THE RISE AND DECLINE OF ECONOMIC POLICY AS AN AUTONOMOUS DISCIPLINE: A CRITICAL SURVEY

After Adam Smith's statement of market virtues, the process of gestation of economic policy as a rational set of rules for public agenda has been rather slow. Until not so long ago, economic policy as a discipline was often confined to prescribing practical rules intended to explain technical procedures of government intervention. Economic policy– as a coherent and to some extent autonomous discipline–only emerged in the late 1950s in Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Italy, when solid foundations indicating not only microeconomic but also macroeconomic market failures and a theory about the conditions for policy effectiveness and design were consistently developed. This paper intends to explain the reasons for the emergence of the discipline, the circumstances that favoured its diffusion, the reasons for its apparent setback and some factors that could facilitate its diffusion in the next years     

Is a Conservative Central Banker a (Perfect) Substitute for Wage Coordination?

In a monetary union, macroeconomic policies are strongly associated with externalities that imply the need for coordination. However, if coordination is not complete, it might be unable to cope with the externalities. This paper investigates different solutions for internalizing policy externalities. In particular, we compare wage coordination to the conservative central banker solution, which the recent literature has found able to impose wage moderation on labor unions. We also discuss some issues related to labor flexibility reforms as a solution for the unemployment problem.     

Supply side inflation persistence

We explore the role of the cost channel in accounting for inflation persistence in the New Keynesian model with Calvo pricing. Hump-shaped responses of inflation to monetary shocks are obtained under purely nominal rigidities.     

Fare elasticities of demand for direct and indirect flights in sub-Saharan Africa

This article examines the different demands for direct and indirect flights within sub-Saharan Africa. It develops both a simple reduced form model and a more refined two equation simultaneously system to examine bookings and fares on the major air transportation corridors. Using panel data, this allows estimation of the different fare elasticities of demand for direct and indirect services between the continents’ major cities as well as assessing the respective merits of the two models used.     

Endogenous timing of managerial delegation contracts in a unionized duopoly

In a multiple‐stage duopoly game with strategic delegation and unionized labor market, this paper analyzes whether firms' owners decide managerial incentive contracts sequentially or simultaneously. When firms compete in quantities, firms' owners can choose incentive contracts simultaneously or sequentially, depending on the unions' relative bargaining power and the degree of product differentiation. Instead, when firms compete in prices, firms' owners set incentive contracts sequentially with substitute goods and simultaneously with complement goods.     

Mark-ups, economies of scale and the role of knowledge spillovers in OECD industries

Using R&D-based models of economic growth as a foundation, this paper argues that market-driven knowledge creation is necessarily linked as an engine of productivity growth to economies of scale and market-power. A cost function and factor demand model is applied to a cross-country industry data set to study market-power, economies of scale and the role of knowledge in an integrated approach. Empirical results reveal the presence of market-power and economies of scale in all of the industries investigated. R&D and spillovers explain some of the productivity growth observed. Spillovers are identified as an external source of economies of scale.     

THE IMPORTANCE OF REPUTATION IN AWARDING PUBLIC CONTRACTS

ABSTRACT * :  The main economic literature emphasizes that the efficiency of the awarding procedure depends on the contractual rules, especially those regarding firm's remuneration. In this work we show the existence of a reverse link: when the enforcement of contractual terms is imperfect, the rules of the awarding mechanism can help to improve the efficiency of the contractual relationship. In some circumstances, awarding rules based only on bids are not able to deal with the problem of opportunistic behaviour during the execution of the contract. Our model points out that the public administration can incentivize the contractor's fairness by considering not only competitors' bids, but also their different reputation.     

On preferences for being self-employed

The concept of procedural utility assumes that agents not only receive utility from outcomes but also attach an independent value to the procedures that lead to these outcomes. This paper analyzes whether the preferences that underlie procedural utility are homogeneous using the case of independence at the workplace. I exploit the event of German reunification to assign preferences for independence to respondents without using data on occupational choice or directly reported procedural preferences. I find that the self-employed report higher job satisfaction than the employed, even after controlling for income and hours worked. However, there is a significant amount of heterogeneity in this effect: while “independent types” experience a large increase in job satisfaction from being self-employed, the most “hierarchical types” could even experience a decrease.     

Actor-network theory and stakeholder collaboration: The case of Cultural Districts

The tourism literature has increasingly recognised the importance of integrating tourism and culture with other value chains. Though the value of such integration is uncontested, it does raise several questions relating to stakeholder collaboration. Despite substantial research in this field, there remain gaps in our knowledge of the micro-dynamics of stakeholder collaborations in building tourism/cultural systems. This paper contributes to this debate by investigating the micro-level interactions among stakeholders during the conceptualisation of a large collaborative project: a Cultural District. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) the research shows that, though rigid sequential planning is not viable, conceptualisation is facilitated by deploying three ANT rules: enrolling actors, fact-building and circulating translations. These rules are used to define a “conditional path” whereby specific actions are activated when controversies emerge.