Lobbying in a multidimensional policy space with salient issues

We present a citizen-candidate model on a multidimensional policy space with lobbying, where citizens regard some issues more salient than others. We find that special interest groups that lobby on less salient topics move the implemented policy closer to their preferred policy, compared to the ones that lobby on more salient issues. When we introduce two types of citizens, who differ with respect to the salience of issues, we find pooling equilibria where voters are not able to offset the effect of lobbying on the implemented policy. This result is in sharp contrast with previous work on unidimensional citizen-candidate models that predict the irrelevance of lobbying on the implemented policy. In an extension of the model we provide citizens with the possibility of giving monetary contributions to lobbies in order to increase their power. With more than one lobby per dimension we have two findings. First, under some conditions only the most extreme lobbies receive contributions. Second, the effectiveness of a lobby is maximized when the salience of an issue is low in the population and high for a small group of citizens

Politicians' coherence and government debt

We model a society that values the coherence between past policy platforms and current implemented policy, and where policy platforms partially commit candidates to their future actions. If an incumbent politician seeks to be reelected, she has to use her platforms to commit to moderate policies that can be distant from her most preferred one. Commitment is related to the incoherence cost that politicians pay when they renege on promised platforms. In this context, we suggest a novel mechanism through which issuing government debt can affect electoral results. Debt is exploited by an incumbent politician, who is in favor of low spending, to damage the credibility of her opponent's policy platforms, and be reelected. A higher level of debt decreases voters' most preferred level of spending, and makes the opponent's past platform a losing policy. Even if the latter chose to update her proposal, she would not be able to credibly commit to it, given the incoherence cost associated to changing proposals

The Social Demand for a Medicine Focused on the Person: The Contribution of CAM to Healthcare and Healthgenesis

The Non Conventional Medicines have a greater social impact and the demand for such treatments of more than 10 million Italian citizens (male and female) of all ages and social classes and of thousands of Italian families reveals an interest proving that there is a trend reversal, involving also other sectors of the medical and scientific world, which shifts the focus from the symptom to an idea of more general and comprehensive well-being of the person. Over the last few years the scientific debate on Non Conventional Medicines and their integration with the academic or dominant medicine in our western society has favored and legitimated an increase in the demand and has activated a cultural transformation process involving the life styles. The focus is therefore shifted to the self-healing capacities, to the reawakening of the individual potentialities, which support and amplify the benefits of the treatments and the citizens start pretending to be accurately informed in order to choose freely their own health program

Looking for a Person-Centered Medicine: Non Conventional Medicine in the Conventional European and Italian Setting

In Italy, the use of non conventional medicines (NCMs) is spreading among people as in the rest of Europe. Sales of alternative remedies are growing, and likewise the number of medical doctors (MDs) who practise NCM/complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). However, in Italy as in other countries of the European Union, at the present time the juridical/legal status of NCM/CAM is not well established, mainly due to the lack of any national law regulating NCM/CAM professional training, practice and public supply and the absence of government-promoted scientific research in this field. This is an obstacle to safeguarding the patient's interests and freedom of choice, especially now that dissatisfaction with biomedicine is inclining more and more people to look for a holistic and patient-centered form of medicine

Citizens or lobbies: who controls policy?

This paper analyses a model of electoral competition with lobbying, where candidates hold private information about their willingness to pander to lobbies, if elected. I show that this uncertainty induces risk-averse voters to choose candidates who implement policies biased in favor of the lobby. Increasing the prior probability of non-pandering candidates can increase the effect of lobbying. If, however, the cost of running for office is sufficiently large, there is no effect of lobbying on policy. The model thus demonstrates that uncertainty on the influence of special interests can lead to large effects of lobbying on policy

