How to Reform the Italian Domestic Adoptions System Through a Centralized Market Design

Using an innovative variation of the standard Matching Market Design framework, this draft aims to provide inputs useful to drive the reform of the current Italian Domestic Adoption System (Italian families that desire to adopt an Italian child). The problem addressed in this draft, concern how to match the relative small number of waiting children to the large number of waiting families in the most rational and efficient way: each year, the adoptions system is not able to place the 20% of the children in foster care, despite the fact that the number of children (supply side) is very small respect the total amount of families (demand side) willing to adopt. This project is oriented to solve the inefficiencies characterizing the current adoption program, substituting the actual decentralized setup with a more efficient centralized matching market criteriaMatching Market Design, Adoptions System, Matching Algorithm

The Credit is a Right

This article proposes to analyze Grameen Bank operational system and its own evolution, illustrating the values that support this economics theory and the innovations that microcredit brings to the understanding of economics and banking phenomena.Microcredit; Grameen Bank; Poverty; Yunus; Ethics in Economics

How Unjust! An Experimental Investigation of Supervisors' Evaluation Errors and Agents' Incentives

In our simple model the supervisor: i) cannot observe the agent's effort; ii) aims at inducing the agent to exert high effort; but iii) can only offer rewards based on performance. Since performance is only stochastically related to effort, evaluation errors may occur. In particular, deserving agents that have exerted high effort may not be rewarded (Type I errors) and undeserving agents that have exerted low effort may be rewarded (Type II errors). We show that, although the model predicts both errors to be equally detrimental to performance, this prediction fails with a lab experiment. In fact, failing to reward deserving agents is significantly more detrimental than rewarding undeserving agents. We discuss our result in the light of some economic and managerial theories of behavior. Our result may have interesting implications for strategic human resource management and personnel economics and may also contribute to the debate about incentives and organizational performance.agency theory, organizational justice, compensation, type I and type II errors, real effort

Perspectives for a new Welfare. Quality competiton versus Price competition: an 'Exit-Voice-Loyalty' approach.

"Exit, Voice, and Loyalty" (A.O. Hirschman 1970) is a theoretical concept derived from the work of Albert O. Hirschman (1970) which is focused on two essential options in organizatios and products decline, being "exit" and "voice".The basis concept is as follows: members of an organization, whether consumers , or any other kind of human grouping, have essentially two possible responses when they perceive that the producer/organization is demonstrating a decrease in quality or benefit to the consumer/member: they can EXIT (withdraw from the relationship-the standard market strategy); or, they can VOICE (attempt to repair or improve the relationship through communication of the complaint, grievance or proposal for change -the standard political strategy). In this article we apply this approach to welfare and health care markets, emphasizing the main importance of LOYALTY option (a mixed "voice-exit" strategy).A.O. Hirschman; exit-voice-loyalty; Welfare State; Welfare Society

GRAMEEN BANK II. Una possibile analisi in prospettiva relazionale.

“I maggiori cambiamenti riguardano la gamma dei prodotti finanziari. Il clima e la filosofia di base con cui vengono proposti - l’ottica del villaggio, dei gruppi di progetto e dell’assistenza nella quotidianità - rimangono immutati. La preponderanza del soggetto femminile e del lavoro in comune restano fortemente radicati”. Questa è l’efficace sunto proposto da Stuart Rutherford riguardante il nuovo assetto che ha assunto la Grameen Bank. Dopo 25 anni di efficace opera contro la povertà, la banca dei poveri fondata da Muhammd Yunus, ha intrapreso un nuovo percorso atto all’innovazione della pratica del microcredito, così da renderlo ancora più fecondo e relazionalmente - a mio avviso - valorizzante. In questo scritto passeremo prima in rassegna le principali innovazioni - apportate al sistema originario e tradizionale di microcredito proposto dalla Grameen Bank ovvero il Grameen Classic System (GCS) - inerenti i prodotti e l’organizzazione operativa, per poi passare ad un’accurata disamina delle implicazioni che questa evoluzione comporta a livello squisitamente relazionale tra gli agenti coinvolti nel fenomeno, sviluppando le dinamiche ed i nessi che emergono all’interno del rapporto fra il singolo ed il gruppo e viceversa. L’intera analisi ed argomentazione è basata su “Grameen Bank II: designed to open new possibilities” , documento programmatico di riorganizzazione steso da Muhammad Yunus nel 2002, nonché sulla serie di papers di analisi consuntiva “MicroSave: briefing notes on Grameen II” pubblicati nel 2005. La disamina ed i giudizi inerenti l’aspetto relazionale, sono cura di chi scrive.Grameen Bank, Grameen Bank II, Yunus, Microcredito, Finanza etica

Book review to Muhammad Yunus - "Creating a world without poverty" (2008)

In the last two decades, free markets have swept the globe, bringing with them enormous potential for positive change. But traditional capitalism cannot solve problems like inequality and poverty, because it is hampered by a narrow view of human nature in which people are one-dimensional beings concerned only with profit. In fact, human beings have many other drives and passions, including the spiritual, the social, and the altruistic. Welcome to the world of social business, where the creative vision of the entrepreneur is applied to today's most serious problems: feeding the poor, housing the homeless, healing the sick, and protecting the planet. Creating a World Without Poverty tells the stories of some of the earliest examples of social businesses, including Yunus's own Grameen Bank. It reveals the next phase in a hopeful economic and social revolution that is already under way—and in the worldwide effort to eliminate poverty by unleashing the productive energy of every human being.Muhammad Yunus, Social Business, Corporate Social Responsibility, Grameen Bank

Broadband Internet and Social Capital

We study how the diffusion of broadband Internet affects social capital using two data sets from the UK. Our empirical strategy exploits the fact that broadband access has long depended on customers' position in the voice telecommunication infrastructure that was designed in the 1930s. The actual speed of an Internet connection, in fact, rapidly decays with the distance of the dwelling from the specific node of the network serving its area. Merging unique information about the topology of the voice network with geocoded longitudinal data about individual social capital, we show that access to broadband Internet caused a significant decline in forms of offline interaction and civic engagement. Overall, our results suggest that broadband penetration substantially crowded out several aspects of social capital.Comment: Internet & Society; Economic

People are more likely to promise to help you if you ask them in person or by phone

Synchronous communication usually gets people to say yes, but follow through will always be low, write Julian Conrads and Tommaso Reggian

Net neutrality and innovation at the core and at the edge

How would abandoning Internet net neutrality affect content providers that have different sizes? We model an Internet broadband provider that can offer a different quality of service (priority) to heterogeneous content providers. Internet users can potentially access all content, although they browse and click ads with different probabilities. Net neutrality regulation effectively protects innovation done at the edge by small content providers. Prioritization, instead, increases both infrastructure core investment and welfare only if it sufficiently stimulates innovation from the large content provider. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Teams or Tournaments? A Field Experiment on Cooperation and Competition among University Students

This paper assesses the effect of two stylized and antithetic non-monetary incentive schemes on students’ effort. We collect data from a field experiment where incentives are exogenously imposed, performance is monitored and individual characteristics are observed. Students are randomly assigned to a tournament scheme that fosters competition between coupled students, a cooperative scheme that promotes information sharing and collaboration between students and a control treatment in which students can neither compete, nor cooperate. In line with theoretical predictions, we find that competition induces higher effort with respect to cooperation and cooperation does not increase effort with respect to the baseline. However, this is true only for men, while women do not seem to react to non-monetary incentives.education, field experiments, incentives, competition, cooperation