Managerial Compensations and Information Sharing under Moral Hazard: Is Transparency Good?

We study the effects of information sharing on optimal contracting in a vertical hierarchies model with moral hazard and effort externalities. The paper has three main objectives. First, we determine and compare the equilibrium contracts with and without communication. We identify how each principal relates her agent’s wage to the opponent’s performance when they share information about agents’ performances. It turns out that the type of effort externalities across organizations is the main determinant of the responsiveness of each agent’s reward to the opponent’s performance. Second, in order to throw novel light on the emergence of information sharing agreements, we characterize the equilibria of a non- cooperative game where principals first decide whether to share information and then offer contracts to their exclusive agents. We explore the implications of introducing certification costs and show that three types of equilibria may emerge depending on the nature and (relative) strength of effort externalities: principals bilaterally share information if agents’ effort choices exhibit strong complementarity; only the principal with stronger monitoring power discloses information in equilibrium for intermediate levels of effort’s complementarity; principals do not share information if efforts are substitutes and for low values of effort’s complementarity. Moreover, differently from the common agency framework studied in Maier and Ottaviani (2009), in our model a prisoner’s dilemma may occur when efforts are substitutes and certification costs are negligible: if a higher effort by one agent reduces the opponent’s marginal productivity of effort the equilibrium involves no communication although principals would jointly be better off by sharing information. Finally, the model also offers novel testable predictions on the impact of competition on the basic trade-off between risk and incentives, the effects of organizations’ asymmetries on information disclosure policies as well as on the link between corporate control and the power of incentives.Competing Hierarchies, Information Sharing, Moral Hazard

Reserve management and sovereign debt cost in a world with liquidity crises

The accumulation of large amount of sovereign reserves has fuelled an intense debate on the associated costs. In a world with liquidity crises and strategic default, we model a contracting game between international lenders and a country, which delivers the country's optimal portfolio choice and the cost of sovereign debt: at equilibrium, the sovereign allocates the borrowed resources to either liquid reserves or an illiquid and risky production project. We study how the opportunity cost of hoarding reserves is affected by the financial and technological characteristics of the economy. In line with recent empirical evidence, we find two important results: the cost of debt decreases in the level of reserves if the probability of liquidity shocks is high enough; however the cost of debt increases in reserves when the lenders anticipate that the country has an incentive to default after a liquidity shock. Indeed, we show that the country may choose to retain reserves instead of employing them to inject the liquidity needed to bring the production project to maturity.sovereign debt, international reserves, liquidity shock, strategic default

Three Essays in Industrial Organization and Corporate Finance.

Soft bankruptcy allows a poor performing entrepreneur to renegotiate the terms of outstanding financial contracts, but at the same time it allows lenders to increase recovery rates. Hinging on this basic trade-off, the first Chapter of this thesis shows that a soft bankruptcy law designed as pure financial renegotiation may lead to investments that are biased towards the achievement of short-term results. However, if a soft bankruptcy code would encourage the entrepreneur to undertake a process of economic reorganization, the short-termism problem would be attenuated. Alternatively, the employment of contractual clauses that provide lenders with a tough punishment in case of entrepreneur's bad performance, like management turnover, can alleviate the short-term bias. In the second Chapter, I analyze technology adoption in a standardization consortium composed by a majority of vertically-integrated firms and a pure innovator, and its implications for social welfare. Like in most certification bodies, parties negotiate over the royalties after manufacturers' technology adoption and this generates a hold-up problem. Integrated operators can employ a standard with their inputs and circumvent the hold-up problem, or buy from the specialized firm and enjoy the cost-savings produced by its technology. I show that cross-licensing may lead to the inefficient exclusion of the pure innovator and that a policy of early-licensing commitments would result in efficient adoption choices. The third Chapter analyzes the profitability of vertical integration when downstream firms deal with suppliers of complementary intermediate goods with market power. The Chapter shows that the results in this setting are different from those of the models with substitute input-goods. In particular, vertical integration is not necessarily profitable, because the integrated firm faces the problem that the complementary input producer expropriates the higher profits earned downstream by the integrated chain. Interestingly, this effect is particularly strong the more efficient the integrated firm is.Corporations -- Finance; Industrial organization; Bankruptcy -- Industrial organization;

Patent Disclosure in Standard Setting

We present a model of industry standard setting with two-sided asymmetric information about the existence of intellectual property. We provide an equilibrium analysis of (a) rms' incentives to communicate ideas for improvements of an industry standard, and (b) rms' decisions to disclose the existence of intellctual property to other participants of the standardization process

Agricultural in protect areas: agronomic aspects

Among the various aims of the protect lands, as expressed by the art. 1 of the L. 394/91, there is “the promotion of educational, formative, experimental and interdisciplinary activities, as well as recreational activities”. Considering the multiplicity of the protect areas functions as well as the interests and the problems involved in their management, the most suitable research in this field is that according to a “systemic” approach. It concerns the study of the most high hierarchical levels: agricultural, farming and agro-territorial levels. The researches regard not only the environmental sustainability of crops production, including the control of the erosion risks and the management of the pasturing areas, but also other aspects that result less conventional than the classical questions of the Agronomy. They include the land planning, the productions of local and typical markets, the production dependent on the organic farming on the environmental preservation, the management of areas which result of particular interest for wild fauna, the renaturalization of degraded areas, the eco-sustainable management of water resources, the multifunctional agriculture, the landscape improvement and the biodiversity enhancement

