The willingness to pay for Renewable Energy Sources (RES): the case of Italy with different survey approaches and under different EU “climate vision”. First results.

In reference to the “Renewable Sources” EU Directive 2001/77/CE the Italian goal, for 2010, is to attain the share of 22% in RES electricity production. In such context it becomes crucial to explore the existence of consumer’s Willingness to Pay (WTP) in order to use green energy in the electricity production. This study is founded on a national survey with 1601 phone interviews made, in Italy, at the end of November 2006. This paper focus much on three issues. First one, how the different elicitation affects respondents choices, second one on the relationship between a “single point value” and “a valuation distribution” and finally on the gaps between different formats as: bidding game and dichotomous referendum (single bounded) contingent valuation method. In all the elicitations formats we make a “certainty correction” proposing five degree of acceptance: definitely yes and no (DY, DN), probably yes and no (PY, PN) and don’t know (DK). In order to apply the quantitative analysis, the original dataset has been appropriately treated, recoding DK, PN and PY responses. With regard to the results we found a significant path dependences in respondents answers due to the elicitation formats. Another important result is that also in “conservative” way we found a substantial willingness of consumers to partially cover the cost of Italian RES goal.bidding game, contingent valuation, renewable energy sources, descending and ascending elicitation format

Italian consumers’ willingness to pay for renewable energy sources

EU Directive 2009/72/CE imposes to the European Countries environmental and energy targets. The Italian goal is to attain a 17% share in electricity production from renewable energy sources (RES) by 2020. To make investment in renewables attractive, market prices must be profitable and the gap between the private and social costs of renewables must be filled using “persuasive” tools. The acceptance of such a burden may be controversial because it results in an increase in prices. It is interesting to estimate the consumer’s willingness to pay (WTP) for green electricity. We based our research on a national survey conducted in November 2007 in Italy. We used a stochastic payment card (SPC) including a “certainty correction” and proposing five degrees of acceptance. An empirical analysis shows that there is a substantial willingness among Italian consumers to partially cover the cost of achieving the RES goal.contingent valuation; interval data; stochastic payment card; renewable energy sources

The individual contribution to income inequality: conceptual analysis and empirical investigation

The paper aims to study individual contributions to income inequality. The role of individual positions in the analysis of inequality is considered at various levels. The utility of inequality analysis in analysing the variation across a given income distribution is also recognised. The paper elaborates on this perspective and proposes a definition of individual contributions to inequality within a given income distribution. The concept of such an individual contribution is proposed, and its properties are discussed. The paper presents and tests the hypothesis that given the concept of individual contributions, patterns of influence associated with the determinants of inequality can be identified across a given income distribution. An empirical method of investigation and testing is proposed based on the Survey on Household Income and Wealth carried out by the Bank of Italy. The results support the hypothesis and show that the patterns identified are useful in the analysis of inequality.Inequality; person-by-person perspective; quantile regression

L’analisi delle determinanti della domanda di trasporto pubblico nella città di Perugia.

Nell’ambito della promozione del trasporto pubblico locale la città di Perugia si è mossa, in periodi storici diversi, nelle direzioni di promuovere un sistema integrato di trasporto, inclusivo degli ascensori e delle scale mobili, e di realizzare la riforma tariffaria. Il risultato di queste scelte è stato il raggiungimento, negli ultimi dieci anni, di una posizione di preminenza nel panorama nazionale del trasporto pubblico dato che dal 1996 la domanda di viaggi è in costante aumento, e da allora la domanda è complessivamente aumentata del 48%. L’obiettivo del presente lavoro è duplice. Il primo obiettivo è quello di individuare i fattori sottostanti alla prestazione del trasporto pubblico locale a Perugia e conseguentemente si è stimato un sistema di equazioni esplicativo delle funzione di domanda aggregata per i bus e per il sistema ferroviario urbano. L’intento è di stimare le elasticità della domanda rispetto ai principali attributi del trasporto pubblico locale ed alle principali caratteristiche socio-demografiche. Il secondo obiettivo è quello di valutare l'impatto della riforma tariffaria e le conseguenze della introduzione dei biglietti multi corsa attraverso la stima di un sistema di equazioni relative alle domande di viaggi per le diverse tipologie di biglietto al fine di stimare sia le elasticità dirette che quelle incrociate.Trasporto pubblico, funzione di domanda, tipologie titoli di viaggio

An empirical analysis of employment and growth dynamics in the Italian and Polish regions

