A Case Study of Pluralism in Economics: The Heterodox Glass Ceiling in Italy

ABSTRACT

Quantitative measures of supposed scientific ‘quality’ (or ‘impact’) based on bibliometric indicators are used as the primary or exclusive tools of research evaluation in a growing number of countries. The negative impact of this method of evaluation on pluralism in economic teaching and research has been documented in Italy, France, Australia and the United Kingdom. We provide new evidence for Italy by investigating the CVs and publications of all candidates for the ‘national scientific qualification’, which is needed to access all tenured Italian academic positions. With respect to past evidence, we focus on the homologation of research topics and methods as well as the delegitimization of particular publication outlets. Our analysis has relevant implications internationally. First, research evaluation aimed at identifying ‘excellence’ often boils down to (as in the case of Italy) the adoption of rankings of supposedly top journals, which systematically discriminate against heterodox journals. Second, the legitimacy of academic research published in the form of books and book chapters must be reclaimed. Third, heterodox economists risk discrimination not so much because of their methods or policy recommendations, but because of the topics and research fields they investigate.     

When legacy carriers converge with low-cost carriers: Exploring the fusion of European airline business models through a case-based analysis

The paper makes uses of cognitive mappings developed from personal interviews with a number of European airline executives to examine the differences in managerial attitudes of low-cost and transitional carriers. In particular it explores the extent to which there is a convergence of views regarding the ways various airline models will develop in the future.     

Buying a Book as a Christmas Gift: Two Routes to Customer Immersion

Although services and retailing are usually regarded as relevant experiential contexts and investments in creating an experiential environment are growing, little consideration has been given to the investigation of the general consumption experiences and their emotions in retailing. By adopting an ethnographic approach to study the buying processes in two Italian bookstores – a small traditional family-run bookshop and a large international chain store – products that, by definition, are high in perceived complexity and symbolism, we present two distinct business models based on different processes of valorisation of purchasers' emotions. The two-path model towards customer immersion represents different strategies to involve consumers emotionally: one is based on increasing the positive emotional load, the other on decreasing the negative emotional load. Decisions about physical layout, display, services and sales assistance should follow consistently.     

A New Axiomatization of the Banzhaf Index for Games with Abstention

(3, 2)-Simple games are a model for voting situation in which players can vote not only in favour or against a proposal but they can also abstain. Also in this model, power indices are used to evaluate the power of players. In particular, the Banzhaf index and the Shapley–Shubik index have been generalized to define analogous power indices in the context of games with abstention. In this work we provide a new axiomatization of the Banzhaf index for games with abstention, to underline its properties and increase the justification of the use of this index as a solution concept also in the family of games with abstention.     

Bouncing back from a sudden-onset extreme event: exploring retail enterprises’ resilience capacity

ABSTRACT

A feature of recent decades has been the sudden and unexpected occurrence of catastrophic events seriously affecting people and territories. From an economic viewpoint, this has led scholars to pay increasing attention to factors and determinants taking enterprises face-to-face with extreme and catastrophic events, through the resilience lens. In this context, this study aims to contribute to the literature on resilience to natural disasters which is currently still limited in the business and management fields, both theoretically and empirically. This is particularly true as regards retailing, despite the key role played by retail in the aftermath and recovery periods following on from sudden-onset extreme events such as earthquakes.

The 2012 Emilia earthquake is a case in point with which to explore small retail enterprises’ resilience to sudden-onset disasters. Specifically, our empirical research consisted of administering a structured questionnaire to a sample of small retail enterprises which experienced an earthquake. The unit of analysis adopted was the retail enterprise. Data was processed applying Covariance-Based Structural Equation Modeling (CB-SEM). The structural model aims to verify the impact of sales capabilities, market orientation and networking capabilities on the resilience capacity of retail enterprises affected by an extreme event, controlling for certain financial indicators such as suppliers’ payment timeframes and the use of debt capital, as well as respondent age and gender. The findings show that all the antecedents analysed exert a significant and positive effect on small retail enterprises’ resilience capacity and ability to bounce back from natural disasters. Moreover, suppliers’ payment timeframes showed a direct relationship with retail enterprises’ resilience capacity, with lower use of debt capital equalling higher retail business resilience. Age and gender do not exert any significant effect. Scientific, managerial and public policy implications are derived.

Abbreviation: SEM     

CEO investment of deferred compensation plans and firm performance

We study how US chief executive officers (CEOs) invest their deferred compensation plans depending on the firm's profitability. By looking at the correlation between the CEO's return on these plans and the firm's stock return, we show that deferred compensation is to a large extent invested in the company equity in good times and divested from it in bad times. The divestment from company equity in bad times arguably reflects CEOs' incentive to abandon the firm and to invest in alternative instruments to preserve the value of their deferred compensation plans. This result suggests that the incentive alignment effects of deferred compensation crucially depend on the firm's health status.     

“Misfits,” “stars,” and immigrant entrepreneurship

Prior research has shown that immigrants are more likely than natives to become entrepreneurs, and that entrepreneurs are disproportionately drawn from the extremes of the ability distribution. Using a large panel of US residents with bachelors’ degrees in scientific fields, we ask whether higher rates of entrepreneurship among immigrants can be explained by their position on the ability spectrum and establish four new facts about science-based and immigrant entrepreneurship. First, in this sample, an immigrant entrepreneurship premium exists only in science-based entrepreneurship. Second, this premium persists after controlling for ability (measured by paid employment wage residuals.) Third, a U-shaped relationship between ability and entrepreneurship exists only in non-science entrepreneurship; for science entrepreneurship, the relationship is increasing. Finally, the immigrant premium in science entrepreneurship is largest among immigrants with non-US degrees and those from non-English-speaking or culturally dissimilar countries. Stated preferences for self-employment do not explain the immigrant premium. The results suggest that immigrants may on average have higher levels of unobservable skills related to entrepreneurship.     

The near-death experience of the celtic tiger

This article narrates Ireland’s recent odyssey from the pride and envy of Europe to kneeling supplicant through the eyes of an econometric model of the government bond market. The exercise suggests that, in essence, two developments triggered and propelled Ireland’s drift towards sovereign default: first, the global financial crisis that drove Ireland into a severe recession with collapsing tax revenues and increasing unemployment; second, a gap between the post-2007 increase in sovereign default risk that can actually be linked to macroeconomic fundamentals and the much bigger increase in perceived risk reflected by high interest rates and communicated by the massive downgrades of Ireland’s sovereign debt rating.