An Endogenous Growth Model with Productive Public Spending and Uncertain Lifetime Consumers.

This paper deals with the effects of productive public spending on long-term economic growth within an endogenous growth model with uncertain lifetime consumers in the presence of lump-sum transfers, public consumption and investment subsidies. A flexible framework capable of analysing the steady state effects of fiscal policy in both infinite and finite horizons cases is provided. The Barro rule for the optimal provision of public investment is extended to the finite horizons case. Such a modified Barro rule is lower than the Barro Rule and decreasing in the probability of death parameter. The negative effect on the balanced growth rate of an increase in non-productive public spending is found in the finite horizons as well as in the infinite horizons case. However, increases in either public consumption or lump-sum transfers to households are found to be less effective in reducing long-term economic growth under the assumption of uncertain lifetime consumers. The condition under which the government needs to increase public investment in the presence of either higher transfers to households or higher public consumption is derived. Finally, an optimal rule for investment subsidies provision is analytically derived under the assumption of uncertain lifetime consumers.

Economic integration and agglomeration in a customs union in the presence of an outside region

New Economic Geography (NEG) models do not typically account for the presence of regions other than the ones involved in the integration process. We explore such a possibility in a Footloose Entrepreneur (FE) model aiming at studying the stability properties of long-run industrial location equilibria. We consider a world economy composed by a customs union of two regions (regions 1 and 2) and an "outside region" which can be regarded as the rest of the world (region 3). The effects of economic integration on industrial agglomeration within the customs union are studied under the assumption of a constant distance between the customs union itself and the third region. The results show that higher economic integration does not always implies the standard result of full agglomeration of FE models. This incomplete agglomeration outcome is due to the fact that the periphery region keeps a share of industrial activities in order to satisfy a share of "external demand". That is, the deindustrialization process brought about by economic integration in the periphery of the union is mitigated by the demand of consumers living in the rest of the world. In general, the market size of the third region affects the number of the long-run equilibria, as well as their stability properties. In addition to the standard outcomes of FE models, we describe the existence of two asymmetric equilibria characterised by unequal distribution of firms between regions 1 and 2, with no full agglomeration though. Interestingly, these equilibria are stable and therefore can be regarded as a likely long-run equilibrium state of the economy. (author's abstract)Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Serie

Technical efficiency in primary health care: does quality matter?

The accuracy required in the measurement of output is an issue that has as yet still not been satisfactorily addressed in empirical research on efficiency in primary health care. We exploit information retrieved from a newly constructed database (APEX06) for the Spanish region of Extremadura. The richness of our dataset allows us to consider original synthetic measures of output that take into account both the quantity and the quality of services provided by 85 primary care centres (PCCs) in 2006. We provide evidence that neglecting the issue of properly accounting for the quality of health services can lead to misleading results. Our main finding is that adjusting output for quality influences efficiency analysis in three senses. First, inefficiency now explains relatively more of the deviation from the potential output. Second, the average technical efficiency in the sector is lower, while its dispersion among PCCs is significantly higher. And third, the efficiency ranking of the PCCs is also affected.Primary Health Care; Stochastic Frontier Analysis; Technical Efficiency; Quality

Proximity and Innovation in Italian SMEs

Abstract: In this paper we assess the relevance of both knowledge creation and diffusion processes in affecting Italian SMEs’ propensity to innovate. In doing so a knowledge production function (KPF) is estimated for a representative sample of small and medium manufacturing firms over the period 1998-2003. To account for endogeneity of R&D effort in the KPF, we estimate a Heckman selection model on R&D decisions and obtain two main results. First, we do not find the probability of being engaged in intramural R&D activities to be significantly related to firm size. Second, for those firms engaged in R&D activities, the intensity of R&D effort increases with firm size. Then, the KPF is estimated for three different samples of firms using a standard probit where the probability that SMEs will innovate depends upon intramural R&D effort, regional and industrial spillovers and a vector of interaction and control variables. The main results obtained from this second set of regressions are the following: first, we find the probability to innovate to be positively related to sectoral spillovers, the magnitude of such impact being decreasing in firms’ size. Second, knowledge diffusion via geographical proximity enhances the probability of the recipient firm to innovate only if it has an appropriate endowment of human capital.Innovation, knowledge, spillovers, firm size

The Virtual Image in Streaming Video Indexing

Multimedia technology has been applied to many types of applications and the great amount of multimedia data need to be indexed. Especially the usage of digital video data is very popular today. In particular video browsing is a necessary activity in many kinds of knowledge. For effective and interactive exploration of large digital video archives there is a need to index the videos using their visual, audio and textual data. In this paper, we focus on the visual and textual content of video for indexing. In the former approach we use the Virtual Image and in the latter one we use the Dublin Core Metadata, opportunely extended and multilayered for the video browsing and indexing. Before to concentrate our attemption on the visual content we will explain main methods to video segmentation and annotation, in order to introduce the steps for video keyfeature extraction and video description generation

Reparation Awards To Victims of Crimes in Ohio

Ohio has taken steps to assist victims of crime by enacting Revised Code sections 2743.51-.72.1 It is the purpose of this comment to review the provisions of the Ohio law, comparing it with the statutes of other states and making a preliminary assessment of its impact, strengths, and weaknesses, based on approximately two years of experience with the law in its present form. Comparison will be made with the provisions of the Uniform Crime Victims Reparation Act, drafted and approved by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws in 1973

Measuring the Shadow Economy with the Currency Demand Approach - A Reinterpretation of the methodology, with an application to Italy

We contribute to the debate on how to assess the size of the shadow economy by proposing a reinterpretation of the traditional Currency Demand Approach (CDA) a là Tanzi. In particular, we introduce three main innovations. First, we take a direct measure of cash transactions (the flow of cash withdrawn from bank accounts relative to total noncash payments) as the dependent variable in the money demand equation. This allows us to avoid using the Fisher equation, overcoming two severe critiques to the traditional CDA. Second, we include among covariates two distinct measures of ‘detected’ tax evasion, in place of the tax burden level. Finally, we control also for a new ‘criminal’ component of the shadow economy, considering money demand for illegal activities like drug dealing and prostitution. We propose an application of this ‘modified – CDA’ to a panel of 91 Italian provinces for the years 2005-2008.Shadow economy, Currency demand approach, Cash transactions, Evasion, Crime