The possible effects on the future management of local Italian authorities following the use of financial derivative instruments

The appeal from municipalities, provinces and regions to financial derivative instruments is tied to the need of overcoming the situations in a state of urgency inherent in a balance. On average, one local Italian authority in twenty has decided to underwrite a derivative product, giving life to a number of contracts that had a value of over 35 billion euro with an average value of 6.5 million for each contract until 2007. The boom of swaps has, since 2000 on, experienced a peak period from 2003 to the end of 2005, in which the Euribor rate touched a very low level, maintained itself for long periods at around 2% and fallen in some cases even under this value. Many of the contracts completed before 2006, which link the debt of local authorities to variable rates, but also many of those completed from 2006 onwards that moved debt onto fixed rate, which are now a source of loss for the balance of local authorities that have underwritten them. In the 2002-2008 period, the number of the stipulation of contracts local authorities reported to the Ministry of Economy and Finance is about 900, corresponding to more or less 150 per year, which affected 18 regions, 44 provinces, 532 municipalities and 4 mountain commtmities, for a total of 594 authorities. Therefore, the local authorities have approached the derivative instruments in an often approximate way without a real awareness, both for the conditions that were being negotiated and the effects that they would have produced in perspective. The purpose of this work is to highlight the consequences of the use of derivative instruments on the future management of local authorities.     

Drivers of Autonomy of Public Agencies in Italy

The creation of agencies has been and still is a widespread trend in the public sector: governments in many countries often establish semi‐autonomous single‐purpose organizations to carry out a wide range of functions and tasks. The trend to autonomization is problematic as it affects public sector's governance: several bodies operate partly autonomously from the core elective government, and are sometimes loosely coupled with their ‘parent’ administration. Consequently, analysing the drivers of agencies’ autonomy is a crucial issue for public management. This paper, in the light of some major contributions in organizational science, assumes that agencies’ autonomy is influenced by factors that affect post‐delegation relationships: agencies’ structure, culture and nature of the tasks executed. The study was aimed at testing a range of hypotheses about the autonomy of public agencies, using for this purpose the so‐far not investigated case of Italy–much in the spirit of the accumulation of knowledge in an area of public management. Results do not provide any strikingly counter‐intuitive finding, but a mix of confirmations and disconfirmations of previous findings that allow a finer‐grained analysis on the determinants of agency autonomy.     

关于美国城市政府公共服务私营化的思考

在直接的垄断性的政府服务中，缺乏非常主要的纽成要素——竞争与选择，新公共服务的提倡者认为，应该在公共服务的提供领域引入竞争机制，如何来实现这一目的，与公共服务私营化有关的关键性的问题是：公共服务的合同是否存在竞争的环境，城市政府是否有足够的公共管理能力为公共服务提供签订有效的合同等，美国在公共服务领域的私营化运动是值得关注与思考的。关于美国城市政府公共服务私营化的思考对于指导我国新时期的公共服务改革具有重要的理论和实践价值。     

Polarities between Naturalism and Non-Naturalism in Contemporary Economics: An Overview

We provide a dynamic model of banking competition, in which bounded rationality of some competitors explains how the credit cycle is intensified. We model the economic cycle following Tobias F. Rötheli (2012b), who argues that boundedly rational banks, in their Bayesian learning, overestimate the probability of success during booms and underestimate it during recessions. We obtain three main results. First, the model suggests that pessimism/underconfidence is not a powerful driver of credit cycles. Instead, it supports the conclusion that it is euphoria during large upswings that leads to the next crunch. Second, the dynamization of the model provides further insight into the way boundedly rational competition intensifies the credit cycle. Third, it additionally predicts that the effects of behavioral biases are more pervasive when the quality of the niche markets is lower.     

我国中小企业应对金融危机的对策研究

由美国次贷危机引发的金融危机席卷全球,对我国中小企业的影响尤其明显。中小企业的应对措施是：积极承接产业转移,加快结构调整;优化出口产品结构,提高竞争力;提高自主创新能力;培养特色产业集群;拓展融资方式,改善融资环境。     

公益创投的本土实践分析

本文对公益创投这一社会创新模式的起源、概念和特征进行描述,在此基础上,分析公益创投的本土实践模式,指出公益创投已经在中国显出端倪并产生了一定的作用,同时也存在一定的问题并提出相应的对策。     

Institutional Quality and Public Debt Accumulation: An Empirical Analysis

The question of public debt management for both developed and developing economies has generated an enormous amount of political as well as academic interest. This study examines how governance affects public debt accumulation in the MENA countries during the 1996–2015 period. The six Worldwide Governance indicators (voice and accountability, political stability and the absence of violence/terrorism, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption) were used to measure the quality of governance in these countries. The results show that only three governance indicators support well the hypothesis that poor governance leads to higher accumulation of MENA public debt. Moreover, the estimates suggest a significant indirect impact of bad governance operating via decreased GDP growth. These findings have important implications for policy makers of these countries, which are currently facing major fiscal and external imbalances due to the high cost of war and terrorist attacks, low oil prices and a decline in trade. Sound public debt management represents an urgent task especially that public debt management problems often find their origins in the lack of attention paid by policymakers to the costs of bad governance and weak macroeconomic management.     

Public–private partnerships for nature-based tourist attractions: the failure of Seal Rocks

In 1998, the Seal Rocks Sea Life Centre opened on Phillip Island, Australia. It was a public–private partnership, with a privately funded tourist attraction built on a government-owned protected area. Almost immediately it was beset by problems and court action found in favour of the private developer, who was awarded $A37 million in damages, with ownership of the centre returning to the state. This article fills a gap in the literature examining public–private partnerships by considering this failed venture. It is a qualitative case study, analysing the 2003 appeal court judgement in the case and newspaper accounts from 1995 to 2004. Our findings highlight that deficiencies with the drafting of commercial contracts for public–private partnerships may limit the environmental and economic benefits that are being sought by governments through these arrangements. In this case, the application of a “best efforts” clause was critical, as it required that priority was given to the commercial success of the project over environmental and planning concerns. Furthermore, the development was a centralised decision made by the state government, affording very little input from local parks management and community stakeholders. Such a court finding has important ramifications for future developments of partnership agreements in nature-based tourism.     

我国国内市场一体化的影响因素分析——基于面板数据的检验

在使用价格指数法测算出我国国内市场一体化程度的基础上，本文实证检验我国国内一体化的影响因素。结果表明，地方保护倾向与国内市场一体化水平负相关；铁路营业里程增长与国内市场一体化水平正相关，公路里程增长与国内的市场一体化负相关；CAFTA建设对国内市场一体化具有显著正向作用，有利于推进国内区域经济协调发展；区域GDP差异加剧了地方政府本地市场偏好。这对我国促进国内市场整合与区域协调发展具有现实意义。     

PPP的认识误区与公共服务改革

通过查阅大量国外文献,试图厘清公私合作(PPP)的家族谱系,纠正对PPP、BOT、PFI等融资模式的误解。通过论述政府采购的特征,阐明PPP不是政府投资而是政府公共服务采购。根据我国PPP的发展阶段以及政府在各类PPP模式中发挥的作用,提出公共服务改革的10项建议。