Does apprenticeship improve job opportunities? A regression discontinuity approach

In Italy the main difference between apprentices and other types of temporary workers is that apprentices must receive firm-provided training. The firm incentive in hiring apprentices consists in paying lower wages and labour taxes. Using an Italian administrative dataset containing information on the jobs started between January 2009 and June 2012, we estimate the effect of apprenticeship on the hazard function to a permanent job. Identification is based on a regression discontinuity design. We find that, for 29-year-old workers, apprenticeships are “long entrance halls” towards permanent contracts, especially within the firm where the apprenticeship is performed.

     

On local indeterminacy and endogenous cycles in Ramsey models with heterogeneous households

It is well-known that endogenous cycles can occur in Ramsey models with heterogeneous households and borrowing constraints. In this note, we address the issue of robustness in the more general case of endogenous labor supply and we explain the occurrence of local indeterminacy under progressive taxation.

If not only GDP,what else? Using relational goods to predict the trends of subjective well-being

In the last decade, a lively interdisciplinary discussion has grown around the evidence that, in the long-run, people’s subjective well-being is not significantly correlated with income growth. In other words, GDP growth does not predict the long run growth of subjective well-being. In this paper, we argue that there exists a different predictor of subjective well-being that works pretty well: sociability, i.e. the quality and quantity of social relationships (also referred to as relational goods). More precisely, we illustrate the role of sociability as a predictor of well-being, presenting the available evidence at both the within-country and the worldwide level. In particular, we discuss recent evidence from US cross-sectional data (General Social Survey, 1975–2004), cross-country time series (World Value Survey 1980–2005), and German panel data (German Socio-Economic Panel, 1996–2007). We conclude by indicating the most relevant open issues and suggesting future lines of research.     

Innovation and finance: a stock flow consistent analysis of great surges of development

The present work aims at contributing to the recent stream of literature which attempts to link the Neo-Schumpeterian/Evolutionary and the Post-Keynesian theory. The paper adopts the Post-Keynesian Stock Flow Consistent modeling approach to analyze the process of development triggered by the emergence of a new-innovative productive sector into the economic system. The model depicts a multi-sectorial economy composed of consumption and capital goods industries, a banking sector and two households sectors: capitalists and wage earners. Furthermore, it provides an explicit representation of the stock market. In line with the Schumpeterian tradition, our work highlights the cyclical nature of the development process and stresses the relevance of the finance-innovation nexus, analyzing the feed-back effects between the real and financial sides of the economic system. In this way we aim at setting the basis of a comprehensive and coherent framework to study the relationship between technological change, demand and finance along the structural change process triggered by technological innovation.     

Termination clauses in partnerships

We show that when designing a partnership agreement partner firms may prefer not to specify how to allocate the commonly owned assets should there be an early termination of the contract. By not including such a clause, firms induce litigation before a Court with positive probability. Firms create this ex-post inefficiency in order to increase the levels of non-contractible investments, i.e. increase the ex-ante efficiency. The absence of an asset allocation clause works as a “discipline device” that mitigates the hold-up problem within the partnership. In our set-up, no other contract but that without an asset allocation clause can credibly create an ex-post inefficiency.     

Estimating deferred taxation on dividends in business groups

In a group of companies corporate income taxation is levied on basic earnings and then on dividends paid to holding companies. The entity of this taxation depends on the tax regime, so that income may be taxed twice, first in the hands of the subsidiaries, then in the next years in the hands of holding companies. Therefore, consolidated profits may not be wholly paid to shareholders (who are the ultimate owners) and deferred taxes have to be computed in order to determine the true profitability of a group of companies. Using input–output theory, we developed a framework to estimate deferred taxation on dividends in business groups. Such relationships can be particularly useful when cross‐shareholdings exist to determine deferred liabilities under several accounting standards. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Issues in the analysis of co-authorship networks

Scientific collaboration is a complex phenomenon that improves the sharing of competences and the production of new scientific knowledge. Social Network Analysis is often used to describe the scientific collaboration patterns defined by co-authorship relationships. Different phases of the analysis of collaboration are related to: data collection, network boundary setting, relational data matrix definition, data analysis and interpretation of results. The aim of this paper is to point out some issues that arise in these different phases, highlighting: (i) the use of local archives versus international bibliographic databases; (ii) the use of different approaches for setting boundaries in a whole-network; (iii) the definition of a co-authorship data matrix (binary and weighted ties) and (iv) the analysis and the interpretation of network measures for co-authorship data. We discuss the different choices that can be made in these phases within an illustrative example on real data which is referred to scientific collaboration among researchers affiliated to an academic institution. In particular, we compare global and actor-level network measures computed from binary and weighted co-authorship networks in different disciplines.     

Geodesics on the equilibrium manifold

We show the existence of a Riemannian metric on the equilibrium manifold such that a minimal geodesic connecting two (sufficiently close) regular equilibria intersects the set of critical equilibria in a finite number of points. This metric represents a solution to the following problem: given two (sufficiently close) regular equilibria, find the shortest path connecting them which encounters the set of critical equilibria in a finite number of points. Furthermore, this metric can be constructed in such a way to agree, outside an arbitrary small neighborhood of the set of critical equilibria, to any given metric with economic meaning.     

Does player specialization predict player actions? Evidence from penalty kicks at FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro Cup

Penalty kicks are analysed in the literature as ‘real life experiments’ for assessing the use of rational mixed strategies by professional players. However, each penalty kick cannot be considered a repetition of the same event because of the varying background conditions, in particular the heterogeneous ability of different players. Consequently, aggregate statistics over data sets composed of a large number of penalty kicks mediate the behaviour of the players in different games, and the properties of optimal mixed strategies cannot be tested directly because of aggregation bias. In this article, we model the heterogeneous ability of players. We then test the hypothesis that differently talented players randomize over different actions. To achieve this aim, we study a data set that collects penalties kicked during shoot-out series in the last editions of FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro Cup (1994–2012) where kickers are categorized as specialists and non-specialists. The results support our theoretical predictions.     

Innovation in knowledge-based professional service firms. An integrated conceptual model*

ABSTRACT

The current paper offers a new conceptual model to understanding innovation processes in professional service firms, to make hidden relationships more explicit and to find out what are the issues still unexplored. The paper employs a systematic literature review, and draws upon original categorizations of extant literature, to identify main processes for each category of PSFs. It unveils connections among a wide range of factors setting a conceptual model for innovation pathways and highlighting neglected questions relevant from both the theoretical and the practical perspectives.