Productivity in services twenty years on. A review of conceptual and measurement issues and a way forward

Griliches' seminal contribution on "Output measurement in the service sectors" (1992) is now more than twenty years old. The aim of this paper is to review and systematise the scholarship that has been produced since, to identify any step forward in the conceptualisation of service output, the measurement of service productivity and the account of technical change in affecting productivity in services that might have occurred. An agenda for both innovation and service scholars is proposed

Inflation Targets as Focal Points

In a world characterised by noisy information and conflicting signals, no Central Bank is always able to affect private sector expectations. Based on Morris and Shin's model, monetary policy then becomes an information game, in which individuals form their expectations based on all the information that is available to them (public and private). However individual agents also know that ultimately inflation is affected by both the objectives of the Central Bank (and hence the policies it pursues) as well as the average expectation formed by the all agents. They thus need to evaluate both actions. Central to our argument is the way that individuals interpret these actions to form their expectations. We apply Bacharach's methodology to provide a framework for assessing everyone's interpretations. Our contribution is to merge these two models to show that a monetary policy regime that has explicit quantitative objectives may provide individuals with better anchors for expectations to coordinate at. However, that is only true first, if no great shocks are anticipated to hit the economy and second, when all other public information is very unclear thus rendering the inflation target the only clear piece of information. We derive in detail the conditions under which this is true.

Sarda female lambs bred at pasture: growth rate from weaning to reproductive activity

The traditional dairy sheep system in Sardinia presents 2 lambing seasons: in November-December for mature ewes and in February-March for primiparous. Replacement (20-25% of female lambs) usually came from mature ewes whereas all lambs born in January-February are slaughtered when their market price is low. These lambs could represent part of flock replacement that can integrate the traditional lamb breeding system, and also a flock replacement of ewes that are planned to lamb in late winter to have a continuous milk production all over the year. The aim of the present work, that represent an aspect of a wider trial, was to determine the suitability to breed this lambs under grazing condition monitoring their growth rate from weaning to the beginning of reproductive activity. At the “Bonassai” research farm an experiment was carried out from March 2004 to May 2005. 51 female Sarda lambs born from 19/01/2004 to 07/02/2004 (live weight 3.24±0.51 kg; mean±standard deviation) were weaned on average of 45 days (live weight 12.02±1.52 kg) and weighted monthly. After weaning feeding regimen was based on grazed forage crops (Lolium multiflorum Lam., Hedysarum coronarium L. and Cichorium intybus L.) and on natural pasture with an average stocking rate of 5.5 head/ha. The supplementation ranged between 0 - 1200 g/head/d of Lucerne and Italian ryegrass hay and 0 - 400 g/head/d of commercial concentrate, depending on herbage on offer. The amount of hay and concentrate offered during the trial represented 51% of total energetic requirements of lambs. Average lamb daily gain (ADG) during the experimental period resulted 74±11 g head/day. The ADG pattern showed a maximum value 30 days after weaning (139±33 g head/day) and a minimum value in January when herbage availability was low. At the beginning of reproductive activity lambs weighed on average 40.5±3.5 kg and their average body condition score was 3.03±0.12. The trial showed that is possible to breed lambs born in late winter at pasture. However an economic and technical evaluation of differences of these lambs compared to those bred in the traditional system is under evaluation

Semi-Parametric Empirical Best Prediction for small area estimation of unemployment indicators

The Italian National Institute for Statistics regularly provides estimates of unemployment indicators using data from the Labor Force Survey. However, direct estimates of unemployment incidence cannot be released for Local Labor Market Areas. These are unplanned domains defined as clusters of municipalities; many are out-of-sample areas and the majority is characterized by a small sample size, which render direct estimates inadequate. The Empirical Best Predictor represents an appropriate, model-based, alternative. However, for non-Gaussian responses, its computation and the computation of the analytic approximation to its Mean Squared Error require the solution of (possibly) multiple integrals that, generally, have not a closed form. To solve the issue, Monte Carlo methods and parametric bootstrap are common choices, even though the computational burden is a non trivial task. In this paper, we propose a Semi-Parametric Empirical Best Predictor for a (possibly) non-linear mixed effect model by leaving the distribution of the area-specific random effects unspecified and estimating it from the observed data. This approach is known to lead to a discrete mixing distribution which helps avoid unverifiable parametric assumptions and heavy integral approximations. We also derive a second-order, bias-corrected, analytic approximation to the corresponding Mean Squared Error. Finite sample properties of the proposed approach are tested via a large scale simulation study. Furthermore, the proposal is applied to unit-level data from the 2012 Italian Labor Force Survey to estimate unemployment incidence for 611 Local Labor Market Areas using auxiliary information from administrative registers and the 2011 Census

Stock Market Integration between three CEECs, Russia and the UK

This paper estimates a tri-variate VAR-GARCH(1,1)-in-mean model to examine linkages between the stock markets of three Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs), specifically the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, and both the UK and Russia. The adopted framework allows to analyse interdependence by estimating volatility spillovers, and also contagion by testing for possible shifts in the transmission of volatility following the introduction of the euro and EU accession. Further evidence on possible changes in the transmission mechanism (namely, on whether there is contagion) can be obtained by examining the conditional correlations implied by the estimated model over different time periods. The empirical findings suggest that there is significant co-movement (interdependence) of these CEEC markets with both the Russian and the UK ones. Furthermore, whilst the introduction of the euro has had mixed effects, EU accession has resulted in an increase in volatility spillovers between the three CEECs considered and the UK (contagion).Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs), volatility spillovers, interdependence, contagion, VAR-GARCH-in-mean model

Affective norms for italian words in older adults: Age differences in ratings of valence, arousal and dominance

In line with the dimensional theory of emotional space, we developed affective norms for words rated in terms of valence, arousal and dominance in a group of older adults to complete the adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) for Italian and to aid research on aging. Here, as in the original Italian ANEW database, participants evaluated valence, arousal, and dominance by means of the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) in a paper-and-pencil procedure. We observed high split-half reliabilities within the older sample and high correlations with the affective ratings of previous research, especially for valence, suggesting that there is large agreement among older adults within and across-languages. More importantly, we found high correlations between younger and older adults, showing that our data are generalizable across different ages. However, despite this across-ages accord, we obtained age-related differences on three affective dimensions for a great number of words. In particular, older adults rated as more arousing and more unpleasant a number of words that younger adults rated as moderately unpleasant and arousing in our previous affective norms. Moreover, older participants rated negative stimuli as more arousing and positive stimuli as less arousing than younger participants, thus leading to a less-curved distribution of ratings in the valence by arousal space. We also found more extreme ratings for older adults for the relationship between dominance and arousal: older adults gave lower dominance and higher arousal ratings for words rated by younger adults with middle dominance and arousal values. Together, these results suggest that our affective norms are reliable and can be confidently used to select words matched for the affective dimensions of valence, arousal and dominance across younger and older participants for future research in aging. Figure

A Comparison Between Different Cycle Decompositions for Metropolis Dynamics

In the last decades the problem of metastability has been attacked on rigorous grounds via many different approaches and techniques which are briefly reviewed in this paper. It is then useful to understand connections between different point of views. In view of this we consider irreducible, aperiodic and reversible Markov chains with exponentially small transition probabilities in the framework of Metropolis dynamics. We compare two different cycle decompositions and prove their equivalence