Pseudo conditional maximum likelihood estimation of the dynamic logit model for binary panel data

We show how the dynamic logit model for binary panel data may be approximated by a quadratic exponential model. Under the approximating model, simple sufficient statistics exist for the subject-specific parameters introduced to capture the unobserved heterogeneity between subjects. The latter must be distinguished from the state dependence which is accounted for by including the lagged response variable among the regressors. By conditioning on the sufficient statistics, we derive a pseudo conditional likelihood estimator of the structural parameters of the dynamic logit model, which is simple to compute. Asymptotic properties of this estimator are studied in detail. Simulation results show that the estimator is competitive in terms of efficiency with estimators recently proposed in the econometric literature.     

Die Wiederherstellung einer internationalen Währungsordnung

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Digital Transformation and Innovation Management: A Synthesis of Existing Research and an Agenda for Future Studies

Management and organizational scholars have paid increasing attention to the interconnections between digital transformation and innovation management in the last decade. However, a highly fragmented understanding of this topic is what we are left with so far. In this editorial, we suggest an approach to open up the black box of the interplay between digital transformation and innovation management by providing a framework that identifies three levels of analyisis (i.e., macro, meso, and micro) along which existing and future research on the topic can be organized. This model encourages scholars to conduct theoretical and empirical studies on how digital transformation affects ecosystems’ structure and governance, how industries and firms compete and organize for innovation in a digitalized world, how the processes for developing new products and services change under the effect of digital technologies, and the implications of digital transformation on managing people and teams involved in the innovation process, among the other topics. We also provide a synthesis of the eight papers published in the Special Issue that this editorial introduces and develop an agenda for future research that will hopefully contribute to encourage and shape future scholarly efforts into this field.     

Employer Association Responses to the Effects of Bargaining Decentralization in Australia and Italy: Seeking Explanations from Organizational Theory

The literature has neglected to analyse employer associations as organizations facing potential environmental threats to their financial sustainability. We examine associations' responses to collective bargaining decentralization, a major, contemporary threat. Using a qualitative, comparative case approach, we examine eight associations — four each in Australia and Italy — to develop a model of response types. Stronger decentralization effects increase associations' exposure to new and heightened competition, which in turn produces stronger association responses. These include prioritizing commercial over associational objectives. We analyse responses using strategic choice and resource dependence theories, finding that associations use both. However, the decision how to combine them reflects environmental conditions as well as choices linking organizational purpose and financial sustainability.     

Designing feasible and effective health plan payments in countries with data availability constraints

Risk equalization schemes, which transfer money to/from insurers that have above/below average risks, are a fundamental tool in regulated health insurance markets in many countries. Risk sharing (the transfer of some responsibility for costs from a plan to the regulator or the overall insurance market), are an additional method of insulating insurers who attract higher-than-average risks. This paper proposes, implements and quantifies incorporating risk sharing within a risk equalization scheme that can be applied in a data-poor context. Using Chile's private health insurance market as case study, we show that modest amount of risk sharing greatly improves fit even in simple demographic-based risk equalization. Expanding the model's formula to include morbidity-based adjustors and risk sharing redirects compensations at insurer level and reduces opportunity to engage in profitable risk selection at the group level. Our emphasis on feasibility may make alternatives proposed attractive to countries facing data-availability constraints.     

When income differences hurt or excite: The nonlinear effect of regional inequality on subjective wellbeing

Combining information from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and the European Social Survey, we investigate the relationship between subjective well-being and income inequality using regional inequality indicators and individual data. We assume that inequality aversion and perception of social mobility affect the impact of regional inequality on subjective well-being in opposite directions. We find evidence of an inverse U-shaped effect of inequality, where inequality starts to have a positive effect on subjective well-being that becomes negative with a switch point before the average of the Gini index for the entire sample. The rationale for our nonlinear finding is that Hirschman's tunnel effect (and the positive effect of perceived social mobility) prevails for low levels of inequality, while inequality aversion and negative relative income effects are relatively stronger when inequality is higher. Robustness checks on different sample splits are consistent with the hypothesis of the two drivers.     

Cooperative movement and widespread prosperity across Italian regions

Our goal is to participate in the debate on regional well-being. To this end, we explore the relationship between prosperity and the cooperative movement at the regional level in Italy between 2010 and 2019. We summarize prosperity through an index originally proposed by Amartya Sen and we apply it to classify Italian regions. We then perform panel analyses showing that there is a positive and significant association between such an index and the cooperative presence. We detect that, and explain why, the cooperative movement contributes to the regional prosperity more through its employment than in terms of the added value it generates.     

Better to be direct? Evidence from the abolition of direct elections in Italian local governments

This paper provides evidence for the importance of direct electoral processes by investigating the consequences for public spending of an unexpected reform that repealed direct elections for local (provincial) politicians in Italy. Direct elections were substituted with indirect ones, whereby directly elected municipal politicians choose a municipal mayor to serve as provincial president. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I document two main consequences of the reform. First, municipalities connected to the provincial presidents tend to receive disproportionately more public funds after the reform, suggesting geographic favoritism increased. Second, the share of provincial resources spent on public goods drops in favor of bureaucratic costs. I discuss suggestive evidence that these results are driven by weaker electoral incentives rather than by the selection of worse politicians.     

The coordinating power of social norms

Experimental Economics - A popular empirical technique to measure norms uses coordination games to elicit what subjects in an experiment consider appropriate behavior in a given situation (Krupka...