Government Expenditures and Revenues in Italy in a Long-run Perspective

The aim of this study is to investigate the sustainability of Italian public accounts using in a long-run perspective, using empirical tests on sustainability and solvency of the country’s fiscal policies. The results of unit root and stationarity tests show that government expenditures and revenues series are first-differences stationary. The empirical analysis considered both the entire period and two sub-periods (1862–1913, 1947–2013). Furthermore, we conduct tests on cointegration, which evidence that a clear long-run relationship between public expenditure and revenues emerges only for the years 1862–1913. In essence, the paper’s results reveal that Italy have sustainability problems in the republican age.

     

Critical social marketing – The impact of alcohol marketing on youth drinking: Qualitative findings

• This paper presents findings from exploratory qualitative research as part of a critical social marketing study examining the impact of alcohol marketing communications on youth drinking. The findings from stakeholder interviews (regulators and marketers) suggest that some alcohol marketing might target young people, and that marketers are cognisant of growing concern at alcohol issues, including control of alcohol marketing. Focus groups with young people (aged 13–15 years) revealed a sophisticated level of awareness of, and involvement in, alcohol marketing across several channels. It was found that some marketing activities featured content that could appeal to young people and appeared to influence their, well‐developed, brand attitudes. The research demonstrates the utility of taking a critical social marketing approach when examining the impact of alcohol marketing. The implications of these findings for research, regulation and policy around alcohol marketing are also examined. The contribution that studies such as this make to the debate around marketing principles and practice, and to social marketing, is also discussed.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Timing Equilibria in an Urban Model with Congestion

All spatial urban models with congestion assume that the departure (arrival) time of commutes is exogenously determined and assume that travel speed at a given time and location depends upon the traffic density at that point in time and space. This paper presents a framework that encompasses such models, but allows workers to choose the time at which they leave home (arrive at work). This paper then proves that in general only one equilibrium exists for urban models with traditional congestion technology: a commuting pattern in which commuting is continuous and the rush hour never ends, which is unrepresentative of traffic patterns anywhere. This paper concludes by discussing alternative general equilibrium urban models with congestion that may have more realistic equilibria.     

Are Sunk Costs a Barrier to Entry?

The received wisdom is that sunk costs create a barrier to entry—if entry fails, then the entrant, unable to recover sunk costs, incurs greater losses. In a strategic context where an incumbent may prey on the entrant, sunk entry costs have a countervailing effect: they may effectively commit the entrant to stay in the market. By providing the entrant with commitment power, sunk investments may soften the reactions of incumbents. The net effect may imply that entry is more profitable when sunk costs are greater.     

世界主要医疗保障体系比较——对中国“医改”的启示

建立成功的医疗保障体系是一个世界难题,也是我国目前所面临的重大发展问题。为了更好地探索医疗保障体系的实质和便于比较世界上主要医疗体系的特点,本文分析了四种医疗保障风险分担机制,进而根据其特征将主要发达国家的医疗保障体系分为三类。通过分析这三类医疗保障体系的卫生费用构成并与中国的进行比较,得出针对中国医疗保障体系改革和发展的相应启示。     

Stock return reversal and continuance anomaly: new evidence from Hong Kong

Using weekly data, this article conducts a comprehensive analysis and presents new empirical evidences on the short-term stock return reversal and continuance anomaly in the Hong Kong stock market. We confirm that winner stocks behave differently from loser stocks in that the return reversal phenomenon is pervasive within past winner stocks only while past loser stocks tend to show weak return continuance. The arbitrage strategy can earn significantly positive contrarian profits, especially for small firms and illiquid stocks. The anomaly varies across different industries and is also sensitive to the market movement. Despite the existence of the anomaly, our results still in general suggest that the Hong Kong stock market is weak-form efficient because arbitrage trading costs would largely overwhelm the available profits in most cases.     

Whose property is it anyway? The social nature of economic actors and egalitarian remuneration ∗

This article formulates an egalitarian theory of property based on an ethic of remuneration for economic contributions. The principle of egalitarian remuneration is developed by revising basic notions of economic contributions. Economic contributions are found to be those activities that contribute to the value of commodities not just those that produce a product. Consumers, and not only producers, contribute to the creation of value, and these economic contributions make consumers eligible for remuneration. However, the concept of consumer contributions needs to be recast, for consumer contributions do not consist of neoclassical, individualistic actors maximizing subjective preferences. Rather, consumers economic contributions flow from their socially self-determined attributes as formed through relation to the system of economic actors. Indirect social contributions spread responsibility throughout the members of the system, affecting calculations of dueness. Other members indirect contributions are relatively equal in degree of responsibility for the social formation of the consumer's economic contributions. The dispersion and equalization of responsibility for the creation of economic contributions entails a correlative equalization of claims to remuneration, on a principle of dueness for economic contributions. This implies a property right to egalitarian remuneration.     

The Use of Policies for Competition in the Promotion of Structural Change in Transforming Economies

This article takes as its central theme the idea that competition policy is merely one among many policies which can and should be used to promote competition in an economy. After having considered the importance of competition for any healthy economy, the article examines the inextricable links between competition and transition, in particular marketisation and liberalisation, and discusses in detail the scope for the use of various policies for competition in the transformation process. Within this discussion, particular attention is paid to the importance of the legal and institutional framework, the process of privatisation, macroeconomic stability, ease of entry, supply side policies, the role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and trade policy in contributing to the development of a market economy. The article concludes by noting the extreme care that must be taken not only in the content of such policies but also in their implementation, something which is easily demonstrated by the experience of developed capitalist economies in the West.