Aggregated analysis of in-depth accident causation data

Data collected from in-depth road accident investigations are very informative and may contain more than 500 accident-related variables for a single investigated case. These data may be used to get a more detailed knowledge on accident and injury causation associated with a specific accident scenario. However, due to their complexity, studies using in-depth data at aggregated levels are not common. The objective of this paper is to propose a methodology to analyse aggregated accident causation charts in order to highlight strong and weak relationships between crash causes and pre-crash scenarios. These relationships can be taken into account when developing or assessing new road safety measures (e.g. in-vehicle systems). The methodology has been applied to an in-depth accident dataset derived from the European project SafetyNet. Four different pre-crash scenarios associated with the accident scenario ‘vehicles encountering something while remaining in their lane’ have been investigated. Even if generalization of these results should be done with care because of database representativeness issues, the methodology is promising, highlighting, for example, a well-defined causation pattern related to vehicles striking a vehicle in rear-end accidents.     

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Non-Keynesian Fiscal Adjustments? A Close Look at Expansionary Fiscal Consolidations in the EU

This paper analyses the characteristics of episodes of fiscal consolidation in the EU exhibiting non-Keynesian features, i.e., followed by an improved growth performance. Roughly half of the episodes of fiscal consolidations that have been undertaken in the EU in the last 30 years have been followed by higher growth. Probit regressions indicate that the consolidations that turned out to be expansionary were more likely started in periods with output below potential and based on expenditure cuts rather than on tax increases. These results appear quite robust with respect to the criteria used to identify the consolidation episodes and to classify such episodes as expansionary.

The new EU merger regulation: Implications for EU‐U.S. merger strategies

This article examines the implications of the new EU merger regulation (EU 139/2004) on international merger strategies. Important changes in the new regulation on both a substantive and procedural level are analyzed in the comparative context of EU and U.S. merger‐control policies. In particular, the article evaluates whether the “substantial impediment to effective competition” (SIEC) test in the new regulation implies convergence with the U.S. “substantial lessening of competition” (SLC) benchmark. In this context, the article develops scenarios for convergence between EU and U.S. merger‐control policies. The EU merger process has emerged against a background of significant political and institutional development in the European Union, and this is an important explanatory element in the development of competition policy in general and for the new merger regulation in particular. It also has implications for merger strategies examined at the end of the article. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Functions of industrial supplier relationships and their impact on relationship quality

Although recent scholarly work on business relationships often discusses relationship quality as a major issue, especially with regard to the phenomenon of vendor stratification, there is still little empirical research on this important construct. In this paper, the authors provide a thorough conceptualization of relationship quality and its possible antecedents, i.e., the direct and indirect functions of the relationship for the customer. Drawing on an empirical base of 230 buyer questionnaires, the authors show that the extent to which a supplier fulfills direct and indirect functions in a relationship has a direct positive impact on the relationship quality perceived by the customer. This impact is especially strong when the customer can easily replace the supplier or, in other words, when the supplier faces competition. The findings are discussed and the authors provide managerial implications for decision-makers from both buyer and supplier organizations.     

Agents interaction and price dynamics: evidence from the laboratory

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - Using data collected from an experimental double auction market, we study the dynamics of interaction among traders. Our focus is on the effect...     

Sequential estimation of shape parameters in multivariate dynamic models

Sequential maximum likelihood and GMM estimators of distributional parameters obtained from the standardised innovations of multivariate conditionally heteroskedastic dynamic regression models evaluated at Gaussian PML estimators preserve the consistency of mean and variance parameters while allowing for realistic distributions. We assess their efficiency, and obtain moment conditions leading to sequential estimators as efficient as their joint ML counterparts. We also obtain standard errors for VaR and CoVaR, and analyse the effects on these measures of distributional misspecification. Finally, we illustrate the small sample performance of these procedures through simulations and apply them to analyse the risk of large eurozone banks.     

How organizational support impacts affective commitment and turnover among Italian nurses: a multilevel mediation model

This study examines multilevel relationships between perceived organizational support (POS), affective commitment and voluntary turnover among nurses. We explored the mediation role of affective commitment between POS and turnover behavior at both individual and work-unit levels. This cross-level study involved 945 Italian nurses from 60 work units. We hypothesized and showed that collective affective commitment fully mediated the impact of climate for POS on individual and collective turnover among nurses. This study helps explain the variance in turnover among nurses in healthcare organizations by analyzing the influence of unit-level climate on individual behavior. Results stress that social environments within wards are important in explaining the processes by which nurses decide to quit their work unit.     

Effects of the New Basel Capital Accord on Bank Capital Requirements for SMEs

Using data from three countries (US, Italy and Australia) and surveying related studies from several other countries in Europe, we investigate the effects of the New Basel Capital Accord on bank capital requirements for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). We find that, for all the countries, banks will have significant benefits, in terms of lower capital requirements, when considering small and medium sized firms as retail customers. But they will be obliged to use the Advanced IRB approach and to manage them on a pooled basis. For SMEs as corporate, however, capital requirements will be slightly greater than under the existing Basel I Capital Accord. We believe that most eligible banks will use a blended approach (considering some SMEs as retail and some as corporate). Through a breakeven analysis, we find that for all of our countries, banking organizations will be obliged to classify as retail at least 20% of their SME portfolio in order to maintain the current capital requirement (8%). JEL classification: G21, G28     

Taming financial systemic risk: models,instruments and early warning indicators

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination -