Cardinality-based equality of opportunities

We study possible rankings of opportunity profiles. An opportunity profile is a list of opportunity sets, one for each agent in the society. We compare profiles on the basis of the notion of “equality of opportunities”. Our main results show the necessary and sufficient conditions for this comparison to be made using exclusively the information provided by two cardinal measures: the number of common alternatives in all sets of a given profile and the difference between the number of alternatives in the individual sets. We also show that, under additional axioms, we can combine these criteria only in a weighted procedure or in some lexicographic refinements of a weighted procedure.      

Money, endogenous fertility and economic growth

This paper analyzes the issue of money superneutrality through an intertemporal optimizing model of capital accumulation with endogenous fertility, i.e. endogenous population growth. Two elements of this setup invalidate money superneutrality: (i) a demand for fertility that depends on real money balances, and (ii) an inverse relation between capital–labor ratio and population growth. Higher monetary growth increases fertility, since it reduces its opportunity cost, and hence diminishes capital intensity, and per capita output. This reverse Tobin effect is matched by an increase in aggregate capital and output growth rates. In this framework, the optimal monetary growth rule is a “distorted Friedman rule”.     

Remote control and maintenance outsourcing networks and its applications in supply chain management

The paper analyzes the impact of e-business technologies on maintenance management and supply chain operations. The aim of this work is to investigate the network organization level of supply chains in case of remote maintenance application and to understand how maintenance policies are coupled with information technology (IT) solutions. To this purpose two literature reviews are presented: firstly, on the supply chain and network integration, and then on the evolution of maintenance using information technology. Following this, the paper present four specific industrial case-studies of eMRO network organisation. They have been chosen as reference models from a set of practical applications and pilot tests performed by the authors in different production sectors in the last 5 years. Technology complexity environments, maintenance outsourcing level, and supply chain integration context are discussed for each case-studies with particular regards to the profitable forms of collaboration provided by the introduction of IT and the Web. This analysis work toward the development of a framework useful to: (1) classify different e-maintenance systems and understand the relationships between the different members of the network, and (2) identify the variables which can influence the introduction and development of the systems.     

Economic Growth and Transboundary Pollution in Europe: An Empirical Analysis

The existing empirical evidence suggests that environmental Kuznets curvesonly exist for pollutants with semi-local and medium term impacts.Ansuategi and Perrings (2000) have considered the behavioral basis for thecorrelation observed between different spatial incidence of environmentaldegradation and the relation between economic growth and environmentalquality. They show that self-interested planners following a Nash-typestrategy tend to address environmental effects sequentially: addressingthose with the most immediate costs first, and those whose costs aredisplaced in space later. This paper tests such behavioral basis in thecontext of sulphur dioxide emissions in Europe.     

The Weekend and 'Reverse' Weekend Effects: An Analysis by Month of the Year, Week of the Month, and Industry

In this paper, we examine whether the 'reverse' weekend effect recently documented by Brusa, Liu and Schulman (2000) is concentrated in a few industries or widely spread across all the industries. The findings in this paper indicate that the 'reverse' weekend effect exists not only in broad indices, but also in most industries . The results suggest that the 'reverse' weekend effect may be driven by economic events that affect all industries, rather than industry‐specific factors . Although the patterns of Monday returns are similar between broad indices and industry indices, they are different between the pre ‐ and the post ‐1988 periods. Monday returns tend to be negative in the pre ‐1988 period, but tend to be positive in the post ‐1988 period, for both broad market indices and industry indices. These conclusions are valid even after considering the influence of the month‐of‐the‐year and the week‐of‐the‐month effects.     

Prepayment and future cross-buying: an exploratory analysis

Recent research has provided important insights on consumers’ preferences for prepayment mechanisms and on its impact on consumption of a given product or service. However, little is known about how prepayment influences future purchases of goods and services. We consider this question in a contractual setting within the services industry, involving different purchasing decisions over time. Based on a large-scale empirical test, we find that prepay customers make fewer changes to their cross-buying levels (i.e., the number of different services they buy from the company) from one contractual period to another, and that this effect is more salient for the firm's new customers. We propose possible explanatory mechanisms for this effect. For instance, based on mental budgeting theory, we suggest that prepayment customers may set mental budgets and track expenditures against this budget leading them to resist further investments. Alternatively, prepayment customers may be more certain about their consumption behavior leading to fewer changes over time.

     

Monday returns and asset pricing

The seasonal patterns observed on Monday stock returns are still unexplained by different asset pricing models. We attempt to fill this gap in the finance literature by using the Fama-French (Journal of Financial Economics 33:3–56, 1993) risk factors to explain the Monday seasonal. The results in the study show that Monday returns are explained by risk factors such as the market return, the size of the firms, and the book-to-market ratios of firms.     

Model for evaluating the environmental sustainability of energy projects

This article focuses on the problem of assessing the environmental sustainability of energy projects. For this purpose an original model, which is based on various indicators that measure the environmental sustainability of energy projects, has been developed. This model, so called index of environmental sustainability of energy projects (IESEP), can be used in scenario comparison, while measuring the effectiveness of the proposed alternatives. Finally, an example of how to use this model is provided by analyzing alternatives to ameliorate the environmental sustainability of a hydroelectric project. In doing so, it is possible to show the usefulness of this model when used as a decision making tool for energy planners.