpoint of a benevolent regulator that provides services using two hospitals with fixed locations. The paper shows that price discrimination is a superior instrument. Finally some market forms are always dominated and should be avoided.

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Structure of the labour market and wage inequality: evidence from European countries

The aim of this paper is to explore how the structural changes that have occurred in the labour market, in terms of employment composition by skill levels, affect wage inequality in three developed countries of Western Europe that are in close geographical proximity but have disparities in their labour market characteristics. More precisely, the analysis compares, from an international perspective, France, Germany—whose labour markets have been characterised in recent years by job polarization and the upgrading of occupations, respectively—and Italy, where neither of the two phenomena can be clearly identified. Using EU-SILC (European Union—Survey on Income and Living Conditions) data, in the first step, RIF-regression (Recentered Influence Function) enables an exploration on the primary factors that are likely to explain the differences in generating personal labour earnings and, in the second step, a decomposition of the change in wage inequality between 2005 and 2013 to evaluate how much of the overall gap is accounted for by the endowments in employees’ individual characteristics (composition effect) rather than the capability of labour markets to transform these characteristics into job opportunities and earnings (wage structure). Regarding France and Germany, the main results highlight how the endowment effect plays a key role in decreasing or, at least, not increasing wage inequality, whereas in Italy the rising inequality may be due to the lower efficiency of the country’s labour market in creating job opportunities, better job-related careers, and higher-salaries for employees.     

Estimating a socially optimal water price for irrigation versus an environmentally optimal water price through the use of Geographical Information Systems and Social Accounting Matrices

This article develops a method for establishing water prices and their effects in order to provide policy makers an environmentally and socially optimal range of regional prices for irrigation water. Two prices are determined. The “environmentally optimal price” of water is defined as the one that internalizes the environmental costs generated by agricultural consumption. The “social optimally price” of water is defined as the one that maximizes levies on water for agriculture without affecting the regional economy. The environmentally optimal price is calculated with an economic model built over a Geographical Information System (GIS) that allows the economic quantification and valuation of the environmental cost of water in different basins. The optimal price is calculated with a demand curve for irrigation water introduced into a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) to observe if the regional economy can accept higher prices without affecting the regional GDP. Potential water prices are established, ranging from prices that minimize the negative impact in the regional economy to those that totally internalize the environmental cost of water.     

The impact of innovation on companies’ performance: an entropy-based analysis of the STAR market segment of the Italian Stock Exchange

This paper proposes the use of a class of concentration-based entropy measures as a new instrument to quantify business performances through an analysis of growth, profitability and productivity. Such measures are tested against a complex analysis of the link between innovation and performance for firms listed in the STAR market segment of the Italian Stock Exchange. In so doing, two targets are achieved: (1) the identification of parameters that are relevant for explaining the relationship between innovation and performance for the considered sample, with special focus on innovation type, innovation level and business size; (2) the elaboration of a new methodology – based on information theory – for the analysis of the impact of innovation on performance. The study shows that type of innovation and size play a key role in determining company performance.     

The estimation of British local government expenditure decisions under a piecewise linear budget constraint

In the light of the reforms that have affected local government finance in Britain, the empirical analysis of local government responses to the changes in the grant system has become a topical subject because of its policy implications. Barnett et al.proposed different models to predict the likely impact of the reforms on local government expenditure but never tested ofr the validity of the functional form used in their model. The main reason for this omission is related to the piecewise nature of the budget constraint faced by local authorities which complicated the estimation techniques and restricted the choice of the functional forms that could be used. The presented here tests for the validity of the functional form using data for the three fiscal years that preceded the poll tax reform, namely 1986–87 to 1988–89 and suggests specific tests to compare the parameters obtained using different models. The main conclusion of the analysis is that only the behaviour of metropolitan districts is consistent with utility maximization.     

INVESTMENT IN HOSPITAL CARE TECHNOLOGY UNDER DIFFERENT PURCHASING RULES: A REAL OPTION APPROACH

Quality of health care is the product of several factors as the literature has long recognized. In this paper we focus on the relationship between quality and investment in health technology by analysing the optimal investment decision in a new health care technology of a representative hospital that maximizes its surplus in an uncertain environment. The new technology allows the hospital to increase the quality level of the care provided, but the investment is irreversible. The paper uses the framework of the real option literature to show how the purchaser might influence the quality level by setting a quality‐contingent long‐term contract with the hospital.The investment in new technology is in fact best incentivated within a long‐term contract where the number of treatments reimbursed depends on the level of investment made when the technology is new. In this way, asymmetry of information does not affect the outcome of the contract. In our model in fact the purchaser can verify the level of the investment only at the end of each period but the purchasing rule has an anticipating effect on the decision to invest.     

协调社会与产业的目标：药品定价中的议价模型

药品费用在世界许多国家快速增长，这激起了人们对药品定价的关注，因此许多国家都试图通过定价手段来达到降低药品费用的目的。各国对药品价格都有一定形式的规制，其中一种做法就是最高限价，即通过制定药品价格的上限以达到控制成本。     

Bayesian estimation of truncated data with applications to operational risk measurement

Data insufficiency and reporting threshold are two main issues in operational risk modelling. When these conditions are present, maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) may produce very poor parameter estimates. In this study, we first investigate four methods to estimate the parameters of truncated distributions for small samples—MLE, expectation-maximization algorithm, penalized likelihood estimators, and Bayesian methods. Without any proper prior information, Jeffreys’ prior for truncated distributions is used. Based on a simulation study for the log-normal distribution, we find that the Bayesian method gives much more credible and reliable estimates than the MLE method. Finally, an application to the operational loss severity estimation using real data is conducted using the truncated log-normal and log-gamma distributions. With the Bayesian method, the loss distribution parameters and value-at-risk measure for every cell with loss data can be estimated separately for internal and external data. Moreover, confidence intervals for the Bayesian estimates are obtained via a bootstrap method.