Private monetary transfers and altruism: an empirical investigation on Italian families

The aim of this paper is to explore the motivation of monetary transfers received by household heads. Indeed, the financial transfers may be motivated by altruism or by the expectation of future services. For this reason, we select a sample of Italian families from the 2006 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) dataset. The empirical analysis is divided into two parts. First, we consider the transfer decision and try to account for the factors that affect the probability that the household member will receive a transfer. Next, we restrict our analysis to those families who did receive a positive transfer and examine the factors that affect the size of the transfer. The economic interest in the intrinsic explanation of monetary transfers is supported by the efficacy of policy makers instruments. For this reason, we also explore the relationship between private and public financial transfers. The main contribution to the existing literature is to investigate the social motivation of private transfers and their implications in terms of policy in a unified framework.Altruism; Household behaviour; Cross-sectional Models

Why without Pay? The Intrinsic Motivation between Investment and Consumption in Unpaid Labour Supply

This paper provides a theoretical model and an empirical investigation on unpaid labour regularly supplied in non profit organisations. The contribution is threefold. First, intrinsic motivation in unpaid labour supply is considered, taking into account simultaneity between investment and consumption motives. Second, we study the impact of family care responsibilities on the determination of unpaid labour supply. Third, the specific activity a person is engaged in is shown to have a significant relevance. Empirical analysis, on data from Indagine Multiscopo sulle Famiglie, Aspetti della Vita Quotidiana, 1997, shows that frequently supplied unpaid labour depends on intrinsic motivation, income, age, family responsibilities and the specific task carried out in non profit organisations. The analytical framework suggests that these determinants support the hypothesis that both investment and consumption motives interact in shaping unpaid labour supply, with a stronger impact of consumption purposes.unpaid labour; non profit organisations;

Capitale sociale robusto

This paper presents a framework characterized by three definitions of social capital and a hypothesis of conceptual robustness that looks, first of all, at the results of empirical literature on social capital and economic outcomes, such as growth and formal institutions; and secondly, on a micro-econometric analysis of the accumulation of social capital variables conducted using the ISTAT’s (Italian Central Statistical Office) Multiscopo survey. The paper shows that repeated social interactions and social norms concepts are consistent with a hypothesis of conceptual robustness and that some potential instrumental variables, correlated with social capital accumulation and uncorrelated with household income are found, provides means to deal with Durlaufs’ econometric instrumental variables problem.statistical matching, social capital, conceptual robustness

The hysteretic response of a shallow pyroclastic deposit

In the last decades, in Campania (southern Italy), steep slopes mantled by loose air-fall pyroclastic soils have been the seat of shallow, fast, rainfall-induced landslides. The occurrence of such events has been the result of the combination of critical rainstorms and of unfavourable initial conditions determined by antecedent infiltration, evaporation, and drainage processes. In order to understand the nature of the phenomena at hand and to clarify the role of all influencing factors, an automatic monitoring station has been installed in an area already subject to a recent killer flowslide (December, 1999). The paper reports data collected in 2011 about volumetric water content and suction (used to investigate the soil water retention features) and rainfall depth and temperature (providing the boundary conditions). In particular, the installation at the same depths of tensiometers and time domain reflectometry (TDR) sensors allowed us to recognise the hysteretic nature of the wetting and drying soil response to weather forcing and its influence on the slope stability conditions. The data reported in the paper are freely available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4281166 (Comegna et al., 2020)

Expectations for the high-energy neutrino detection from starburst galaxies with KM3NeT/ARCA

Star-forming galaxies (SFGs) and starburst galaxies (SBGs) are extragalactic sources which could produce high-energy neutrinos. In principle, they could play a rather important role for explaining at least a sizeable part of IceCube’s observations of astophysical neutrino. Using a recent theoretical model which implemented a blending of spectral indeces, we present the KM3NeT/ARCA sensitivities for such a diffuse flux from the startburst galaxies. In particular, we provide the 5-year differential sensitivity for the two building blocks of ARCA. We make use only of the track-like events in the range of 100 GeV - 10 PeV differentiate in 11 bins of energy. We show how the upcoming neutrino telescope could observe the diffuse SFG and SBG within 5 years of data taking. We found the minimum of the sensitivity at around 100 TeV, which is also the energy where the SBG contribution is expected to peak. This would not only constrain the multi-component fit of the observed astrophysical neutrino flux at that energy (100 TeV), but would also provide us a direct link between the star-forming activity in the reservoir environments and the hadronic emissions.Postprint (published version

Self Image and Environmental Attitude and Behavior

In this paper, we examine some important aspects related to safeguarding environmental quality. Beginning by defining the identity of the agents considered, we conceptually describe how whilethey have different identities, they can be simultaneously influenced by three distinct elements: self image and environmental attitude and behavior. We define self image as the individual's willingness to cooperate for the sake of the public good, we define environmental attitude as the individual's concern regarding waste prevention and disposal, and the environmental behavior as the individual's recycling behavior. Using the 1998 wave of the Multipurpose Household Survey (MHS), which is conducted annually by the Italian Central Statistical Offce, and univariate probit models, we show that there is a positive relationship among these factors that is robust to the inclusion of social participation variables and to the use of a sub-sample of individuals who have no interest in environmental issues

Private monetary transfers and altruism: an empirical investigation on Italian families

The aim of this paper is to explore the motivation of monetary transfers received by household heads. Indeed, the financial transfers may be motivated by altruism or by the expectation of future services. For this reason, we select a sample of Italian families from the 2006 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) dataset. The empirical analysis is divided into two parts. First, we consider the transfer decision and try to account for the factors that affect the probability that the household member will receive a transfer. Next, we restrict our analysis to those families who did receive a positive transfer and examine the factors that affect the size of the transfer. The economic interest in the intrinsic explanation of monetary transfers is supported by the efficacy of policy makers instruments. For this reason, we also explore the relationship between private and public financial transfers. The main contribution to the existing literature is to investigate the social motivation of private transfers and their implications in terms of policy in a unified framework

Private monetary transfers and altruism: an empirical investigation on Italian families

The aim of this paper is to explore the motivation of monetary transfers received by household heads. Indeed, the financial transfers may be motivated by altruism or by the expectation of future services. For this reason, we select a sample of Italian families from the 2006 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) dataset. The empirical analysis is divided into two parts. First, we consider the transfer decision and try to account for the factors that affect the probability that the household member will receive a transfer. Next, we restrict our analysis to those families who did receive a positive transfer and examine the factors that affect the size of the transfer. The economic interest in the intrinsic explanation of monetary transfers is supported by the efficacy of policy makers instruments. For this reason, we also explore the relationship between private and public financial transfers. The main contribution to the existing literature is to investigate the social motivation of private transfers and their implications in terms of policy in a unified framework

Identification in Structural Vector Autoregressions Through Graphical Modelling and Monetary Policy: A Cross-Country Analysis

There is an ongoing debate on how to identify monetary policy shocks in SVAR models. Graphical modelling exploits statistical properties of data for identification and offers a data based tool to shed light on the issue. We conduct a cross-country analysis, considering European Monetary Union (EMU), Japan and US. We obtain some important results. The information set of the monetary authorities, which is essential for the identification of the monetary shock seems to depend on availability of data in terms of higher frequency with respect to the policy instrument (US and Japan). Moreover, there is not yet a widespread consensus on whether or not the European Monetary Union should be considered as a closed economy. Our results indicate that EMU official interest rate depends on the US federal funds rate.monetary policy; SVAR; graphical modelling