Social Capital, Institutions and Growth: Further Lessons from the Italian Regional Divide

Since Putnam's work on social capital, the Italian regional case has been a very rich source of both data and theories about the origins of large and persistent differences in local stocks of social capital, and about the impact of such differences on economic performances. The Italian case is widely interpreted as supporting the idea that persistent regional divides are largely explained by local differences in social capital. In this paper we maintain that this interpretation fails to recognize that the current large regional gap in Italy is significantly linked to two policy decisions taken by the central State at the beginning of the 1970s. In particular, we focus on the possibility that social capital became a binding constraint for the growth of southern Italy’s mainly as a consequence of the deep process of governmental decentralization that began in the1970s. We formalize this hypothesis by using an endogenous growth model with public capital. In this model, the accumulation of public capital is characterized by the presence of iceberg costs that depend on social capital. Decentralization affects these costs because the impact of the local stocks of social capital on public investment increases when the latter is managed locally. To assess the role of decentralization as a trigger of the influence of local social capital on growth, we control for the impact of labor market reforms, a second and almost simultaneous institutional shock that took place in Italy and that made regional labor markets far more rigid than in the previous decades. In the second part of our paper, we use the large empirical literature on the Italian regions to restrict the values of the parameters of our model in order to perform a simple simulation exercise. In this exercise, the model turns out to be able to account for the major swings in the convergence of southern regions towards the center-northern regions since 1861. The general lessons we can draw from this further analysis of the Italian regional case are as follows. First, we show that the strength of social capital as a determinant of long-run growth may depend on some well-defined characteristic of the institutional context. Second, our model suggests that the economic success of decentralization policies -- even when the budget constraint is not 'soft' -- depends on the local endowment of social capital.

Change in persistence tests for panels: An update and some new results

In this paper we propose a set of new panel tests to detect changes in persistence. The test statistics are used to test the null hypothesis of stationarity against the alternative of a change in persistence from I(0) to I(1), from I(1) to I(0) and in an unknown direction. The limiting distributions of the panel tests are derived, and small sample properties are investigated by Monte Carlo experiments under the hypothesis that the individual series are independently cross-section distributed. These tests have a good size and power properties. Cross-sectional dependence is also considered. A procedure of de-factorizing, proposed by Stock and Watson (2002), is applied. The defactored panel tests have good size and power. The empirical results obtained from applying these tests to a panel covering 21 OECD countries observed between 1970 and 2007 suggest that inflation rate changes from I(1) to I(0) when cross-correlation is considered.Persistence, Stationarity, Panel data

Halo Coronal Mass Ejections during Solar Cycle 24: reconstruction of the global scenario and geoeffectiveness

In this study we present a statistical analysis of 53 fast Earth-directed halo CMEs observed by the SOHO/LASCO instrument during the period Jan. 2009-Sep. 2015, and we use this CME sample to test the capabilities of a Sun-to-Earth prediction scheme for CME geoeffectiveness. First, we investigate the CME association with other solar activity features by means of multi-instrument observations of the solar magnetic and plasma properties. Second, using coronagraphic images to derive the CME kinematical properties at 0.1 AU, we propagate the events to 1 AU by means of the WSA-ENLIL+Cone model. Simulation results at Earth are compared with in-situ observations at L1. By applying the pressure balance condition at the magnetopause and a solar wind-Kp index coupling function, we estimate the expected magnetospheric compression and geomagnetic activity level, and compare them with global data records. The analysis indicates that 82% of the CMEs arrived at Earth in the next 4 days. Almost the totality of them compressed the magnetopause below geosynchronous orbits and triggered a geomagnetic storm. Complex sunspot-rich active regions associated with energetic flares result the most favourable configurations from which geoeffective CMEs originate. The analysis of related SEP events shows that 74% of the CMEs associated with major SEPs were geoeffective. Moreover, the SEP production is enhanced in the case of fast and interacting CMEs. In this work we present a first attempt at applying a Sun-to-Earth geoeffectiveness prediction scheme - based on 3D simulations and solar wind-geomagnetic activity coupling functions - to a statistical set of potentially geoeffective halo CMEs. The results of the prediction scheme are in good agreement with geomagnetic activity data records, although further studies performing a fine-tuning of such scheme are needed.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate (SWSC

Social Capital, Institutions and Growth: Further Lessons from the Italian Regional Divide

