Trade Costs and the Agglomeration of Production

The object of this paper is to study the evolution of trade costs and of the agglomeration of production, as well as their relation. The Home Market Effect prescribes increasing agglomeration when trade costs decrease because it is supposed to strengthen. We study the joint variation of trade costs and agglomeration in all the sectors that we consider, and specifically in those which support the home market effect hypothesis. We employ an original approach based on the combination of different bootstrap distributions. Our analysis yields insights into the evolution of trade costs and agglomeration in Europe in the last decade.Trade Costs; Agglomeration of Production; Home Market Effect; Bootstrap

Sectorial Border Effects in the European Single Market: an Explanation through Industrial Concentration

The purpose of this paper is to explain the relation between the Border Effect and industrial concentration. This is achieved by founding this relation on the Home Market Effect and testing the robustness of this foundation through an application to the European Single Market. A sectorial Gravity Equation is estimated using different econometric estimators, in particular we discuss a recently suggested technique for the estimation of log-linear CES models. Overall, our findings suggest a steady relation between the Border Effect and industrial concentration. Besides, the analysis of industrial concentration through a synthetic index provides us with valuable insights into the structure of the European industry. JEL Classification: F10, F12, F15.Border Effect, European Single Market, Home Market Effect, Industrial Concentration, Trade

The Geographic Space in International Trade: from Gravity to New Economic Geography

In this paper we discuss the foundations of two recent trade theories linked by the role that the space-dimension plays in this kind of models. The theories discussed are the Gravity Approach and the New Economic Geography. We dedicate much to the explanation of the micro-foundations of the gravity equation and to the solution of the Border Puzzle achieved in a relevant and innovative paper by Anderson and van Wincoop. Some upto-date empirical applications, which test or use Gravity and NEG relations, are discussed in order to show how much these two theories are used in empirical trade analysis.Gravity, Trade Costs, Border Puzzle, Economic Geography

The Export Performance of the Euro Area countries in the period 1996-2007

This paper studies the export performance of the Euro Area and the majority of the Euro Area countries through a Constant Market Share Analysis. We keep a special focus on the three largest countries: Germany, France and Italy. The Constant Market Share Analysis provides a breakdown of an economy’s export performance into the separate components that are due to a Structure Effect, resulting from the product and destination market of its exports, and a broad Competitiveness Effect which is a residual category assumed to capture both price and non-price competitiveness.Constant Market Share Analysis, Export Performance, Specialization, Competitiveness, Euro Area.

Euro's influence upon trade: Rose effect versus border effect

This paper assesses the Euro’s influence upon European trade by estimating two different indicators. The first is the so-called “Rose Effect”, while the second is the “Border Effect”. The former measures how much a country within a currency union trades more with its partners than with non-member countries, the latter measures the integration of a country with its trade partners. This study of the Euro’s influence by means of the Border Effect is a novelty in the literature, it reveals that the Euro’s influence upon trade is not so clear as papers focused only on the Rose Effect claim. This casts doubts about the consequences of the Euro introduction for the European Single Market. Both indicators are estimated by means of a gravity model for bilateral trade flows using a panel of manufacture exports among twenty-four OECD countries. JEL Classification: F10, F14, F15Border Effect, euro, European Integration, Rose effect, Trade

Molecular evidence for a bacterium of the family Midichloriaceae (order Rickettsiales) in skin and organs of the rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss affected by red mark syndrome

Red mark syndrome (RMS) is a chronic skin disease of unknown aetiology affecting farmed rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss in Europe that causes single or multiple bright red skin lesions. Histological analysis showed acute inflammation in the area of the skin suggesting a bacterial infection. No aetiological agent has been unequivocally identified, although the involvement of a single transmissible agent has been suggested. The 16S rDNA of a bacterium belonging to the family Midichloriaceae (Rickettsiales) was found in association with RMS skin lesions.In this work, we present a novel specific method for absolute quantification of the midichloriacea associated with RMS in O. mykiss, based on a quantitative PCR approach. The qPCR method was tested on healthy skin, on lesions when present and on organ samples (heart, liver, spleen, intestine, kidney) from ten fish. Our work shows, for the first time, that the midichloriacea is present not only in skin lesions but also in organs of affected fish. Further studies are needed to prove whether this bacterium is actually involved in the pathology

The Mandate and the Activity of the International Monetary Fund

This paper explains the evolution of the International Monetary Fund’s mandate and discusses its role in supporting countries experiencing a macroeconomic crisis. We consider the conditionality attached to its loans and why it is convenient in some regards. Even though its operations and functioning raise many criticisms, we argue that the Fund is a necessary institution because it acts opposite to capital markets when it is necessary.International Monetary Fund, Conditionality, Structural Adjustment Programs.

