Decentralisation of competencies and local development agencies in North-Eastern Italy

Despite the economic success of north-eastern Italy, some of its areas, such as those closest to the Adriatic coast, are still experiencing difficulties in industrialisation. Since the 1960s, some development policies have been implemented to stimulate economic restructuring. After the disappointing performance of centrally planned initiatives, most development policies are now the responsibility of local authorities. In fact, institutional and constitutional reforms have increased the competencies and the autonomy of lower levels of government, which have also been allowed greater responsibility in development initiatives. The establishment of development agencies is therefore increasingly left to local collective action.¹ This paper examines the effectiveness of such bottom-up initiatives driven by local institutions, and attempts to identify the best forms and the best regulatory framework for such activities.     

Has Ryanair's pricing strategy changed over time? An empirical analysis of its 2006–2007 flights

This paper analyzes the question of whether Ryanair's pricing strategies have changed over time. We create a panel dataset of fares for all of Ryanair's European flights over a two-year period, from 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2007. We calculate the average fare over a 90-day period prior to departure and the intensity of dynamic pricing for each flight in the panel, in particular analysing the changes in these variables observed between pairs of “equivalent” flights. Our results show that overall, both average fares and the intensity of dynamic pricing decreased in 2007. More than one-third of flights saw a price reduction of more than 10%. Now that it has become the dominant low-cost carrier in Europe, Ryanair appears to be softening its dynamic pricing activities on existing routes, typically employed to stimulate additional touristic demand. Thus, booking in advance becomes relatively more expensive.     

Territorial Rooting as an Element of Well-Being

The paper discusses the relevance of the idea of rooting as proposed by Simone Weil and builds a social economic framework to study its role in our life. Rooting is connected to the need of belonging and to have an identity. These elements are identified in some different areas of research—social psychology and social economy—to analyze how this need of the person is taken into account. Then, a theoretical framework to study rooting is presented developing the concept of plural utility and capabilities. The end is to discuss one of the neglected dimensions of human needs in the context of modern society. Finally, some conclusion concerning both individual choices related to rooting and well-being will be proposed.     

Preference for flexibility in the absence of learning: the risk attitude effect

Individuals’ preferences over opportunity sets may display “preference for flexibility” which prescribes to gradually eliminate alternatives from a given set until a final choice is made. One rationale for this preference for flexibility is individuals’ incentive to postpone the final choice in order to better learn their underlying preferences over basic alternatives. In this paper we show that even in the absence of learning, preference for flexibility arises if individuals are risk-averse or, at least, are not very risk-seeking. Thus, individual’s attitude towards risk provides yet another rationale for preference for flexibility. One of our results is that in the absence of learning, risk-neutral as well as risk-averse individuals display the same, maximal preference for flexibility. We thank Han Bleichrodt, Robert Dur, Chaim Fershtman, Maarten Janssen, Peran van Reeven, Peter Wakker, and Timothy van Zandt for helpful comments to and inspiring discussions. We are very grateful to the anonymous referee for very constructive comments and suggestions.     

Is H.A. Simon a theoretician of decentralized planning? A comparison with F.A. Hayek on planning,market, and organizations

Herbert A. Simon acknowledged Friedrich A. Hayek as a founder of the notion of bounded rationality; yet Simon considered Hayek’s perspective incomplete, and, more in general, their views on market mechanisms, planning, and organization exhibit considerable differences. The comparison between these authors sheds light on Simon’s interpretation of planning, which emerges within his theory of organization (and not in traditional debates on socialism). Contrary to Hayek, he maintained that planning, in specific circumstances, is more advantageous than the market; and in both administration and organization, it involves a decentralized structure based on near independent sub-units. Decentralization of decisions also appears in social planning, which evolves through continuous interactions among planners (i.e., agents and institutions), and it is a process connoted by the absence of “fixed goals”. Finally, Simon defined modern economies more in terms of “organizational economies” than in those of “market economies” and this highlights a further difference with respect to the Austrian economist. This leads to analysis of the nature of organizations as hierarchical and “near-decomposable” structures, which refers to Simon’s theory of complexity and gives an epistemological explanation to the relation between centralization and decentralization.     

Thank you to Reviewers 2013

Abstract

Drawing on Parkin's [Marxism and class theory: A bourgeois critique. London: Tavistock Publications] concept of dual closure, this paper examines the attempt to secure the regulation of the accountancy profession in post-unification Italy. The state's establishment of a class of ‘expert accountants’ in 1865 represented an imperfect closure of the profession. In consequence, a chain of closure attempts ensued. These ventures involved shifting constructions of dominant and subordinate occupational groups and the deployment of diverse strategies to achieve usurpationary and exclusionary forms of closure. The study reveals that the achievement of state regulation of the profession in 1906 reflected the successful pursuit of usurpationary closure by a subordinated group within the accountancy field. However, it also points to the failure of the profession's efforts to make incursions into the jurisdictions of higher status occupations, especially lawyers, who wielded considerable sociopolitical power in newly unified Italy. Consistent with the findings of previous studies, the paper confirms the complexity and uncertain outcomes of closure projects in the accountancy profession.     

The effects of unification: markets,policy, and cyclical convergence in Italy, 1861–1913

This paper uses time-series evidence on construction movements to examine the convergence of regional business cycles in the decades that followed Italy’s unification. The aggregate series point to cyclical convergence, but a sector-level analysis traces this result to the decline in differentiated “regional-policy” shocks. The regional market cycles diverged, as regions specialized in different sectors of production; market-cycle convergence is observed only within the “industrial triangle,” the regions of which also developed different specializations. This suggests that the balance between growing interdependence and growing differentiation is not general, as the current literature presumes, but specialization-specific.