TRUST AND VIRTUAL DISTRICTS: EVIDENCE FROM THE MILAN INTERNET EXCHANGE

Peering decisions between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) contain substantial non‐measurable aspects requiring trust and informal cooperation among peering partners. We study whether virtual districts are observed between Internet peers. Our empirical analysis of the bilateral peering decisions at the Milan Internet Exchange confirms that these decisions are significantly influenced by: travel time either between ISPs' headquarters or towards the exchange—a proxy for distance, bandwidth—a proxy for size, and European connectivity. Proximity still plays a role in reducing the transaction costs of monitoring and punishing deviant behavior within an industry where trust is essential for Internet universal connectivity.     

The spinning jenny and the guillotine: technology diffusion at the time of revolutions

Scale economies and demand, combined with the relative prices of input factors, can provide an economic explanation to the location and timing of the Industrial Revolution. Its labor-saving innovations were profitable only above a minimum output threshold, which allowed to cover the upfront cost of capital. In turn, the possibility to exceed such threshold depended on consumer demand, which was affected by the level and by the distribution of real income. The case of the spinning jenny and the cotton industry in England and France serves as a valuable case study to show how scale and demand considerations might have mattered even at the eve of the Industrial Revolution, thus implying also a potentially important role for income distribution.     

Price Commitments in Standard Setting under Asymmetric Information*

Standards may create market power for the holders of standard essential patents (SEPs). To address these concerns, the literature advocates price commitments, whereby SEP holders commit to the maximum royalty they would charge were their technology included in the standard. We consider a setting in which a technology implementer holds private information about profitability. In this setting, price commitments increase efficiency not only by curbing SEP holders' market power, but also by alleviating distortions in the design of the royalty scheme. We derive conditions under which price commitments can be implemented using a simple royalty cap as used in practice.     

An offer they couldn't refuse (but probably should have): the ineffectiveness of Italian state subsidies to movie-making

Public financial support to national movie (film) production is typically conditional on very subjective artistic and socio-cultural criteria and objectives. Yet the question remains as to whether state subsidies actually help films at the box office. This paper shows the public grant regime in Italy did not develop the industry as intended, since in an overwhelming number of cases, production losses exceeded subsidy. The subsidy regime was ineffective and wasteful. Specific institutional and political features characterizing the Italian system are important components in this story. The conclusions will be of interest to all countries making commercial films.     

Male and Female Recoveries in Medical Malpractice Cases

This study analyzes male and female recovery resulting from medical malpractice injuries to discern the importance to the recovery differential of gender differences in recoveries for medical malpractice injuries. We find that the pattern of recoveries follows one similar to that found in studying wage differentials between males and females. Differences in the relative magnitudes of foregone earnings and nonmarket loses are reflected in the composition of recoveries. In addition, we find a recovery gap in which females receive substantially less in recoveries when they receive male's average compensation for medical malpractice injuries. However, only a small portion of the male and female recovery differential is explained by the characteristics of the claims, leaving a substantial portion of the differential unexplained.     

CSR Practices and Corporate Strategy: Evidence from a Longitudinal Case Study

This paper aims to contribute to the present debate about business ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) that the Journal of Business Ethics is hosting. Numerous contributions argued theoretical frameworks and taxonomies of CSR practices. The authors want to ground in this knowledge and provide further evidence about how companies adopt CSR practices to address stakeholders’ claims and consolidate their trust. Evidence was provided by a longitudinal case study about an Italian food company that is one of the largest producers of baby food. This company reshaped its corporate strategy along three decades through the adoption of CSR practices in order to win stakeholders’ trust about food safety and supply chain behaviour. The empirical exercise was informed by a literature review of the relevant contributions in terms of CSR business practices and levels of efforts to adopt them. In light of this review, the authors adopted for the research framework the taxonomy of business practices proposed by Spiller (2000, “Ethical Business and Investment: A Model for Business and Society”, Journal of Business Ethics 27, 149-160) and the levels of commitment towards CSR proposed by Stahl and Grigsby (1997, Strategic Management; Total Quality & Global Competition (Blackwell, Oxford)). The main findings are discussed in order to argue theoretical implications and identify further areas of research and debate.     

Order book modeling and financial stability

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - This paper presents an agent-based model of the financial order book, and investigates whether the volatility of market prices can be reduced by...     

Ownership ties,conflict of interest,and the tone of news

This paper investigates the tone newspapers use in reporting information on a company that it is linked with through an ownership tie. Our empirical setting is Italy, a country characterized by dominant national industrial groups’ high ownership of newspapers. Based on a sample of about 123,000 articles, we document that newspapers’ coverage of firms in conflict of interest is greater, with significantly fewer negative and uncertain words. We also document that the slant increases with ownership stakes and decreases with the newspaper's reputation.     

Uncertainty across volatility regimes

We propose a nonrecursive identification scheme for uncertainty shocks that exploits breaks in the volatility of macroeconomic variables and is novel in the literature on uncertainty. This approach allows us to simultaneously address two major questions in the empirical literature: Is uncertainty a cause or effect of decline in economic activity? Does the relationship between uncertainty and economic activity change across macroeconomic regimes? Results based on a small‐scale vector autoregression with US monthly data suggest that (i) uncertainty is an exogenous source of decline of economic activity, and (ii) the effects of uncertainty shocks amplify in periods of economic and financial turmoil.