Bankruptcy Law and the Cost of Banking Finance

Many theories study how firms'cost of funding depends on reorganization and liquidation in bankruptcy. However empirical evidence on this subject is scarce due to the difficulty in interpreting reforms that change different legal instruments at the same time. We take advantage of the timing of the 2005-2006 Italian bankruptcy law and combine it with a unique loan-level dataset. We find that the introduction of a reorganization procedure increased the interest rates on bank loans; the reform that made the liquidation procedure faster reduced firms' loan costs; and the presence of gains from creditor coordination reduced the cost of funding

Irrigation with treated municipal wastewater on artichoke crop: assessment of soil and yield heavy metal content and human risk

Industrial and municipal wastewaters are often used for irrigating agricultural fields in arid and semi-arid countries, representing the most attractive option to alleviate pressure on fresh-water resources. However, the wastewater may contain various potentially toxic elements and organic matters with highly harmful effects on human and animal health. During two growing seasons of globe artichoke, the effects of irrigation with secondary (SWW) and tertiary (TWW) municipal wastewater on heavy metal soil and plant content were evaluated together with the consequent human risk from artichoke head consumption. The heavy metal contents (i.e., Al, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Ni, Pb, Zn, and Mn) of the irrigation water, soil, plant and yield were analyzed. Total and extractable heavy metals were quantified to determine the bioaccumulation factors, and the health risks to adults and children were determined according to hazard indices. The heavy metal contents of the artichoke heads harvested after SWW and TWW irrigation were lower than the international threshold values and low bioaccumulation factors suggested that these heavy metals did not accumulate in the edible part of the artichoke crop. The hazard indices based on the consumption of the artichoke heads remained <1.0 for both adults and children, thus indicating that the health risks involving the different heavy metals are not significant

Qualitative characterisation of cultivated and wild edible plants: Mineral elements, phenols content and antioxidant capacity

This study investigated the qualitative characteristics of several edible wild herbaceous species, including those most consumed in Foggia Province (southern Italy). Analysis of qualitative characteristics was performed for the edible parts of 11 wild species (Beta vulgaris L., Foeniculum vulgare Miller, Centaurea solstitialis L., Cichorium intybus L., Scolymus hispanicus L., Sonchus oleraceus L., Borago officinalis L., Diplotaxis erucoides L., Diplotaxis tenuifolia (L.) DC, Sinapis arvensis L., Portulaca oleracea L.) and three cultivated species (C. intybus, B. officinalis, D. tenuifolia). The plants were collected from areas in the Foggia countryside, and the edible part of each species was analysed for dry matter, protein, cation and anion contents as well as total phenols and antioxidant activities. Among the cations, calcium was the most differentiated among species, ranging 784 mg kg-1 fresh weight (Fw) for B. vulgaris to 5886 mg kg-1 Fw for S. hispanicus. The nitrate contents were also highly variable, from 75 mg kg-1 Fw for C. intybus to 3874 mg kg-1 Fw for D. tenuifolia. Total polyphenols ranged from 1054 mg GAE mg kg-1 Fw for C. solstitialis to 3664 mg GAE mg kg-1 Fw for S. arvensis. Antioxidant activities ranged from 839 mg TE kg-1 Fw for B. vulgaris to 5658 mg TE kg-1 Fw for C. intybus. Significant differences were also noted between wild and cultivated plants in the qualitative parameters. Total polyphenols and antioxidant activity were higher in wild C. intybus and B. officinalis than in their cultivated counterparts. Multivariate analysis (cluster analysis and linear discriminant analysis) allowed integration of the ANOVA data to determine the qualitative characteristics of the wild species that contribute most to group differences. The results of the present study aims at improve the current knowledges about edible wild species as vegetable sources in the Mediterranean diet

Treated agro-industrial wastewater irrigation of tomato crop: Effects on qualitative/quantitative characteristics of production and microbiological properties of the soil

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Psychological counselling interventions to improve perceived quality of life and counter anxiety and depression in pulmonary-arterial-hypertension patients. a clinical trial

Introduction: Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension (PAH) is a rare and progressive disease, frequently associated with a worsening of perceived quality of life as well as anxiety and depression symptomatology. Psychological counselling helps the patient understand the diagnosis and prevent the onset of psychopathologies. This study evaluates the effect of counselling sessions on anxiety and depression as well as the impact on self-reported quality of life in patients with PAH. Methods: Patients with a diagnosis of PAH were recruited at the Monaldi Hospital (Naples). An EQ-5D 3L questionnaire was administered to all patients at baseline (pre-session), three months (post-session) after the last session to patients who received psychological counselling (experimental group, EG) and after the first questionnaire to patients who did not (control group, CG). The EQ-5D index and EQ-VAS score were analysed in both groups. Results: A sample of 50 patients with a PAH diagnosis was evaluated; among them 6% had mild PAH, 66% moderate PAH, and 28% severe PAH. The majority (53%) did not receive psychological counselling. All patients showed no significant difference in EQ-5D index (P &gt; 0.05), EQ-VAS score (P &gt; 0.05), and the anxiety/depression dimension (P&gt;.05) at baseline. However, between pre- and post-session evaluations, the analysis showed a significant change in the EQ-VAS score (P = 0.00) and the anxiety/depression dimension (P = 0.02) in the EG. In the CG, there was a similar change in the anxiety/depression dimension (P = 0.00) but not in the EQ-VAS score (P = 0.05) in CG. The z-test revealed significant intergroup relations, showing that the EG had a 37% increase in perceived quality of life and a 9% reduction in anxiety and depression, while a 12% reduction was observed for the CG’s perceived quality of life and a 44% increase in anxiety and depression. Discussion and Conclusions: This study showed that patients with PAH who received psychological support improved their health-related quality of life by reducing anxiety and depression symptomatology. Our findings highlight the impact of psychological support in the treatment of patients with PAH