What Do Ads Buy? Daily Coverage of Listed Companies on the Italian Press.

We match data on the daily newspaper coverage of a sample of Italian listed companies with Nielsen data on the monthly amount of advertising that a given company has purchased on a given newspaper. Controlling for newspaper and company fixed effects, we show that newspaper coverage of a given company is positively related with the amount of ads purchased on that newspaper by that company. We also find that coverage of a company is higher the day after a press release, but especially so on newspapers where more ads are purchased. This result on press releases is robust to controlling for ownership links between newspapers and companies, and -more generally- controlling for time invariant features of each company-newspaper pair, i.e. for (company × newspaper) fixed effects.. Moreover, coverage is correlated with past day absolute return and trading volume, and this relationship appears to be steeper for those newspapers where more ads are purchased. .Media Bias, Advertising, Press Releases, Stock Returns, Italian Press

A market-consistent framework for the fair evaluation of insurance contracts under Solvency II

The entry into force of the Solvency II regulatory regime is pushing insurance companies in engaging into market consistence evaluation of their balance sheet, mainly with reference to financial options and guarantees embedded in life with-profit funds. The robustness of these valuations is crucial for insurance companies in order to produce sound estimates and good risk management strategies, in particular, for liability-driven products such as with-profit saving and pension funds. This paper introduces a Monte Carlo simulation approach for evaluation of insurance assets and liabilities, which is more suitable for risk management of liability-driven products than common approaches generally adopted by insurance companies, in particular, with respect to the assessment of valuation risk

Big Data Competition and Market Power

Big data are considered at the same time a promising driver of economic development and a concern for possible manipulation and privacy intrusion. Data diffusion and their uncertain appropriability can make property rights regarding data less precise than those regarding traditional goods. The article reviews some economic features of data. In many digital markets data can be considered a relevant input for production but hardly an essential facility. Many data are collected in two-sided market platforms and on the one side, they are used to personalise services and to add quality, while on the other side of the platform they contribute to make advertising collection more efficient. So, the transfer of personal data can be considered an implicit price for many free information services. Consumers are usually unaware of subsequent pervasive use of their personal data, and therefore give them away easily. Big data can amplify competitive advantages and related dominant positions, leveraging on information asymmetries. A dominant position obtained through collection and processing of big amounts of personal data allow practices such as first-degree price discrimination, personalised advertising, and artificial degradation of services that can sometimes be considered competitive abuse, but it is difficult that data alone allow to maintain a true dominant position

Why are childcare workers low paid? an analysis of pay in the UK childcare sector, 1994-2008

The thesis examines pay among British childcare workers from 1994 to 2008. It uses childcare as an example of female care occupations and selects the UK as a case study because in recent years childcare services have expanded substantially. As childcare provision has become increasingly formal, the issue of the rewards attached to this type of work has become more pressing. The thesis asks why childcare workers in the UK have traditionally received low pay and to what extent they continue to do so. It explores the changes in childcare policy that have taken place since the mid-1990s in order to understand whether Government’s increased commitment to childcare services has resulted in an improvement in workers’ pay. The thesis develops a multi-layered analysis. First, based on a review of policy documents and secondary sources, the thesis examines British childcare policy and identifies the challenges to higher pay in the sector. Second, the thesis investigates changes in the characteristics and pay of the childcare workforce between 1994 and 2008 by using data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and from the Early Years and Childcare Providers survey. Finally, cultural assumptions about caring motivations and pay are explored on the basis of data from the LFS as well as findings from interviews with childcare workers. The thesis makes three main contributions. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods and a variety of information sources, it offers evidence on changes in the remuneration of British childcare workers, paying close attention to the way childcare policy, education policy and labour market institutions influence wage levels. Furthermore, drawing from the example of childcare in the UK, the thesis contributes to the wider debate on the undervaluation of women’s work by pointing to some of the institutional dynamics that account for low pay in the sector. Finally, the thesis highlights the direct labour market impact of a childcare and early education policies, thus exploring an important dimension of welfare state analysis

Investigation of solid-liquid interactions in high temperature metal-ceramic systems

Studio delle interazioni solido-liquido in sistemi metallo-ceramico testati ad alta temperatur