Housing wealth effect in emerging economies

In this paper I estimate the impact of changes in real and financial wealth on private consumption for a panel of 17 emerging economies from Asia and Central and Eastern Europe. Households' consumption, income and the two measures of real and financial wealth – proxied by house and stock market prices – are found to be difference-stationary and co-integrated; by means of recent econometric techniques for heterogeneous panels, i.e. the pooled mean group estimator, inference is drawn about the long- and short-run relationships between the variables of interest. The main result of the analysis shows that both real and financial wealth positively affect households' consumption in the long-run, with the elasticity of housing wealth being larger than that of stock market wealth. Moreover, there is also a significant short-run adjustment from income, stock prices and house prices on consumption, i.e. consumption adjusts to its long-run relationship with lags. When the model is run for the two groups of countries separately, the long-run impact of an increase (decrease) in house prices is generally higher in Central and Eastern European economies with respect to Asian ones, which make them more vulnerable to further adverse housing market developments.     

A note on the effects of market power distribution in Cordella and Gabszewicz's Ricardian model

We argue that it is the distribution of market power among agents, rather than the use of market power itself, that may force Ricardian economies into autarky. By applying Baldwin (1948) monopoly equilibrium concepts to the general equilibrium with imperfect competition model analyzed by Cordella and Gabszewicz (1997), we show that the monopoly equilibrium outcome Pareto dominates the oligopoly one. As a consequence, economic efficiency is higher when market power is concentrated in one agent than when it is evenly distributed among few agents.     

Impact of Low‐Skilled Immigration on Female Labour Supply

In this paper, segmenting the market by educational levels, we investigate which native‐born women are more affected by an increase of low‐skilled immigrants working in the household service sector. We present a model of individual choice with home production and, using a harmonized dataset (the Cross‐National Equivalent File), we estimate its main comparative static results. The results suggest that the share of immigrants working in services is positively associated with an increase of native‐born women's labour supply at the intensive margin, if skilled, and at the extensive margin, if unskilled. Moreover, the results show that these effects are larger in countries with less‐supportive family policies.     

Household financial vulnerability: An empirical analysis

Using survey data, we investigate household financial distress. Specifically, we propose an indicator of financial vulnerability to jointly analyse different features of household financial distress, analysing its socio-demographic and economic determinants. A total number of 3102 Italian households make up the sample.The empirical analysis highlights that for the median level of the financial vulnerability index households already exhibit some important symptoms of financial vulnerability, such as problems in getting to the end of the month or an inability to face unexpected expenses. As regards the determinants of the financial vulnerability index, three findings need to be pointed out. First, the level of debt servicing is positively related to financial vulnerability and the effect is stronger for households holding unsecured debt, i.e. consumer credit. Second, financial vulnerability also increases for impulsive individuals, who may adopt impatient, short-sighted behaviour patterns which make it difficult for them to be fully aware of the consequences of their financial and spending decisions. Third, a higher level of education helps to reduce financial fragility.     

Are Commodity Prices Driven by Fundamentals?

Physical scarcity is hardly sufficient to explain commodity price swings. However, despite of clues of commodity market inefficiency in the last decade, excess volatility in commodity markets emerges only under strong assumptions. When we allow for non‐stationarity in commodity prices and time variation in commodity‐specific risk premia, evidence of commodity market inefficiency becomes significantly weaker. Moreover, there is some evidence of commodity‐specific regime changes in commodity markets, with negligible or even positive correlation between efficiency and market liquidity.     

Enforcement and environmental quality in a decentralized emission trading system

Should the powers of monitoring compliance and allocating tradeable emissions allowances be appointed to a unique supranational regulator or decentralized to several local regulators? To answer this question, we develop a two stage-two country game where environmental regulators set the amount of emission allowances and the level of monitoring effort to achieve full compliance while the regulated firms choose actual emissions and the number of permits to be held. Various, possibly conflicting, spillovers between countries arise in a decentralized setting. We show that decentralization is socially harmful if no asymmetry among institutional settings is introduced and can be suboptimal even when decentralization features lower monitoring costs than a centralized setting. Lower monitoring costs are therefore necessary, but not sufficient, to justify decentralization. Also, our analysis reveals that welfare can be higher under decentralization even if the corresponding environmental quality is worse than under centralization. Indeed, better environmental quality is sufficient but not necessary for higher welfare under decentralization. Finally, we discuss how these results can provide a theoretical rationale for the recent evolution of the EU ETS design.     

Implementing Change in a Hospital Management Accounting System

A central aspect of the efforts to improve public healthcare systems often is a provider’s management accounting system (MAS). The article focuses on a change effort for a hospital’s MAS. The effort involved implementing low-cost information technology designed to improve efficiency and effectiveness in operating rooms. The article aims to identify and discuss the factors that led to the hospital’s success in achieving improved outcomes at lower costs via the improvement of its MAS. The analysis uses a theoretical framework that can assist managers to identify methods that can help to foster the factors needed for effective change implementation.     

Assessing environmental product declaration opportunities: a reference framework

The growing awareness about environmental issues places greater responsibility on firms to transmit information about the environmental quality of their products. One of the most innovative ways to achieve this objective is through the ‘environmental product declaration’. Unfortunately, from an operating viewpoint, there is a very little evidence on the effects associated with the introduction of this label. In lieu of this context, the paper suggests operating guidelines and a methodological approach for managers who aim to understand under which conditions the EPD can represent a useful tool for the company's competitiveness. In particular, the paper will identify

• 1 the specific peculiarities and requirements of the EPD;
• 2 the EPD parameters of attractiveness, related to its potential costs and benefits;
• 3 an operational framework in order to assess the EPD target audience.

In this respect, an empirical analysis on 17 Italian firms will be carried out. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Risk cultures and dominant approaches towards disasters in seven European countries

This paper builds upon the risk culture concept started with Mary Douglas’ and Aaron Wildavsky’s seminal work on risk and culture. Based upon the empirical results of a qualitative sociological study on sociocultural factors affecting risk perception and crisis communication in seven European countries, a theoretical model, illustrating how differences in disasters framing imply diverse approaches to risk and disaster management, is suggested. According to this framework, culturally bounded assumptions and conventions strongly influence how communities make sense of risks and hazards and how these communities consider some ways of dealing with disasters more appropriate than others. The framework suggested in this article distinguishes between risk cultures of a given society, which do not necessarily respond to nation states. In order to explain differences in how cultures deal with risks and disasters, and to define the main features of our typology, three main interrelated dimensions have been selected: disaster framing, trust in authorities and blaming. By analyzing differences and similarities in how people perceive and interpret disasters, as well as to whom the responsibility for risk prevention and crisis management is attributed, in seven European countries, three specific ideal types of risk cultures emerged: state-oriented risk culture, individual-oriented risk culture and fatalistic risk culture. Implications for crisis management and communication in case of a disaster will be addressed for each of these risk cultures.