Wage differentials in social enterprises

In Italy social enterprises include more than 7,000 institutions with around 250,000 workers serving more than three million people, a big share of which disadvantaged. Using the ICSI 2007 survey conducted by a pool of Italian universities on a representative sample of social enterprises, we analyze the determinants of nominal and real wages (adjusted for the cost of living in the area of residence). Our two main findings show that: i) low wages and absence of “direct” education premia make it hard to attract (beyond intrinsic motivations) young talented workers in this sector even though indirect premia in terms of higher probability of becoming manager exist; ii) cooperative wage differentials are sensitive to regional disparities in PPP even though they do not fully compensate for them: nominal wages are higher in Northern Italy but, after adjusting for the cost of living, they become higher in the South.Social enterprises; wage differentials; education; wage premium; motivations

Does money affect happiness and self-esteem? The poor borrowers' perspective in a quasi-natural experiment

Research on the nexus between life satisfaction and income has looked at lottery winners or postcommunism transition to document that exogenous changes in income generate effects of the same sign on happiness. In this paper we consider the unfortunate tsunami event as a negative lottery and examine the effects of the tsunami related income losses, net of the most ample possible set of concurring factors, on life satisfaction and self-esteem of a sample of Sri Lankan microfinance borrowers. Our empirical findings help to discriminate between various effects of material damages and monetary losses, both having strong significant impact on the dependent variables. Our contribution to the literature is in: i) identifying an exogenous shock which is temporary and does not suffer from voluntary participation bias (unfortunate "winners" of the negative lottery, exactly as control sample, did not decide to buy the lottery ticket); ii) testing the money-happiness nexus on a sample of individuals close to the poverty line.life satisfaction; quasi natural experiment; tsunami; natural catastrophe

Is Fair Trade Honey Sweeter? An empirical analysis on the effect of affiliation on productivity

We evaluate the impact of affiliation to Fair Trade on a sample of Chilean honey producers. Evidence from standard regressions and propensity score matching shows that affiliated farmers have higher productivity (income from honey per worked hour) than the control sample. We show that the productivity effect is partially explained by the superior capacity of affiliated workers to exploit economies of scale. Additional results on the effects of affiliation on training, cooperation and advances on payments suggest that affiliation contributed both to, and independently from, the economies of scale effect.Fair Trade, economies of scale, productivity.

Individual and Collective Reputation: Lessons from the Wine Market

The concept of reputation has been used in every field of economic research, given its capacity to affect the outcome of all economic and financial transactions. The theoretical debate on reputation is very rich, but the mechanisms of reputation building have not been explored enough from the empirical viewpoint. In this paper we investigate the determinants of firm reputation taking into consideration the interactions between individual and collective reputation. This paper is one of the first attempts to provide robust evidence on the determinants of firm reputation using a large set of controls applied to a database not affected by self-selection bias. In fact, we constructed a new database containing the universe of wineries located in four regions of the North-West of Italy with an established national reputation and focus on the determinants of the “jump” from national to international reputation. Our research confirms the prediction of the theoretical literature and shows the positive effect of firm age, size, investments and producer’s intrinsic motivations, and of collective reputation on individual firm reputation. Cooperatives seem to decrease their reputation when the number of associated members rises, due to free-riding and traceability problems. In contrast with previous research, relying on well-known external consultants does not acquire any outside reputation. Finally, by comparing the regression results on the determinants of national and international reputation it emerges the relevance of the mechanisms of the evaluation process: the higher proximity to the wineries of a national observer permits a better and more technical knowledge of the quality provided, allowing small niche producers with very low productivity to emerge and be known. For the same reason, the national classification system (i.e. the DOCG system) exerts a significant effect only on the international reputation of wineries, but not on the national one where the effect of collective reputation (i.e. the reputation of single denominations like Barolo) seems to prevail.reputation, credibility, asymmetric information, quality standards, Industrial Organization, L14, L15,

Inside the black box of collective reputation

The literature on collective reputation is still in its infancy. Despite the existence of a (limited) number of valuable theoretical works studying the process of collective reputation building, there is still no comprehensive analysis of this concept. In addition, due to data limitation, there are no empirical studies testing the determinants of group reputation. This work intends to provide a comprehensive analysis of reputational equilibria within coalitions of agents. In order to do so, we design a static and dynamic (over 30 years) study on the universe of coalitions of companies, within the wine market, looking at the role exerted by the characteristics of the coalition itself (its age and size), the rules set and the actions put forward by the group of agents in order to reach and maintain a certain level of collective reputation, and the context in which they operate. Results shed new lights into this ubiquitous phenomenon.reputation, collective reputation, asymmetric information, quality standards, wine.

