Le esternalità di rete

Negli ultimi vent'anni gli avanzamenti della letteratura riguardo le esternalità di rete sono stati notevoli, d'altra parte essi mancano di uniformità e omogeneità. L'obiettivo di questo articolo è quello di verificare le congruenze di tali concetti presentandoli in maniera congiunta e discutendo l'origine delle loro divergenze. Nell'ultima parte discuti amo approfonditamente l'approccio di Mix and match e verifichiamo la forza dei risultati raggiunti proponendo delle funzioni di surplus netto del consumatore differenti e ottenendo una forma di mercato alternativa.

Add-on pricing: theory and evidence from the cruise industry

In many industries, firms give consumers the opportunity to add (at a price) optional goods and services to a baseline product. The aim of our paper is to provide a theoretical model of add-on pricing in competitive environments with two new distinctive features. First, we discuss the choice of offering the add-on, assuming that this entails a fixed cost. Second, we allow firms to have a varying degree of market power over the add-on, associated with the ability to capture the value that consumers obtain from such an additional good/service. Our model shows that the conventional wisdom, according to which offering the add-on should unambiguously lower the price of the baseline product, is not always supported. In asymmetric equilibria, in which only one firm offers the add-on, baseline prices are higher if the firm’s market power over the add-on is limited. The predictions of the model are confirmed by a hedonic price model on a dataset of cruises offered worldwide

Government fiscal efforts vs. labour union strikes. Strategic substitutes or complements?

To unveil the strategic interaction between the government and the labour union in a unionised economy, a policy-game model is estimated by cointegrated Vector Autoregressive system using Italian quarterly data (1960-2009) on government budget surplus (fiscal efforts), hours not worked (strikes), unemployment and real wages. The long-run cointegration relationships are interpreted as the players' reaction functions and the long-run equilibrium as the equilibrium of the game. The identification of the long-run cointegration relationships allows indeed to determine if efforts and strikes are strategic complements or strategic substitutes. Finally, speed of long-run adjustment provides insights about the effectiveness of government and labour union strategies

School-Based Deworming Program Yields Small Improvement in Growth of Zanzibari School Children After one Year.

Efficacy trials of antihelminthic therapies conducted in Africa have reported improvements in children's growth, but nutritional evaluations of large-scale deworming programs are lacking. We evaluated the first-year effect on growth of a school-based deworming program in Zanzibar, where growth retardation occurs in school children. Children in four primary schools were given thrice-yearly mebendazole (500 mg) and compared with children in four schools that received twice-yearly mebendazole and children in four non-program schools. Evaluation schools were randomly selected and allocated to control, twice-yearly or thrice-yearly deworming. Approximately 1000 children in each program group completed the 1-y follow-up. Children <10 y old gained 0.27 kg more weight (P < 0.05) and 0.13 cm more height (P = 0.20) in the twice-yearly group, and 0. 20 kg more weight (P = 0.07) and 0.30 cm more height (P < 0.01) in the thrice-yearly group, compared with the control group. Children <10 y old with higher heights-for-age at baseline had higher weight and height gains in response to deworming. In children >/=10 y old, overall program effects on height or weight gains were not significant. But in this age range, younger boys had significant improvements in height gain with thrice-yearly deworming, and children with higher heights-for-age had greater improvements in weight gain with deworming. We conclude that the deworming program improved the growth of school children, especially children who were younger and less stunted, but the improvements were small. More effective antihelminthic regimens or additional dietary or disease control interventions may be needed to substantially improve the growth of school children in areas such as Zanzibar

Low Dose Daily Iron Supplementation Improves Iron Status and Appetite but not Anemia, Whereas Quarterly Anthelminthic Treatment Improves Growth, Appetite and Anemia in Zanzibari Preschool Children.

