City versus Metropolis: The Northern League in the Milan Metropolitan Area

Entire metropolitan areas are often seen as fundamental components of the emerging global space–economy. The national and global roles of central cities, however, may lead them in fundamentally different economic and political directions from their hinterlands if the functions of the cities are decreasingly complementary to those of their surrounding areas. In particular, the political complexions of city and hinterland may come to reflect different cultural and economic orientations as a result of divergence in political–economic trajectories between the two. This possibility is explored using the example of the northern Italian city of Milan and its hinterland, taken as the provinces of Bergamo, Como, Lecco and Varese, and the rest of the province of Milan outside of the city with respect to geographical patterns of support for the regionalist/separatist movement, the Northern League, over the course of three national elections: 1992, 1994 and 1996. Putatively a movement representing the interests of northern Italy as a whole, the Northern League’s stands on issues tended increasingly to represent the identities and interests of the small manufacturing firms that dominate part of the fringe of the metropolitan area, whereas Milan itself has an economic base of advanced services and national–oriented manufacturing firms that would lead to the expectation of a very different political orientation. Analysis of election returns suggests a divergence between city and hinterland that is in large part accounted for by their distinctive economic trajectories. There is no simple identity between a city and its metropolis. On considère souvent des zones métropolitaines entières comme des composantes fondamentales de l’espace économique mondial naissant. Les rôles nationaux et planétaires des grandes villes centrales peuvent toutefois les pousser dans des directions économiques et politiques totalement différentes de leur arrière–pays si leur fonction perd de sa complémentarité par rapport à leur zone environnante. Les aspects politiques de la ville et de l’arrière–pays peuvent notamment finir par traduire des orientations économiques et culturelles distinctes è la suite d’une divergence dans leurs trajectoires politico–économiques respectives. Cette possibilité est étudiée au travers de l’exemple de Milan, ville du nord de l’Italie, et de son arrière–pays (couvrant les provinces de Bergame, Côme, Lecco, Varèse et le reste de la province de Milan extérieur à la ville) en s’attachant à la carte géographique des partisans du mouvement régionaliste et séparatiste de la Ligue du Nord au cours de trois élections nationales (1992, 1994 et 1996). Ce mouvement, supposé traduire les intérÁts de toute l’Italie du Nord, a penché de plus en plus souvent pour des positions représentant les identités et intérÁts des petites industries qui dominent partiellement la périphérie de la zone métropolitaine, alors que la base économique de Milan se compose de services de pointe et d’entreprises industrielles d’envergure nationale laissant supposer une orientation politique toute différente. Une analyse des résultats des élections révèle une divergence entre ville et arrière–pays, en grande partie justifiée par leurs axes économiques distincts. Il n’existe pas d’identité simple entre une ville et sa métropole.     

The intraday multivariate structure of the Eurofutures markets

We investigate the multivariate intraday structure in interest rates, focusing on implied forward rates from Eurofutures contracts. Since futures markets are the most liquid for interest rate instruments and they yield high-quality intraday data, it is somehow surprising that their intraday behavior has not been thoroughly studied in the literature.We find interesting similarities with the foreign exchange market: scaling law, intraday patterns, all of which point to the heterogeneity of market participants. Other properties like asymmetric causal information flow between fine and coarse volatilities for the same time series are present in our data. There are also lead–lag correlations across the term structure of implied forward rates, but they tend to disappear as markets mature.A principal component analysis of the short end of the yield curve allows us to determine the most important components and to reduce the number of time series needed to describe the term structure. We find the decomposition rather stable over time. The first component, which describes the curve level, shows an asymmetry in the information flow between volatilities of different time resolution, i.e., the coarse-grained volatility predicts the fine-grained volatility better than the other way around, as observed in the foreign exchange market. The remaining components do not show such an effect, having instead significant negative autocorrelations for the time series themselves. A heterogeneous autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (HARCH) model is estimated for the first component and the impact of different market agents is discussed.     

Public engagement through social media: the spending review experience

This paper, relying on three empirical cases of spending reviews carried out in Europe, investigates how social media has been used to engage citizens in spending review processes. The authors explain the differences in levels of engagement between the use of social media (Web 2.0 tools) compared to traditional Web 1.0 tools. Finally, they discuss how government might genuinely listen to its citizens and work with them.     

