Competition, Reputation and Cheating

Under repeated market interaction, reputation and competition may drive out of the market those firms that do not comply with their quality promises. One may thus presume that competitive pressure improves average market quality. This paper shows that the opposite may be true in an endogenous entry, repeated interaction, linear demand oligopoly model, in which introductory prices may be used as quality signals. Cheating firms may enter the market, fool even rational consumers, and exit the market when discovered, implying a failure of the basic reputation mechanism and an increasing time path of prices. Markets for closer substitutes tend to have a lower initial average quality and less trusting consumers, whereas the number of competitors has no clear relationship with average quality.

”Thou shalt not covet ...”: Prohibitions, Temptation and Moral Values

We propose a theory studying temptation in presence of both externally and internally sanctioned prohibitions. Moral values that (internally) sanction prohibited actions and their desire may increase utility by reducing self-control costs, thereby serving as partial commitment devices. We apply the model to crime and study the conditions under which agents would optimally adhere to moral values of honesty. Incentives to be moral are non- monotonic in the crime premium. Larger external punishments increase temptation and demand for morality, so that external and internal sanctions are complements. The model helps rationalizing stylized facts that proved difficult to explain with available theories.Prohibitions, Temptation, Self-Control, Moral Values, Crime

Bowling Alone, Drinking Together

Alcohol consumption may be associated to a rich social life, but its abuse might be related to a poor social life. This paper investigates whether alcohol consumption is a socially enjoyed good (a complement of social relations) or a substitute for social relations. In particular, it explores whether the answer changes between use and abuse, beer, wine and spirits, youth and adults, controlling or not for family influence and unobserved heterogeneity, and for various forms of social relations. Controlling for a great number of covariates and allowing for non linear and identity-specific family interaction effects, we find that alcohol consumption is a socially enjoyed good.Social relations, Social interaction, Family, Alcohol consumption, Binge drinking

Government Information Transparency

This paper studies a model of announcements by a privately informed government about the future state of the economic activity in an economy subject to recurrent shocks and with distortions due to income taxation. Although transparent communication would ex ante be desirable, we find that even a benevolent government may ex-post be non-informative, in an attempt to countervail the tax distortion with a "second best" compensating distortion in information. This result provides a rationale for independent national statistical offices, committed to truthful communication. We also find that whether inequality in income distribution favors or harms government transparency depends on labor supply elasticity.Government announcements, Cheap talk, Asymmetric in- formation, Inequality

Competition, Reputation and Compliance

This paper displays a linear demand oligopoly model, in which firms endogenously decide whether to enter the market and whether to specialize on high or low quality products, and then repeatedly interact to sell experience goods. It shows that the intuition that low and rising prices grant compliance with quality promises extends to this setting, provided that high quality is sufficiently important to buyers

Forensic Entomology:an overview.

Insects are the most important, in terms of number and diversity, group of animals on the earth. Insects have colonized all the world’s environments and are associated with both human life and death. Although their economical and sanitary importance is well documented, in the past few years they have been used also in a forensic context. In forensic entomology, necrophagous insects have proved useful in; studying postmortem interval (PMI), postmortem transfer (the movement of a body from one location to another after death), presence of drugs or poisons, and in identifying the victim and/or the suspect. Many species can be used to estimate the minimum PMI (mPMI), according to the stage of cadaver decomposition, body exposure, geographical region, and season. The most important British flies of forensic interest are described

Participation, growth and social poverty: social capital in a homogeneous society

We introduce social capital accumulation into a neoclassical model, showing how it differs from physical and human capital accumulation. We take the view that social capital is crucial to the enjoyment of socially provided goods and that it is mainly accumulated by means of participation to social activities. Under-investment in social capital maylead a growing economy to fall into a social poverty trap. We argue that this risk is particularly relevant for advanced societies.Social capital; self-protection choices; social poverty traps

Economic Growth and Social Poverty: The Evolution of Social Participation

We develop an evolutionary model of growth in which agents choose how to allocate their time between private and social activities. We argue that a shift from social to private activities may foster market-based growth, but also generate social poverty. Within a formal framework that merges a game theoretic analysis of the evolution of social participation with a model of dynamic accumulation of its effects on social environment (i.e., of social capital accumulation), we show that growth and well-being may evolve in opposite directions (a plausible outcome for advanced and affluent societies).Time Allocation, Social Capital, Relational Goods

Social capital accumulation and the evolution of social partecipation

We study the co-evolution of social participation and social capital accumulation, taking the view that the former contributes to the latter, and both contribute to the enjoyment of relational goods Within this framework, we show that a process of substitution of private for social activities (observable in some advanced, affluent economies), might be self-reinforcing and lead to a Pareto-dominated steady state. We find some scope for policy intervention, but we also acknowledge its difficulty.Social Capita; Well-being; Time Allocation

Musical Form And Tonal Structure In Troubadour Song

The aim of this study is to lay the groundwork for an eventual codification of musical form and style in the troubadour songs. To that end, it concentrates on two of the broadest musical parameters, form and tonal structure. A new catalogue of all attributed songs is provided with the study, which is intended to remedy the deficiencies of Gennrich\u27s, the only complete one available until now. It is based on descriptive and logical, rather than historical, principles, and the graphing procedure employed is designed to provide more information than the standard ones, by showing connections at the sub-phrase level. The songs are grouped into five large categories, based on the kind of phrase repetition found in their musical forms, and these categories then serve as a tool in the detailed examination of the nature and role of musical form in the repertoire. It is found that the troubadours\u27 acknowledged fascination with structure for its own sake, as evidenced in their versification, can also be seen in their musical forms. Indeed, there is an intimate and dynamic interaction between the two kinds of form, which can serve as a paradigm for the understanding of music/text relations in the canso. The analysis of selected examples demonstrates some of the many ways in which the troubadours created subtle and finely articulated formal designs in their music; this contradicts the view that they were unskilled as composers and relied only on simple standard formulas for their music.;The chapter on tonal structure examines the songs for evidence of functional tonal centres, and looks at the role of the final in relation to these. It is found that both the medieval modal system and the notion of interval chains are useful in shedding light on the characteristic tonal features of troubadour songs, and that a significant percentage of the finals can be considered functionally related to the tonal centre of the song, where this is clearly established