This paper intends to contribute to the compared empirical analysis of “old” (15) and “new” (10) EU members, especially focusing on Poland and Italy, with regards to per-capita GDP and employment performance convergences and differences, mainly at the regional level (NUTS-2) for the period 1995-2001. In Section 2 we analyse (i) the per-capita GDP levels and growth rates (correlation with human capital, employment rate, etc.) and convergence dynamics (β conditional convergence) for 249 EU-25 regions and (ii) the GDP density estimations and Lowess β convergence for the 16 Polish and 20 Italian regions. In Section 3, we study (i) the compared employment performance of “old” and “new” EU members with respect to the objectives of the European Employment Strategy, (ii) the β convergence dynamic of employment rates for 249 EU-25 regions (distinguishing between “old” and “new” EU members’ regions) and (iii) the employment density estimations and Lowess β convergence for the Polish and Italian regions. In Section 4, in order to evaluate and compare similarities and differences between the 36 Polish and Italian regions, a cluster analysis is carried out considering both employment/unemployment variables and the sectorial employment composition (NACE 1 sector classification). In the final Section, the main results and some policy implications are briefly presented.GDP and Employment Convergence, Regional Differences

Assessing the Determinants of Renewable Electricity Acceptance Integrating Meta-Analysis Regression and a Local Comprehensive Survey

In dealing with renewable electricity (RE), individuals are involved both as end-consumers on the demand side and as stakeholders (citizens) in the local production process on the supply side. Empirical evidence shows that in many countries, consumers are willing to pay a significant amount to facilitate adoption of RE. By contrast, environmental externalities are often the cause of strong opposition to RE adoption if local communities are involved as stakeholders in wind, solar or biomass investment projects. Looking at the literature on willingness to pay and on willingness to accept, we have investigated RE acceptance mechanisms. First, we have used the meta-analysis to assess the major determinants of RE acceptance on both demand and supply sides. Meta-analysis has provided some insights useful for managing field research on an onshore wind farm enlargement project located in the Umbria region. Meta-analysis and survey results confirm that the local community plays a central role in local RE acceptance. Furthermore, people who have previous experience with windmills require less compensation, or are willing to pay more, for RE development. Results suggest that these attributes should be included in future research to improve understanding of determinants of RE acceptance

TECHNICAL AND ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY OF LOCAL PUBLIC SERVICES: THE CASES OF THE MUNICIPALS PHARMACIES AND OF THE INTEGRATED WASTE SERVICES

This study focuses on the technical and economic efficiency achieved in two local public service sectors: pharmaceutical services and integrated waste services. In the first study we also took in account the social dimension of the service as the health corner, the CUP service (e.g. Useful to book a medical examination), so in the analysis we calculated the relative levels of efficiency according to different point of views: "business", "social" and "mixed" models. Anyway in this study we do not include environmental variables, the most significant of which are difficult to collect. The second work focuses on the waste services; we estimated the economic and technological efficiency by comparing the city of Perugia to other relatively similar 23 Municipalities of the Center Italy, in this case, through a multi-stage approach, we included in the analyzes the environmental variables that can affect the efficiency of services. The analysis show that in the first case the efficiency scores for the business model showed greater variation if compared to the social and mixed models. The results of the second analysis show that the context variables have a significant influence on the efficiency measures. In particular highly seasonal tourism and high dispersion of the population on the territory negatively affect the efficiency. Suggestions for further research are provided in order to develop a more complete analysis of the local public services efficiency.DEA, Efficiency; Two-stages approach; Bootstrap procedures; Environmental variables

Ambiente operativo ed efficienza nel settore del Trasporto Pubblico Locale in Italia

This paper assesses the impact of environmental factors on the efficiency of public transit system within a DEAbased mixed framework. Using a sample of 100 Italian companies, we implement a two-stage method in order to investigate the impact of environmental effects into DEA inefficiency measures. The results point out the relevance of environmental effects and consequently the bias of deterministic DEA approach.DEA, two-stage, environmental effects, local public tranpsort

Gli incentivi agli investimenti: un’analisi dell’efficienza industriale su scala geografica regionale e sub regionale.

politiche industriali, frontiera stocastica regionale, efficienza produttiva

Construction and Simulation of the General Economic Equilibrium Model Meg-Ismea for the Italian Economy

Common Agricultural Policy, Agricultural policy, reform, Computable general equilibrium models.