Wine Economics

A comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to the economics of the production, distribution, and consumption of wine. Wine economics is a growing subfield that examines the economics of the production, distribution, and consumption of wine. In this book, Stefano Castriota takes a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to the study of wine economics, drawing on literature from industrial organization, welfare economics, economic policy, political economy, management, finance, health economics, law, and criminology. Castriota explores how wine markets operate and how they are regulated, covering such diverse topics as the health economics of wine consumption (both the positive health effects associated with moderate wine intake and the negative effects of alcohol abuse), the competition and profitability of wineries, the function of wine as an investment, and the quality of wine. He examines differences between the wine industries in the Old World and the New World, comparing small, family-owned wineries with larger conglomerates, and analyzes the regulation of wine in the United States versus the European Union. He concludes with a series of recommendations to ensure open and efficient wine markets while protecting public health. Originally published in Italy as Economia del Vino, this English translation has been extensively revised. It includes additional material focusing on the English-speaking countries of the New World, particularly the regulatory environment of the United States and the lingering effects of Prohibition

Social capital dynamics and collective action: the role of subjective satisfaction

In low income countries grass-root collective action is a well known substitute for government provision of public goods. In our research we wonder what is its effect on the law of motion of social capital, a crucial microeconomic determinant of economic development. To this purpose we structure a ?sandwich? experiment in which participants play a public good game (PGG) between two trust games (TG1 and TG2). Our findings show that the change in trustworthiness between the two trust game rounds generated by the PGG treatment is crucially affected by the subjective satisfaction about the PGG rather than by standard objective measures related to PGG players? behavior. These results highlight that subjective satisfaction after collective action has relevant predictive power on social capital creation providing information which can be crucial to design successful self-organized resource regimes.trust games, public good games, randomized experiment, social capital, subjective wellbeing

Working in the profit versus not for profit sector: what difference does it make? An inquiry on preferences of voluntary and involuntary movers

We investigate what is behind the profit/not for profit wage differential by comparing judgments on job caracteristics of workers who voluntarily or involuntarily moved from the first to the second sector. We define voluntary movers those who applied for a job in a not for profit organization and, when successful, resigned from the for profit one, while involuntary movers can either have been laid off by the company or have resigned without already having a job offer in the not for profit sector when leaving the firm. We observe that almost half of voluntary movers end up with non higher wages and, surprisingly, higher job satisfaction after the change. A vast majority of them exhibit significantly higher time flexibility, improved relationships with stakeholders, closer consistence with educational skills and higher satisfaction of intrinsic motivations in the new job. Our findings support the profit/no profit compensating differential hypothesis and shed light on mechanisms which are beyond the job donation behavior of intrinsically motivated workers.Social enterprises, wage differentials, intrinsic motivations, changing job, dissatisfaction

Beyond the Joneses: inter-country income comparisons and happiness

Our paper provides some novel evidence on the burgeoning literature on life satisfaction and relative comparisons by showing that in the last 30 years comparisons with the wellbeing of top income countries have generated progressively more negative feelings on a large sample of individuals in the Eurobarometer survey. The paper contributes in two main directions: (i) it shows that countries, and not just neighbors, can be reference groups; (ii) it documents a globalization effect by which distant countries become progressively closer and comparisons among them more intense and relevant. Our findings may be interpreted in support of the well known hypothesis that migratory decisions are affected by the gap in economic wellbeing between origin and destination country since they document that such gap affects individual life satisfaction.life satisfaction, relative income, standard of living, comparisons

Beyond the Joneses: Inter-country income comparisons and happiness

Our paper provides some novel evidence on the burgeoning literature on life satisfaction and relative comparisons by showing that in the last 30 years comparisons with the wellbeing of top income countries have generated progressively more negative feelings on a large sample of individuals in the Eurobarometer survey. The paper contributes in two main directions: (i) it shows that countries, and not just neighbors, can be reference groups; (ii) it documents a globalization effect by which distant countries become progressively closer and comparisons among them more intense and relevant. Our findings may be interpreted in support of the well known hypothesis that migratory decisions are affected by the gap in economic wellbeing between origin and destination country since they document that such gap affects individual life satisfaction.life satisfaction, relative income, standard of living, comparisons