Since Putnam's work on social capital, the Italian regional case has been a very rich source of both data and theories about the origins of large and persistent differences in local stocks of social capital, and about the impact of such differences on economic performances. The Italian case is widely interpreted as supporting the idea that persistent regional divides are largely explained by local differences in social capital. In this paper we maintain that this interpretation fails to recognize that the current large regional gap in Italy is significantly linked to two policy decisions taken by the central State at the beginning of the 1970s. In particular, we focus on the possibility that social capital became a binding constraint for the growth of southern Italy's mainly as a consequence of the deep process of governmental decentralization that began in the1970s. We formalize this hypothesis by using an endogenous growth model with public capital. In this model, the accumulation of public capital is characterized by the presence of iceberg costs that depend on social capital. Decentralization affects these costs because the impact of the local stocks of social capital on public investment increases when the latter is managed locally. To assess the role of decentralization as a trigger of the influence of local social capital on growth, we control for the impact of labor market reforms, a second and almost simultaneous institutional shock that took place in Italy and that made regional labor markets far more rigid than in the previous decades. In the second part of our paper, we use the large empirical literature on the Italian regions to restrict the values of the parameters of our model in order to perform a simple simulation exercise. In this exercise, the model turns out to be able to account for the major swings in the convergence of southern regions towards the center-northern regions since 1861. The general lessons we can draw from this further analysis of the Italian regional case are as follows. First, we show that the strength of social capital as a determinant of long-run growth may depend on some well-defined characteristic of the institutional context. Second, our model suggests that the economic success of decentralization policies -- even when the budget constraint is not 'soft' -- depends on the local endowment of social capital

Petri Nets as Semantic Domain for Diagram Notations

AbstractThis paper summarizes the work carried out by the authors during the last years. It proposes an approach for defining extensible and flexible formal interpreters for diagram notations based on high-level timed Petri nets.The approach defines interpreters by means of two sets of rules. The first set specifies the correspondences between the elements of the diagram notation and those of the semantic domain (Petri nets); the second set transforms events and states of the semantic domain into visual annotations on the elements of the diagram notation. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated through MetaEnv, a prototype tool that allows users to implement special-purpose interpreters

Wormlike reverse micelles in lecithin/bile salt/water mixtures in oil

Knowing the ability of water and bile salts to promote the reverse wormlike micelle growth in lecithin/water or lecithin/bile salt mixtures in oil, this work was aimed at elucidating the association properties of the three solutes lecithin, water and the bile salt (BS) sodium deoxycholate in cyclohexane. By systematically changing the fraction of the two additives (i.e.: water and BS) we could identify a region at low additive/lecithin molar ratios where stable wormlike micelle dispersions were formed. Small angle X-ray scattering and oscillatory rheology measurements demonstrated that the ability of bile salt and water to transform the originally spherical lecithin reverse micelles into wormlike micelles and thereby impart to the sample viscoelastic properties is preserved in the three-solute mixture. The results suggest that reverse micelle including both bile salt and water are formed in this system. Reasonably the two primers interact with the same region of the lecithin headgroups and are complementary in altering the packing parameter of the amphiphile to values suitable for the formation of cylindrical aggregates

Nonlinear dynamics in a Cournot duopoly with isoelastic demand

This paper analyses the dynamics of a nonlinear Cournot duopoly with general isoelastic demand (quasi-linear preferences) and quantity-setting firms that have incomplete information about the market demand. Unlike existing papers, we propose a model where the price elasticity of demand is different from one. This causes interesting local and global dynamic events that cannot be observed in the case of unit-elastic demand and homogeneous players. In particular, the global behaviour of the map is studied through the critical curves technique, and numerical simulations show coexistence of attractors, coordination failures and complex structures of the basins of attraction

PLCTOOLS: Graph Transformation Meets PLC Design

Abstract This paper presents PLCTOOLS, a formal environment for designing and simulating programmable controllers. Control models are specified with IEC FED (Function Block Diagram), and translated into functionally equivalent HLTPNs (High-Level Timed Petri Nets), through MetaEnv, for analysis and simulation and obtained results are presented in terms of suitable animations of FED blocks. The peculiarity with FBD is that it does not come with a fixed set of syntactic elements; it allows users to add as many new blocks as they want. Consequently, each time users want to add a new FBD block with PLCTOOLS, they must provide the concrete syntax, to add it to the library of available blocks, but also the associated HLTPN, to allow MetaEnv to build the formal representation

Longitudinal beam dynamics simulation in electron rings in strong rf focusing regime

Obtaining very short bunches in an electron storage ring is one of the frontiers of the accelerator physics. The strong rf focusing (SRFF) is a way to have short bunches at a given position in the ring, thanks to the principle of the bunch length modulation. Until now, the bunch length modulation has been studied only in the limit of zero current; in this paper we present the results of a simulation code suitable to study the effects of coherent synchrotron radiation and vacuum chamber wakefields on the single bunch longitudinal dynamics in the SRFF regime . The code has been applied to three different lattices that can be realized in the Frascati e^{+}/e^{-} collider DAΦNE for a possible experiment on bunch length modulation