Developing a Territory Balanced Scorecard approach to manage projects for local development: Two case studies

This paper applies Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard theory to propose a tool to compare twin local development projects implemented under international cooperation schemes. This tool, called the Territory Balanced Scorecard (TBSc), allows the competitive potential of the territorial system to be measured by means of a rating. Consequently, using the TBSc, it is possible to interpret the characteristics of the supply territory and, by an ad-hoc approach, plan the required increase in headquarters functions and the competences linked thereto. This paper follows a rationale grounded on the territorial setting and offers a methodological decision support tool that enhances the ability of decision makers acting at Local Authority level. A feature of the TBSc model is the fact that, although it is designed for the public sector (mission-oriented), it does enable us to obtain profit-driven indicators that are designed to highlight the economic and territorial strategic ancillary benefits in terms of competitiveness. The TBSc can be considered a valuable strategic tool in management and local development systems and the result also implicitly contains the plan for creating a potential network (in this case among islands in the Mediterranean) in order to delineate a set of principles and analytical and programming devices that would assist in reshaping local economic systems.     

Banking on ELR: How Hyman Minsky’s Ideas Can Help Tackle Unemployment

This article suggests a way of building a comprehensive program that can effectively eliminate unemployment using the employer-of-last-resort (ELR) scheme, which comes from the Minskyan tradition. According to this scheme, the state offers a job to everyone who is willing to work. In response to the many critiques the ELR program has received, we show that it is the best alternative to eliminating unemployment, instituting sound public finance, ensuring social and financial stability, and achieving long-term growth and international economic balances. We also make suggestions with a view of ensuring the efficiency of the ELR institutional design. In this context, we highlight the accountability issue that is largely ignored in the relevant literature, but that is paramount given the state of public finances after the 2008 crisis. We argue that accountability and efficiency should be taken as the core of the ELR project if it is to be politically viable, and they can be addressed alongside the analogy of lending of last resort. In particular, ELR projects should be supervised by a state bank that is set up to ensure the cost-effectiveness of the scheme, along with controls from below. We conduct a simulation of how much such an ELR program would cost for Italy, showing that its gross cost would be less than 2.0 percent of Italian GDP and its net cost would be negative.     

A GIS-based tool for the management of industrial accidents triggered by volcanic ash fallouts

In this last decade, worldwide attention has been focused on the hazards derived from the interaction between extreme natural phenomena and critical infrastructures and/or chemical and process industry (natural–technological hazards or Na-Tech). Due to the recent occurrence of significant events, great attention has also been given to Na-Tech hazards triggered by volcanic eruptions; in particular, the eruption of the Icelandic volcano alarmed the European community due to the ash fallout over the continent, which caused significant problems for the population, road, rail and air traffic and production activities. This study aims at defining a procedure for the representation of the vulnerability of industrial facilities to potential volcanic ash fallouts. Its implementation on a Geographical Information System has also been executed and a semi-automatic procedure for the vulnerability mapping has been constructed.     

Glocalization of accounting standards: Observations on neo-institutionalism of IPSAS

This paper defines and then observes processes of glocalization surrounding the adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) for public sector financial reporting. Glocalization can be best understood using sociological institutionalism, because this theory focuses on the retention of identity, and processes of legitimacy, during adaptation (diffusion) of standards. The paper discusses the history of standard-setting for the public sector in New Zealand to explain why this theory has value.

IMPACT

This paper defines and describes the utility of the concept of glocalization in analysing the implementation of IPSAS, with a New Zealand focus. The value of the paper is in its combination of a jurisdiction-specific experience with an understanding of the broader issues of ‘global versus local’ and processes of sociological institutionalism. Such studies of IPSAS adoption can offer distinctive perspectives on global processes of isomorphism within neo-institutional theory. This paper explains the advantages of flexible strategies to standard-setters.     

Lumpiness,capital adjustment costs and investment dynamics

Aggregate investment in the US economy displays a hump-shaped pattern in response to shocks, and the autocorrelation of aggregate investment growth is positive for the first few quarters, turning negative for the later quarters. This paper shows that this feature of the data is the natural outcome of a two-sector consumption/investment model designed and calibrated to reproduce plant-level evidence on capital accumulation.