Outsourcing versus integration at home or abroad and firm heterogeneity

This paper analyzes the location (at home or abroad) and the mode of organization (outsourcing versus integration) of intermediate inputs production, using data on a sample of Italian manufacturing companies and focusing on the role of firm heterogeneity. We find evidence of a productivity ordering where foreign integration is chosen by the most productive firms and domestic outsourcing is chosen by the least productive firms; firms with medium-high productivity choose domestic integration, firms with medium-low productivity choose foreign outsourcing.     

SHORT-TERM CONTRACTS REGULATIONS AND DYNAMIC LABOUR DEMAND: THEORY AND EVIDENCE

We present a dynamic labour demand model where we evaluate the impact of employment regulations on permanent and temporary employment. We consider three different kinds of regulations, namely firing costs, hiring costs and a constraint on temporary contracts. These regulations differently affect the size and composition of employment. The theoretical results are interpreted and questioned on the basis of empirical evidence on the employment effects of the regulation reforms that occurred in the major European countries in the period 1983–1999. The empirical analysis is based on a new set of time‐varying indicators on permanent employment protection, fixed‐term contracts and temporary agency work regulations. We find evidence in support of the hypothesis that fixed‐term contracts have been effective stepping‐stones to permanent jobs during the period under observation. On the contrary, flexible temporary agency work regulations seem to induce a substitution of permanent with temporary contracts.     

Employment protection: Do firms' perceptions match with legislation?

Drawing from harmonized surveys of firms around the world, we compare employers' responses with actual labor legislation. Employers' concerns about labor regulations are closely related to the relative stringency of labor laws. Medium and large firms, as well as innovating firms, are those most negatively affected by onerous labor regulations.     

Rhetorical manifestation of institutional transformation

The present study proposes an analysis process to compare and contrast different approaches to content analysis. Moving from previous findings (Righettini and Sbalchiero, ICPP—international conference on public policy, 2015), related to consumer protection in the annual speeches of Italian Presidents of AGCOM, delivered between 2000 and 2015, statistical analyses of textual data are applied on the same set of texts in order to compare and contrast results and evaluate the opportunity of integrating different approaches to enrich the results. This review of results resorts to topic based methods for classification of context units (Reinert, Les Cah l’Anal Donnees 8(2):187–198, 1983), text clustering and lexical correspondence analysis (Lebart et al., Exploring textual data, 1998) in a general framework of content analysis and “lexical worlds” exploration (Reinert, Lang Soc 66:5–39, 1993), i.e., the identification of main topics and words used by AGCOM Presidents to talk about consumer protection. Results confirm the strengths and opportunities of topics detection approach and shed light on how quantitative methods might become useful to political scientists when available policy documents increase in number and size. One methodological innovation of this article is that it supplements the use of word categories in traditional content analysis with an automated topics analysis which exceeds the problems of reliability, replicability, and inferential circularity.     

POINTS OR PRISON? THE EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT SANCTIONS ON DRIVING BEHAVIOR

We compare two reforms aimed at reducing road accidents in Italy. The Penalty Points System (PPS) provides drivers with a score and curtails points after infractions. The license is temporarily suspended when points are exhausted. Losing points is easy, but the penalty is mild. The Road Homicide (RH) introduces heavy penalties in the rare event of injuries and/or fatalities. In terms of probability and intensity of the penalty the two policies are therefore diametrically opposed. We find that injuries and fatalities decrease more with PPS than with RH. Comparing costs and benefits, we conclude that strong penalties are not beneficial. (JEL D91, K14, K42, R41)     

Option pricing with stochastic volatility models

A general class of models for derivative pricing with stochastic volatility is analyzed. We include the possibility of jumps for the paths of the asset's price and for those of its volatility. We also consider the case of correlation between the process of the asset's price and that of its volatility. In this way we are able to give a unifying view on most of the models studied in the literature. We will examine theoretical issues related to the market price of volatility risk, the equivalent martingale measures and the possibility of obtaining a numerically tractable formula for contingent claim pricing. Finally, we propose some methodologies to test the behavior of stochastic volatility models when applied to market data.     

Reconstruction and visualisation of melt topology in veined microdioritic enclaves

A number of xenocrystic microdioritic enclaves within the Ross of Mull Granite contain narrow veins of monzonitic material that have formed through the selective partial fusion of granitic magma mechanically incorporated into the microdiorite magma. Field evidence suggests that, as melting of the granitic material ensued, a monzonitic melt formed and exfiltrated from the surrounding microdioritic matrix resulting in Saffman–Taylor instabilities and the development of viscous fingering phenomena. The monzonitic melt network is now preserved as monzonitic veins. Mechanical serial sectioning through a representative veined microdioritic enclave shows that: (a) the topology of the veins is complex but crudely polyhedral, (b) there is porosity (monzonitic melt fraction) variation throughout the length of the veined enclave and (c) that the monzonitic veins are interconnected in three dimensions. Using image analysis software, the total porosity of individual veined enclave sections has been estimated, along with the variation in porosity with depth. Three dimensional rendering and animation software has been used to reconstruct and visualise the monzonitic melt network using Apple QuickTime? software. The above method provides a cheap and powerful way of visualising remnant macroscopic transport properties (such as connectivity and melt topology) in partially molten igneous rocks.