Iron deficiency and helminth infections are two common conditions of children in developing countries. The consequences of helminth infection in young children are not well described, and the efficacy of low dose iron supplementation is not well documented in malaria-endemic settings. A 12-mo randomized, placebo controlled, double-blind trial of 10 mg daily iron and/or mebendazole (500 mg) every 3 mo was conducted in a community-based sample of 459 Zanzibari children age 6-71 mo with hemoglobin > 70 g/L at baseline. The trial was designed to examine treatment effects on growth, anemia and appetite in two age subgroups. Iron did not affect growth retardation, hemoglobin concentration or mild or moderate anemia (hemoglobin < 110 g/L or < 90 g/L, respectively), but iron significantly improved serum ferritin and erythrocyte protoporphyrin. Mebendazole significantly reduced wasting malnutrition. but only in children <30 mo old. The adjusted odds ratios (AORs) for mebendazole in this age group were 0.38 (95% CI: 0.16, 0.90) for weight-for-height less than -1 Z-score and 0.29 (0.09, 0.91) for small arm circumference. In children <24 mo old, mebendazole also reduced moderate anemia (AOR: 0.41, 0.18, 0.94). Both iron and mebendazole improved children's appetite, according to mothers' report. In this study, iron's effect on anemia was limited, likely constrained by infection, inflammation and perhaps other nutrient deficiencies. Mebendazole treatment caused unexpected and significant reductions in wasting malnutrition and anemia in very young children with light infections. We hypothesize that incident helminth infections may stimulate inflammatory immune responses in young children, with deleterious effects on protein metabolism and erythropoiesis

Il tirocinio per gli studenti di Economia di Rimini: matching di volontà reciproche?

In Italy, internship has been added only recently to programs of study at universities. Notwithstanding its relevance in bringing university students closer to the world of work, internship does not easily succeed in its aims. Internship can be used inappropriately in many situations. Therefore, it is important to analyze in depth the experience of internship. In particular, the two subjects that are matched in internships have to be investigated: students and companies. The novel dataset used in the analysis is composed by information about students of Economics in Rimini and about the companies where they worked during the internship. Principal component analysis shows that there is a major component explaining the majority of the variability of the internship quality perceived by the student. The number of interns hired by a company is positively related to female students, front-office duties, a good evaluation in terms of interest and motivation of the internship and good relation with superiors in rank. Internship is not used as a substitute of seasonal/temporary work for firms that hire more interns. Interns that evaluate positively their experience are female and those having experienced a good relation with their superiors. A proper matching (i.e. a match between good students, in terms of marks, and good companies, in terms of number of interns, open-ended and fixed-term contracts) occurred with higher distances between residence and place of work and with a higher degree of overlapping between the sector of studies of the intern and the field of activities of the company

Regulatory reform and banking diversity: reassessing Basel 3

none4We investigate whether and how strongly Basel 3 chief innovations jointly affected in different ways individual Eurozone banks’ stability (z-score) across six business models (BMs). We study this issue in the initial years when adaptation was most intense (2011–2014) and the Eurozone underwent a phase with sovereign crises abated by ECB policies easing financial conditions. In parallel, we run this exercise over 2000–2010 data, a time frame over which Basel 3 did not apply yet to see through the eyes of the regulator. Irrespective of BMs, we identify the leverage ratio as the most effective driver of banks’ stability. However, the impact on z-score of Basel 3 chief drivers does not seem to differ significantly on 2011–2014 vs. 2000–2010. Next, interactions with banks’ BMs suggest that Basel 3 innovations improve z-scores the most at traditionally focused banks (cooperative and savings banks), vis-à-vis diversified banks. Our results suggest Basel regulatory decisions were questionable. First, the front loading of the increased minimum capital requirements vs. the backloading of the leverage ratio phasing in may have lured banks from credit to financial assets. Second, our findings support the desirability of revising the current “one-size-fits-all” European prudential framework, which disregards BMs.Giuliana Birindelli; Paola Ferretti; Giovanni Ferri; Marco SavioliBirindelli, Giuliana; Ferretti, Paola; Ferri, Giovanni; Savioli, Marc

Todo el mundo es país. Rapporto col proprio lavoro e percezione della discriminazione nella popolazione immigrata

Relevant incoming immigration flows to Italy are novel for a country that has been source of emigrants for a long time. Immigrants are often discriminated against in housing, education, health and work. The perceptive aspect (how much immigrants actually feel discriminated) reveals the inner world of the stranger, a world made of priorities which absorb a huge emotional investment, given her/his unstable situation. Work, in absence of other agencies of socialization, takes on a strategic role and is used on many fronts to manage material and emotional needs. 220 questionnaires to the immigrant population in Rimini were conducted. A strong negative relationship between level of job satisfaction and level of perceived discrimination emerged. Therefore, work is invested emotionally, not only financially. Work is the link with the host society, both for economic benefits and for the investment undertaken prior to the time of departure from the country of origin. In other words, work is what a person asks and is expected to have by the host country, it is the reason why an immigrant is required. In the absence of a plurality of shared cultural aspects, work is the main meeting ground between individuals belonging to societies with different histories