FARM-LEVEL DATA MODEL FOR AGRICULTURAL POLICY ANALYSIS: A TWO-WAY ECM APPROACH

Econometric models wishing to estimate relevant parameters for agricultural policy analysis are increasingly relying on unbalanced panels of farm-level data. Since in the agricultural economics literature such models have often been estimated through simplified approaches, in this paper we try to verify whether the adoption of more sophisticated panel data techniques may impact the estimation results. For this reason, the policy model by Moro and Sckokai (1999) has been re-estimated using techniques recently developed in the econometric literature. The preliminary results show a strong impact on the estimations. This seems to suggest that the adoption of proper panel-data techniques is likely to be very important in order to obtain reliable estimates of some key policy parameters.Agricultural policy, Panel data, Systems of equations, Agricultural and Food Policy, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Panel Data Estimation Techniques for Farm-level Data Model

Econometric models wishing to estimate relevant parameters for agricultural policy analysis are increasingly relying on unbalanced panels of farm-level data. Since in the agricultural economics literature such models have often been estimated through simplified approaches, in this paper we try to verify whether the adoption of more sophisticated panel data techniques may impact the estimation results. For this reason, the policy model by Moro and Sckokai (1999) has been reestimated using techniques recently developed in the econometric literature. The preliminary results show a strong impact on the estimations. This seems to suggest that the adoption of proper panel-data techniques is likely to be very important in order to obtain reliable estimates of some key policy parameters.Agricultural policy, Panel data, Systems of equations, Agricultural and Food Policy,

Redistribution and Tax Evasion: an Asymmetric Information Approach

The article studies the optimal redistribution system, achieved by direct taxation, indirect taxation and public provision of the pseudo-necessary good, when individuals, who differ in productivity, can take hidden actions (tax evasion by moral hazard) and have hidden information (tax evasion by adverse selection). It proves that any Government willing to effectively reallocate resources among individuals has to undertake measures against tax evasion, i.e. to establish tax evasion fines

Individual Resilience and Academic Achievements: a Soft Traits Approach to Craft Universities’ Placement and Facilitate Firms’ Onboarding

The “person-organization fit” axiom suggests firms are looking for profiles with specific soft skills to face the increasing level of environmental turbulence. However, the universities’ Placement Service is often not targeted on the full profile of the individual which comprises both hard and soft skills. This research studies some soft traits of students during the pandemic period and found that academic achievements can represent indicators of resilience (i.e., positive thinking, emotional intelligence, and planfulness), which is particularly valued by firms hiring new graduates. This soft trait approach—that studies how various measures of soft skills are related to course grades—has a two-fold significance by crafting universities’ placement activities and facilitating firms’ onboarding

Learning from the COVID‐19 emergency. The remote working organizational experience in Italian SMEs

The Covid-19 pandemic has put several SMEs in the position of having to deploy remote working. The analysis is focused on the adoption of remote working during the first wave of the pandemic in Italy and conducted on 60 SMEs of the Piacenza area (one of the most affected in Italy) with the aim to study the adoption of remote working in SMEs to verify how the organization of work has changed. It involved 391 employees and investigated the issues of perceived productivity, technological preparation, coordination, programming, and control. Results show that the way work has been organized remotely hasn’t changed substantially: in the first wave of the epidemic, remote working has been considered as a mere replica of face- to-face work, without considerable variations other than the physical location of the workplace (from the office to home). Thanks to the availability of technologies and ability to use by workers - even without adequate training - productivity has not decreased and SMEs can trust their employees even without a direct control

Incentives, Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection

This paper proposes a model which analyses not only the provision of incentives (see, e.g., Gershkov et. al 2006 and Huck et al. 2001) and the moral hazard problem (see, e.g., Holmstrom 1982), but also the adverse selection problem (i.e. the workers are heterogeneous). Moreover, unlike the previous works, the paper introduces also the time dimension: we consider a firm with an infinite time horizon and individuals whose working life is split into two phases, the young phase and old phase. By comparing the results of the classical incentives scheme with those of a rewarding incentives scheme, we can conclude that this last scheme allows a higher production level.asymmetric information, incentives

Dynamic Incentives: Temporary Vs. Permanent Disability

This article extends Diamond and Mirrlees\u2019 (1978) disability model in a different and more detailed framework that contemplates both temporary and permanent disability. By introducing different degrees of disability into this seminal framework, the paper contributes to the recent debate among empirical scholars on the growth of disability insurance programmes in several OECD countries (e.g., the US, Norway, Sweden). This approach allows us to analyse and consequently compare able, temporarily disabled, and permanently disabled workers. Furthermore, in a numerical simulation, the analysis demonstrates that the system of dynamic incentives should adapt the disability benefits to the different disability statuse

Mandatory Social Security with Social Planner and with Majority Rule

Several authors have argued that a mandatory social security program undertaken by Social Planner can have positive effects on welfare when individuals possess hidden information about their longevity. Davies and Kuhn (1992) have considered the related problem of the effects of a mandatory social security program undertaken by Social Planner when individuals can take hidden actions to affect their longevity and they have shown that social security never raises welfare in a pure moral hazard economy. Anderberg (1999) has considered voting over a mandatory social security program when there is an annuity market characterized by adverse selection and he has shown that a majority voting can be either the median type's ideal policy or an ends-against-the-middle equilibrium. In this work I will consider the case in which the annuity market is characterized by both adverse selection and moral hazard and I will analyse the effect of a mandatory social security program undertaken by Social Planner and by individuals through a Majority Rule: a mandatory social security program can have positive effects on welfare

The Value of Dynamic Incentives in a Disability Model

This paper investigates a system of dynamic incentives developed within the framework of the classic Diamond and Mirrlees (1978) disability model, but con-sidering disability as a temporary state and rephrasing the analysis in terms of current and promised future utilities. The model therefore assumes that if dis-abled individuals receive benefits to the extent that able individuals are indif-ferent between working and not working, then the marginal utility of consump-tion is lower for working individuals. A comparison, based on a numerical sim-ulation, between the dynamic incentives (DI) model and a private savings (PS) model characterised by a stationary tax-transfer policy allows the assertion that, even if the first system converges to the second system, the total utility guaranteed by the government in the DI model is greater than the total value achieved by the PS model, and in the DI model, the gap in consumption between able and disabled individuals increases not only along working histories, as in the PS model, but also across working histories