Cyclical asymmetry in fiscal variables in the EU

In this paper we present a stylised framework of fiscal policy determination that considers both structural targets and cyclical factors. We find significant cyclical asymmetry in the behaviour of fiscal variables in a sample of fourteen EU countries over 1970–2007, with budgetary balances (both overall and primary) deteriorating in contractions without correspondingly improving in expansions. Analysis of budget components reveals that cyclical asymmetry comes from expenditure. We find no evidence that fiscal rules introduced in 1992 with the Treaty of Maastricht affected the cyclical behaviour of fiscal variables. Numerical simulations show that cyclical asymmetry inflated average deficit levels, contributing significantly to debt accumulation.     

Reevaluating waste as a resource under a circular economy approach from a system perspective: Findings from a case study

The circular economy (CE), definable as a system focused on the reorganization of material, information, and energy flows to achieve greater resource efficiency through the reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling of materials, is a concept widely discussed by practitioners and scientists of many disciplines. Waste recycling is integral to the CE, but there are still few articles focused on waste, and only few studies shed light on CE implementation at the company level. This paper focuses on a particular type of waste, that is, absorbent hygiene products (AHPs), which represents a nonnegligible fraction of municipal solid waste, considered an increasingly serious global challenge. We conducted our analysis on FaterSMART, an Italian firm that developed a unique worldwide technology able to totally convert AHP raw material wastes into recyclable materials, under a CE approach. The case study findings are based upon semi-structured interviews, direct observations, and analysis of FaterSMART's archival documents and are analyzed according to a framework developed for the research and focused on the place of waste from a linear economy, in which waste is considered a burden to CE, in which waste is considered a resource. The latter case is what we found that happens at FaterSMART. FaterSMART's findings could contribute to open up new management scenarios and stimulate further research into how this and similar types of technology will help societies to change from the “use-it-once-and-throw-it away” mentality of linear business models to the sustainable CE model that fully conceptualize waste as a resource for the system.     

The firm,the platform and the customer: A “double mangle” interpretation of social media for innovation

The aim of this article was to explore the relationship between human actors and technology in the context of a social media platform, developed by a leading Italian firm in the food industry, and created to keep in contact with its customers, while gathering innovative ideas from them.In order to address these issues, we adopt a theoretical approach that is deeply rooted in Pickering's “mangle” theory, and Jones' subsequent metaphor of “double dance of agency” i.e. human and material agencies. A longitudinal case study has been developed with two rounds of interviews with marketing and R&D managers. A total of 8 recorded interviews, for 22 h overall.We examined conditions in the ongoing functioning of the platform, and considered how the website's dynamic materiality configures and reconfigures the practices and possibilities of different modes of engagement by multiple users (i.e. firm employees and customers) and vice versa. Specifically, dealing with the case of a social media platform developed by a firm to gain clearly defined organizational ends, the entanglement is considered to be double. One entanglement is between the human agency of customers and the material agency of the social media platform. The other is between the human agency of the firm and the material agency of the social media platform, including all actions that human agents (i.e. firm employees) undertake in seeking to channel material agency and shape actions of other human agents, i.e. customers.     

Home production,market production and the gender wage gap: Incentives and expectations

We study the joint determination of gender differences in labor earnings and time devoted to home production in an economy where informational frictions give rise to incentive problems in the labor market. Our model generates novel predictions on the relation between earnings, home hours and the incidence of performance pay, which we confront with the data. The empirical evidence broadly supports our hypothesis.     

Do investors value companies' mandatory nonfinancial risk disclosure? An empirical analysis of the Italian context after the EU Directive

In October 2014, the European Union adopted Directive 2014/95/EU (hereafter, EU Directive), mandating companies of a certain size to draft and publish corporate nonfinancial information (NFI) regarding society and the environment. In this study, we examine the mandatory disclosure of nonfinancial (NF) risks by listed Italian companies, as required by the EU Directive, focusing on both the state‐of‐the‐art of such disclosure and its usefulness for investors. For this purpose, the study adopts a two‐staged research approach; in the first stage, we employed a manual meaning‐oriented content analysis to investigate the NF declarations (NFDs) of the listed Italian companies that were obliged to disclose NFI, returning a quality NF risks disclosure index. In the second stage, we used the value relevance methodology to investigate whether the disclosed NF risk information affects the levels of equity prices, through a modified Ohlson model. Our research is one of the first to investigate the value relevance of mandatory disclosures of NF risks following the implementation of the EU Directive, in the Italian context. The research was carried out in 2017, the first year of the directive's application for listed Italian companies. The main findings support a positive association between NF risk information disclosure levels and companies' market value. Moreover, they provide evidence of a significant mediating effect of NF risk on the relationship between financial risks and market value.     

Italian Consumers’ Preferences for Pasta and Consumption Trends: Tradition or Innovation?

Abstract

The aim of this study is to know Italian consumers’ preferences for Pasta and consumption habits. Food culture and concerns about food security and product innovation were investigated. A sample of Italian consumers was interviewed. Consumer’ profile, motivations and purchasing behavior were described. Relationships between observed variables and the latent constructs that explain the preferences were highlighted. There is asymmetric information between consumers and producers. Consumers believe Pasta is made with Italian grains, and therefore it is healthy and safe, although that’s not always the case. Intrinsic and extrinsic high quality, which derives from growing and production technologies, is required.     

MURAME parameter setting for creditworthiness evaluation: data-driven optimization

Decisions in Economics and Finance - In this paper, we amend a multi-criteria methodology known as MURAME, to evaluate the creditworthiness of a large sample of Italian Small and Medium-sized...     

Human values and beliefs and concern about climate change: a Bayesian longitudinal analysis

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of human values on beliefs and concern about climate change using a longitudinal design and Bayesian analysis. A sample of 298 undergraduate/master students filled out the same questionnaire on two occasions at an interval of 2 months. The questionnaire included measures of beliefs and concern about climate change (i.e., perceived consequences, risk perception, and skepticism) and human values (i.e., the Portrait Values Questionnaire). After controlling for gender and the respective baseline score, universalism at Time 1 was associated with higher levels of perceived consequences of climate change and lower levels of climate change skepticism. Self-direction at Time 1 predicted Time 2 climate change risk perception and perceived consequences of climate change. Hedonism at Time 1 was associated with Time 2 climate change risk perception. The other human values at Time 1 were not associated with any of the measures of beliefs and concern about climate change at Time 2. The results of this study suggest that a focus on universalism and self-direction values seems to be a more successful approach to stimulate public engagement with climate change than a focus on other human values.