EU Economic Partnership Agreements and WTO negotiations. A quantitative assessment of trade preference granting and erosion in the banana market

The paper provides a quantitative assessment of the impact on the banana market of the expansion of trade preferences the European Union granted Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries with the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) and of the possible erosion of these preferences as a result of different possible conclusions, if any, of on-going WTO negotiations. The results of the simulations performed suggest that the impact of the EPA on production and consumption of bananas in the EU will be limited, while benefits for ACP countries will be significant (at the expense of Most Favoured Nation (MFN) exporters). An agreement between the EU and MFN countries to end the outstanding WTO disputes on bananas and/or the conclusion of the WTO Doha round may bring an erosion of the preferential margins currently enjoyed by ACP countries of such an order of magnitude as to cancel out most of these benefits.     

A search model for Joint Implementation

The aim of this paper is to present a search model in the field of environmental economics, where so-called clean and dirty producers enter the trading market, both looking for a partner with whom to exchange the goods they are endowed with. The model derived in this paper is rather simple. Nevertheless, it is able to produce a series of interesting results and useful insights, and is conveniently used here as a framework to explain the functioning of Joint Implementation programs for polluting emissions＇ reduction.     

Place the good after the bad: effects of emotional shifts on consumer memory

Marketing research has a limited understanding about the effects arising from emotional shifts (i.e., the transition from one emotion to another) during the same advertising message. This paper sheds light on this topic through two studies. Study 1 examines whether an advertising message that features a negative-to-positive emotional shift (i.e., a shift from a negative to a positive emotion) generates greater recall of an advertised brand than an advertising message with a neutral-to-positive emotional shift (i.e., a shift from a neutral to a positive emotion) or one with no emotional shift. Study 2 examines whether an advertising message that simulates a buyer-seller encounter—with the seller reproducing a negative-to-positive emotional shift via facial expressions—generates a greater recall of the advertised content than an identical advertisement with no emotional shift. Results confirm that a negative-to-positive shift facilitates the recall of both the brand and the advertised information.     

Did immigration contribute to wage stagnation of unskilled workers?

In this paper we first show that the timing and skill distribution of Immigrants to the U.S. between 1970 and 2014 imply they did not contribute to the decline in the wages of native, non-college educated workers – including high school dropouts – at the national level. We then review other evidence at the local level, which implies immigration is not associated with lower non-college wages. Rather, higher immigration seems associated with higher average (and college-level) wages. Local externalities, complementarities, efficient specialization and appropriate technological choice suggest at least part of the positive association is causal.     

ON TECHNOLOGY COMPETITION: A FORMAL ANALYSIS OF THE ‘SAILING-SHIP EFFECT’

One of the key features of our economies consists of the coexistence of different technologies supplying similar products and services. We often observe that an old technology is improved when a new one appears; behind this process of improvement often lies an intentional research activity. There thus begins a competition between the two technologies whose performances are improved via R&D. We focus our attention on this competition process and supply a formal model, based on the optimization of R&D expenditure of both technologies, which can describe the dynamics of the delayed overtaking of the new technology over the old one.     

Partnership,reciprocity and team design

This paper studies the effect of intention-based reciprocity preferences on the free-riding problem arising in partnerships. Our results suggest a tendency of efficient partnerships to consist of members whose sensitivity to reciprocity is – individually or jointly – sufficiently high. Sufficient conditions for the implementation of the efficient strategy profile require a reciprocity-based sharing rule so that each partner gets a fraction of the output, which is a percentage of his own sensitivity to reciprocity with respect to the overall sensitivity in the team. Finally, we introduce the concept of psychological strong Nash equilibrium and show that it allows for the unique and collusion-proof implementation of the efficient strategy profile.     

Is enterprise risk management real?

Moving from the growing relevance of the enterprise risk management (ERM) concept, this paper provides empirical evidence of ERM in practice. The paper presents ERM actual uses in a panel of nine Italian companies from different industrial fields and legislative settings and analyses the relationship between the uses and the characteristics of the ERM tool implemented in each case. The data analysis highlights the existence of different activities that are supported by the ERM tool and also different types of use (i.e. responsive, discoursive and prospective) corresponding to a different contribution of ERM to managerial action. These uses related to the specific characteristics of the tools generally indicated with the label ‘ERM’.     

Supervisors as information producers: Do stress tests reduce bank opaqueness?

Supervisory stress tests assess the impact of an adverse macroeconomic scenario on the profitability and capitalisation of a large number of banks. The results of such stress test exercises have recently been disclosed to the public in an attempt to restore confidence and to curb bank opaqueness by helping investors distinguish between sound and fragile institutions. In an unprecedented effort for transparency, the 2011 European Union stress test lead to the release of some 3400 data points for each of the 90 participating banks. This makes it an ideal setting to investigate a number of hypotheses on the information role of the stress tests.     

Filling vacancies: an empirical analysis of the cost and benefit of search in the labour market

This paper investigates empirically the factors that affect the cost–benefit ratio of employers’ search. The empirical analysis is based on a small Dutch data set containing individual information on filled vacancies. It is found that firms that use advertisements during recruitment are sensitive to labour market conditions; their search cost per applicant rises (drops) in tight (slack) labour markets because of the diminished ability of advertisements to generate applicants in tight labour markets. Furthermore, it is found that the high search cost incurred by posting identical vacancies is more than compensated for by the benefits from having a larger flow of applicants.