Choices on museum attendance: An agent-based approach

This paper presents an agent-based model to study museum attendance, with the final aim of evaluating how the rules on free admission affect charged visits. Heterogeneous agents of a population are assumed to make their choices over a bundle of goods and activities which include museum attendance along with other consumption and leisure-time alternatives. Simulations show that larger free-admission rules always lead to an increase in the number of total visits. A specific focus is dedicated to show which conditions let the free admittance policies induce an increment also in charged visits. Agents are characterized in terms of income and education. Addiction to cultural consumption is modelled both with and without reference to education. Specific aspects, such as crowd effects and renovation of exhibitions, are also considered, as features of the museum attendance.     

On the Identification of Interdependence and Contagion of Financial Crises

In this paper we propose a new framework for modelling heteroskedastic structural vector autoregressions. The identification of the structural parameters is obtained by exploiting the heteroskedasticity in the data naturally arising during crisis periods. More precisely, we provide identification conditions when heteroskedasticity and traditional restrictions on the parameters are jointly considered. Although the framework is general enough to find potential applications in many empirical economic fields, it proves to be well suited for distinguishing between interdependence and contagion in the literature related to the transmission of financial crises. This methodology is used to investigate the relationships between sovereign bond yields for some highly indebted EU countries.     

Stakeholder Orientation and Acquisition Performance

Research summary : In this article, we study how a firm's stakeholder orientation affects the performance of its corporate acquisitions. We depart from prior literature and suggest that orientations toward employees, customers, suppliers, and local communities will affect long‐term acquisition performance both directly and through its interactions with process characteristics, such as preacquisition relatedness and postacquisition integration. Analyses of data on a sample of 1884 acquisitions show overall a positive association between acquirers' stakeholder orientation and acquisition performance. In addition, we find support for a positive moderation of business relatedness on the performance impacts of stakeholder orientation. Structural integration has a similarly positive moderation effect only for some of the stakeholder categories. Managerial summary : Does collaboration with stakeholders during an acquisition pay off in terms of performance? The results of this research show that it is worth engaging stakeholders during the M&A process, but that the efficacy of involvement practices may depend on the type of stakeholders and the characteristics of the acquisition. While acquiring firms that take account of suppliers and local communities consistently overperform in their acquisitions, the inclusion of employees might be not beneficial (and even harmful) when the target firm operates in a dissimilar business or when managers do not plan to maintain it as a separate entity. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Russian Roulette at the Trade Table: A Specific Factors CGE Analysis of an Agri‐food Import Ban

In the summer of 2014 Russia imposed a ban on most agri‐food products from countries enforcing Ukraine‐related sanctions against Russia. We use a specific factors computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to simulate the short‐run impact of this retaliatory policy. The baseline is carefully designed to isolate the impacts of the ban on the European Union (EU), Russia itself and a selection of key trade partners. The modelling of the ban follows a novel approach, where it is treated as a loss of established trade preferences via reductions in consumer utility in the Armington import function. Not surprisingly, the results indicate that Russia bears the highest income loss (about €3.4 billion) while the EU recovers part of its lost trade through expansion of exports to other markets. An ex‐post comparison between simulation results and observed trade data reveals the model predictions to be broadly accurate, thereby validating the robustness of the modelling approach.     

Technology Adoption and the Emergence of Regional Asymmetries

The model explains the emergence of asymmetric productive structures among regions based on adoption of a quality improving technology. Firms' products are differentiated both in location and quality, location is given. We characterize symmetric and asymmetric equilibria of the two stage game in price and adoption. Asymmetric equilibria display partial adoption frequencies and regular geographical patterns of adoptions. The asymmetry of the economy has, often, a reverse U-shaped relation with the innovation size. Market integration is an obstacle for the full adoption of the new technology and favours the emergence of regional asymmetries.     

Real-time crisis management: Testing the role of accounting in local governments

At a time of a global crisis with unprecedented depth and breath, this paper explores the role of accounting in real-time crisis management at local level by investigating how national stakeholders assessed the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy, one of the most affected countries. The paper aims at augmenting knowledge on the intersection between weathering crisis and accounting. Calculative practices play an important role to help manage crises since they may foster or undermine relief and recovery efforts. Results show how decision makers used cash accounting disregarding more complete information with a wider and longer-term perspective, against some stakeholders’ and scholars’ advice.     

Financial sector bargaining power,aggregate growth and systemic risk

Recent decades have seen a substantial increase in the size and influence of the financial industry in advanced economies. Mainstream theory states that the financial sector can increase the efficiency and stability of the real economy by reducing informational asymmetries and transaction costs. Nevertheless, the rise of the financial industry has been accompanied by lower aggregate growth, increased inequality and declining financial stability. With this in mind, the main aim of the present article is to provide a different perspective on the rise of finance in developed countries, by focusing on the impact of financial markets on aggregate growth and economic (in)stability. Specifically, we analyse the role of the bargaining power of financial intermediaries in promoting (or reducing) the entrance of new enterprises in the market and find that the financial sector is essential for the good functioning of the real economy, but that an overdeveloped financial industry can reduce the incentive for new firms to start production, resulting in a negative impact on aggregate growth and economic stability.

     

Assessing environmental product declaration opportunities: a reference framework

The growing awareness about environmental issues places greater responsibility on firms to transmit information about the environmental quality of their products. One of the most innovative ways to achieve this objective is through the ‘environmental product declaration’. Unfortunately, from an operating viewpoint, there is a very little evidence on the effects associated with the introduction of this label. In lieu of this context, the paper suggests operating guidelines and a methodological approach for managers who aim to understand under which conditions the EPD can represent a useful tool for the company's competitiveness. In particular, the paper will identify

• 1 the specific peculiarities and requirements of the EPD;
• 2 the EPD parameters of attractiveness, related to its potential costs and benefits;
• 3 an operational framework in order to assess the EPD target audience.

In this respect, an empirical analysis on 17 Italian firms will be carried out. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Impact of Low‐Skilled Immigration on Female Labour Supply

In this paper, segmenting the market by educational levels, we investigate which native‐born women are more affected by an increase of low‐skilled immigrants working in the household service sector. We present a model of individual choice with home production and, using a harmonized dataset (the Cross‐National Equivalent File), we estimate its main comparative static results. The results suggest that the share of immigrants working in services is positively associated with an increase of native‐born women's labour supply at the intensive margin, if skilled, and at the extensive margin, if unskilled. Moreover, the results show that these effects are larger in countries with less‐supportive family policies.