Three essays on fair division, colonialism and lobbying

This thesis is composed of three chapters on topics of theoretical economics and applied theory. The first chapter analyzes the existence and implementation of a land division rule, defined through two properties: efficiency and equal opportunity equivalence. It is a joint work with Antonio Nicolò and Andrés Perea, and was published in SERIEs (2011), in the special issue in honor of Salvador Barberà, see Nicolò et al. (2012). The second chapter presents a citizen-candidate voting model with lobbying on a multidimensional policy space, with salient issues. The third chapter investigates the strategic behavior of colonizers in state capacity investment in non settlement colonies, giving an explanation also to civil conflict outcomes after independence. Going more in detail, in the first chapter we look for a normative solution to a land division problem that could be applied to different types of disputes when the arbitrator has a very limited information about the agents’ preferences, and market mechanisms are not available. The solution must be fair and efficient under the constraint of the limited information available to the arbitrator. To this scope, we propose to use the concept of equal-opportunity equivalence defined by Thomson (1994). A land division is equal-opportunity equivalent if each agent receives a parcel of the land who makes her indifferent with respect to her best parcel of a given size µ,where the size of the reference set must be the same for both agents. Existence of the land division rule, uniqueness of utility levels are proved, along with a mechanism to implement it, in which the preferences of the agents do not need to be common knowledge. Moreover there is a unique µ for which the rule exists, therefore µ is not a discretionary choice of the arbitrator. The second chapter is devoted to the analysis of a citizen-candidate model on a multidimensional policy space with lobbying, where citizens regard some issues more salient than others. In equilibrium special interest groups that lobby on less salient topics move the implemented policy closer to their preferred policy, compared to the ones that lobby on more salient issues. After introducing two types of citizens, who differ with respect to the salience assigned to issues, pooling equilibria are found, where voters are not able to offset the effect of lobbying on the implemented policy. This result is in sharp contrast with previous work on unidimensional citizen-candidate models that predict the irrelevance of lobbying on the implemented policy, see Besley and Coate (2001). In an extension of the model citizens are provided with the possibility of giving monetary contributions to lobbies in order to increase their power. With more than one lobby per dimension there are two findings. First, under some conditions only the most extreme lobbies receive contributions. Second, the effectiveness of a lobby is maximized when the salience of an issue is low in the population and high for a small group of citizens. The third chapter investigates the determinants of investment in state capacity in non settlement colonies. The results of this analysis overcome the limitations of the framework provided by Acemoglu et al. (2001), whose theory predicts that extractive institutions were set in non settlement colonies, with no explanation for the wide heterogeneity of institutions in those colonies. Roughly half of the colonies that became independent after 1945 suffered costly civil conflicts thereafter. Empirical evidence suggests that the colonizer’s investment in state capacity is one of the determinants of civil conflict in ex colonies. A good state capacity, in the form of an efficient bureaucracy, a working police force, an independent judiciary enforcing the rule of law, fiscal capacity, prevented state failure and civil conflict, once independence was achieved. A theory is developed to study the strategic behavior of colonizers in choosing investment in state capacity in the colony. High state capacity creates a productive gain in the colonial economy, but as side effect it prevents civil conflict in case of independence, and therefore increases the incentive of the colony to fight for it. Colonizers decide to invest in state capacity comparing its productivity gain with the increased military cost of maintaining power when colonies aim at independence. The equilibrium investment in state capacity depends on the matching between the identity of colonizer (a colonizer with a larger colonial empire will have a lower average military cost) and the identity of the colony (the productivity gain depends on the presence of natural resources, distance from the sea). If the colonizer is forced to leave the colony for exogenous events, the lack of state capacity, and the inefficiency of the decolonization process, determine the civil conflict outcome after independence

Degradation Prediction Model for Friction of Road Pavements with Natural Aggregates and Steel Slags

Steel production wastes (steel slags) are used more often in asphalt concrete pavements as a valuable replacement for natural aggregates, which are becoming increasingly rare. In this paper authors investigate the polishing characteristics of aggregates, and in particular of steel slags, used in bituminous road surfacing, are a major factor in determining the resistance to skidding. The main purpose of the study is the identification of a suitable degradation model, based on friction indicators, in the laboratory, as well as the comparison of in-situ pavement skid resistance with the cumulative number of passing vehicles over the years. The model predicts the expected resistance to skidding of the road surface based on the knowledge of the polished stone value (PSV) of the aggregates and the expected trac on the road. In this study, several types of aggregates were compared: steel slag, limestone, limestone and slag mixture, diabase, Criggion stone and basalt. Using a standard PSV test, it was found that the aggregates did not reach the lower value of skid resistance (equilibrium value). The analysis of the British Portable Number (BPN) data versus polishing time allowed to empirically derive a regression model for each investigated aggregate. Hence, it appears possible to define both an investigatory level and threshold level to predict the actual residual life of the pavement from the examination of skid resistance

Black Cohosh Hepatic Safety: Follow-Up of 107 Patients Consuming a Special Cimicifuga racemosa rhizome Herbal Extract and Review of Literature

European Medicines Agency (EMEA) and the Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products (HMPC) on July 2006 have released an alert to get European sanitary authorities aware of 42 cases of suspected hepatotoxic reactions in patients consuming Cimicifuga racemosa rhizome. In the public statement EMEA itself considered reliable as hepatotoxic reactions only four cases, on the base of RUCAM score: two were considered possible and two probable. Lacking in almost all of them a precise description of cases, especially a botanical-chemical analysis of the suspected substance, we think there is no real proof of supposed C. racemosa rhizome hepatotoxicity. In our department we administer from about 10 years C. racemosa as special herbal dry extract as single substance or mixed with other medicinal plants at the dose of 500–1000 mg daily, for treatment of menopause related disorders without any reported adverse effect. After EMEA's official signal we have contacted all our patients using a C. racemosa rhizome herbal extract continuously from more than 12 months to verify possible hepatotoxic effects. We followed-up 107 women, and asked them by telephone (33/107) and/or after anamnesis and clinical examination (74/107) to undergo a blood sample examination. In all the patients there was no sign of hepatic disease, or worsening of already altered but stable parameters. We think on the base of these data and current literature C. racemosa rhizome extract should not be considered a potential hepatotoxic substance