Landslide inventory and rockfall risk assessment of the Monte Pellegrino Oriented Nature Reserve area (Sicily)

In the last 20 years the natural oriented reserve of Monte Pellegrino is affected by several rockfall events. This sector of the Northern Sicily is a strategic urban area and represent the most important element of both the religious and cultural tradition and landscape for the city of Palermo.The rockfalls are here the major natural threats and represent a relevant risk of people, structures and infrastructures and prevents the economic and social development that could be made by high tourist potential of the area. For the above mentioned reasons a detailed geological and geotechnical study in order to define a quantitative risk analysis is now being carried out, concurrently with the implementation of the landslide inventory essential for analysis and monitoring. Monte Pellegrino, located along the Alpine orogenic belt (Catalano et al., 2013) in the emerged Sicilian fold and thrust belt, is an isolated carbonate massif characterized by the presence of poor rock masses and steeply sloping hillsides. The quantitative risk analysis was performed through several steps and taking into account the provisions of directive which is in force in the local institutions. The spread of a rockfall depends on many control factors such as geological setting and geomechanical features for both source area and below area, it is therefore necessary to define different input elements: an inventory of landslides, a database of factors and a dataset that contains the results of the on-site inspections like the geostructural and geomorphological data. The archive of landslides occurred over a period of 20 years was created; the spatial database (constructed in accordance with the standards) contains information on the identification code and date of the event, location, type, involved lithology and related thematic maps. Other thematic maps are those requirements deriving from the factors layers as tectonic features, morphological characteristics, geometric attributes of the slope, type of coverage, structures and infrastructures, trajectory of the block and the stop point. The above mentioned steps allow the implementation and calibration of the model for rockfall analysis; in particular, by means back-analysis stage it is possible to determine the restitution and friction coefficients through a comparison of the points where the rock blocks stop in the simulation with the rockfall history stop points. The next step we took is to produce the map of those areas with different degree of risk defined through the density of the trajectories reconstructed through the model. Finally, are presented here two between the cases studied needed to set up the forecasting model for the rockfall trajectories. Catalano R., Valenti V., Albanese C., Accaino F., Sulli A., Tinivella U., Gasparro Morticelli M., Zanolla C., Giustiniani M., 2013 – Sicily fold-thrust belt and slab roll-back: the SI.RI.PRO. seismic crustal transect. Journal of the Geological Society, 170, 451–464

evaluating the safety benefit of retrofitting motorways section with barriers meeting a new eu standard comparison of observational before after methodologies

Abstract The road safety barriers are today designed and installed in compliance with the European standards for Road Restraint Systems (EN 1317), which lays down common requirements for the testing and certification in all EU countries. The introduction of the European Union (EU) regulation for safety barriers, which is based on performance, has encouraged European road agencies to perform an upgrade of the old barriers installed before 2000, with the expectation that there will be safety benefits at the retrofitted sites. Due to the high cost of such treatments, a benefit-cost analysis (BCA) is often used for site selection and ranking and to justify the investment. To this aim a crash modification factor (CMF) has to be applied and errors in the estimation of benefits are directly reflected in the reliability of BCA. Despite the benefits of empirical Bayes before–after (EB–BA) analysis or similar rigorous methods are well-known in the scientific world, these approaches are not always the standard for estimating the effectiveness of safety treatments. To this aim, the differences between the EB–BA and a naive comparison of observed crashes before and after the treatment are presented in the paper. Crash modification factors for total and target crashes are estimated by performing an EB–BA based on data from a motorway in Italy. As expected the results suggest a strong safety benefit for the ran-off-road crashes by reducing the number of severe crashes (fatal and injury). The statistical significance of results obtained by the EB–BA approach show that the retrofits are still cost-effective. The comparison pointed out as selection bias effects can overestimate the safety benefit of the retrofits when a naive approach is used to estimate the CMF and how those can significantly affect a benefit-cost analysis