The Role of Fiscal Policy in a Monetary Union: are National Automatic Stabilizers Effective?*

We assess the role of national fiscal policies, as automatic stabilizers, within a monetary union. We use a two‐country New Keynesian DSGE model, incorporating non‐Ricardian consumers and a home bias in national consumption. Fiscal policy directly stabilizes non‐Ricardian agents' consumption. By doing so it contributes to the reduction in the volatility of variables such as output, wage inflation, and real interest rates. Our analysis of country‐specific shocks does not suggest potential inter‐country conflicts (as long as policies are constrained within the automatic stabilizers framework). However, we detect a potential conflict between the two consumer groups, because fiscal policy may raise optimizing agents' consumption volatility.     

CICPND维修专业人员资格鉴定系统

本文介绍意大利维修专业人员资格鉴定的有关事项，如各类维修人员必须掌握的技术内容和最低要求的知识，以及资格考试办法。     

Inequality of opportunity in secondary school enrolment in Italy,Germany and the Netherlands

Aim of this work is to evaluate the overall effect of social origins on secondary school track enrolment in Italy, Germany and Netherlands, allowing for consistent cross country comparisons. Track choices are assumed to depend on student’s ability and social origins; since proficiency before tracking is not observed, ability is not kept under control. Nonetheless, the unconditional social background effect is the quantity of main substantive interest because it represents the total effect of social origins on school choices. Yet, since regression coefficients in logit models are biased even with independent unobserved heterogeneity, comparison across countries are difficult; the average sample derivative of the response probability is employed and it is showed to be a valid alternative measure of the total social origins effect. The following issue is also addressed: social origins inequality in secondary school choices may be affected by access restrictions policies, at work in some countries, where enrolment into the academic track is subject to binding school recommendations or ability tests. First, we propose a simple theoretical model and derive that the policy is expected to lower the effect of social origins conditional on ability, although the impact on the total effect can either decrease or increase. Second, by exploiting the institutional differences across German Länder with respect to enrolment policies, we carry out a preliminary empirical analysis within Germany. The main empirical findings are: (i) the total effect of social origins on track choice is weaker in the Netherlands and stronger in Germany, with Italy in between; (ii) within Germany, access restriction seem to weaken the parental background effect.     

Food miles: Do UK consumers actually care?

The food miles concept, originating in the UK and given much prominence in the news media, has been used to imply that importing food from distant countries is inherently more wasteful than growing and consuming local produce. What impact is this potential non-tariff barrier having on consumer buying behaviour in UK supermarkets? Revealed preference surveys in four supermarkets show only 5.6% of 251 consumers nominated country-of-origin as one of the reasons for choosing a fresh food item they had just purchased. Furthermore, only 3.6% indicated that they had consciously chosen British products for the reason that such produce was “less harmful for the environment.” In contrast, stated preference surveys in the street found that 21.5% indicated that “food miles” or “the long distance it travels” would stop them buying New Zealand products. What people say may differ substantially from what they actually do in regard to “food miles.”     

From core to periphery and back: A study on the deliberate shaping of knowledge flows in interfirm dyads and networks

We study 892 Italian motorcycle industry projects carried out via 184 different buyer–supplier and supplier‐supplier relationships to provide evidence on the knowledge dynamics occurring in dyads and networks and to understand the underexplored but important (perhaps even dominant) leading role that some firms play in the evolution of networks and interfirm learning processes. We develop a multiphase model which, from a multilevel perspective addressing different relational subsets, suggests how firms can best organize to generate and exchange knowledge efficiently. We argue that extant theoretical perspectives can profitably draw on our findings to strengthen their dynamic components and help them explain the widely diffused ‘exploring through partner’ strategies more effectively. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Estimating an hedonic translog cost function for the home health care industry

Medicare home health care plays an important role in providing cost effective care for the chronically ill and elderly. Long seen as a cost effective substitute for nursing home care, home care has become even more important with expenditures increasing by 31.4% from 1990 to 1996. The purpose of this paper is to provide a short run cost analysis of a sample of home health care providers to gain insight into the efficient provision of home health care services. This paper is a significant improvement over previous studies in that it uses a nationwide database to more accurately represent the multiproduct nature of the industry and uses an hedonic translog cost estimation with desirable economic properties.     

ARBITRAGE‐FREE MULTIFACTOR TERM STRUCTURE MODELS: A THEORY BASED ON STOCHASTIC CONTROL

We present an alternative approach to the pricing of bonds and bond derivatives in a multivariate factor model for the term structure of interest rates that is based on the solution of an optimal stochastic control problem. It can also be seen as an alternative to the classical approach of computing forward prices by forward measures and as such can be extended to other situations where traditionally a change of measure is involved based on a change of numeraire. We finally provide explicit formulas for the computation of bond options in a bivariate linear‐quadratic factor model.     

Low-cost pricing strategies in leisure markets

The practice of dynamic pricing typical of low-cost carriers is generally regarded as a form of price discrimination between “leisure” and “business” travellers on a single flight or route. The same may not be true across different routes because of the different incidence of business travellers. If price increases in the 15 days prior to departure are meant to discriminate business demand, leisure demand should account for earlier price variations. In the present study, we used a database containing the daily fare over the 3 months prior to each flight operated by easyJet during 2009. For each route, we defined the “leisure index” as the difference between the price rates of change during the 90 days and 15 days prior to departure. Overall, “business” routes had lower average prices per km, while “leisure” routes showed less dynamic price behaviour, with higher minimum and lower maximum prices per km.