THE MODEL OF THE LINEAR CITY UNDER TRIANGULAR DISTRIBUTION OF CONSUMERS

This paper presents a model of oligopolistic competition in presence of horizontal differentiation of goods, under a triangular distribution of consumers. The triangular distribution represents a case of concentration of consumers around the central location. The main result is that a good deal of differentiation among goods can be achieved in equilibrium also under such assumption concerning the consumers’ distribution. This means that the incentive to differentiate prevails on the incentive to hold the central location, even if consumers are concentrated in the central location. The analysis based on an empirical case-study is presented, concerning the choice of beverage retails in a town. The empirical evidence is consistent with the theoretical model.orizontal product differentiation, hotelling, maximum differentiation, minimum differentiation

A multilevel analysis on the economic impact of public infrastructure and corruption on Italian regions

This paper uses data contained in the Regional Public Accounts database to investigate the heterogeneity of the impact of public infrastructure across Italian regions basing the analysis also on institutional and political ground. The issue is here addressed linking the analysis of the impact of infrastructure on GDP with the issue of corruption by means of a random coefficient panel data model approach. I consider a novel objective measure of corruption that consists of the difference between a measure of the physical quantities of public infrastructure and the cumulative price government pays for public capital stocks. The empirical analysis confirms the existence of parameter heterogeneity across Italian regions and is also consistent with theoretical considerations that corruption negatively affects economic performance.orruption; public expenditure; infrastructure, random coefficients; regional public accounts.

A simulation on the 2013 EU Regional Policy Outcome

The aim of this paper is to estimate the effects of EU regional policy with respect to economic convergence. In particular, I tried to “measure” the effect of EU regional policy on the per capita Gross Domestic Product by means of a simulation that starts from the GDP growth rate estimated by Eurostat concerning the 2006-2008 sample. The original point of my work consists in a way to consider separately GDP growth and Population growth. I acted as follows: first, I considered the estimated GDP growth rate in the sample 2006-2008 and I calculated the average rate; second, I calculated the average population growth rate in the sample 1998-2003 and, finally, I used the two rate to forecast the GDP per capita in the 2013. The idea behind this technical procedure is that change in demographic variable have a stronger inertia than change in the economic variable. It is important to underline that the purpose of this paper is not to make a good forecast of the 2013 situation concerning the GDP per capita, but representing an optimistic frame that does not consider many theoretical factors that should worsen the whole economic performance. Despite the simplicity of the method adopted this framework may be very powerful. In fact it is able to analyse not only a ceteris paribus scenario, but also the effect of Public Policy eventually even year by year without complex assumption on such a rule that governs the two rate here considered. In this work I propose an analysis that may be thought as divided into two main parts. The first one with the aim to provide a synthesis of the main results achieved in literature about the economic convergence. In a second part, I provide a forecast based on empirical evidence. At margin note that the empirical evidence here considered is consistent with some assertion provided by literature.EU regional policy; income disparities; empirical analysis

The model of the linear city under a triangular distribution of consumers: an empirical analysis on price and location of beverage kiosks in Catania

This paper presents a model of oligopolistic competition under horizontal differentiation of products and a triangular distribution of consumers. The triangular distribution aims to represent a case of concentration of consumers around the central location. The main result is that a good deal of differentiation among products is achieved also under such assumption concerning the consumers’ distribution. This means that the incentive to differentiate – to some extent - prevails on the incentive to the central location, although consumers are concentrated in the central location. The analysis on an original empirical case-study is presented, concerning the choice of beverage retails in a town. The empirical evidence is consistent with the theoretical model.Product differentiation; Hotelling; Empirical analysis

Firm specialisation and growth. A study of the european software industry.

This paper analyses the process of growth and restructuring of 38 large European and US software firms during the period 1984-1992. Since the end of the 1960s, an independent software industry has emerged in the US and in Europe stimulated by technological and institutional change. Particularly, the diffusion of small computers and local area networks during the 1980s is largely responsible for the high growth rate of software market compared with other information technology segments. Moreover, software is a pervasive technology in that it tends to be used in all economic sectors. This has spurred the entry of many new firms and vertical disintegration of software activities from computer hardware manufacturing. In the 1980s a wave of M&As, joint ventures and corporate restructuring (new subsidiaries, reorganisations of divisions, etc.) took place in this industry. This paper aims to analyse the objectives of these operations (exploitation of new market opportunities or new joint research opportunities) and their directions (diversification or specialisation).

Proposal for a measure of regional power in EU15 in the 2007-2013 bargain

This paper presents an analysis with the aim to investigate the EU regional policy and in particular to consider how it has impacted on national states authority. The original point of this work consists in constructing an index to rank the power of regions in each state that consider the total Regional Policy funds allocation in the sample 2000-2006 and the indicative financial allocation for the sample 2007-2013. The idea behind this index is that powerful regions will be able to protect their interests in the allocating process. Thus, we can “measure” the power of regions, indirectly, by mean of the loss bore by them in the re-negotiating process. At this purpose it is important to underline that enlargement had as concomitant result that the regional disparities have doubled, so that the challenge for each region (and each state) is becoming very strong. Thus, the power of region (where and if it exists) has to emerge with particular evidence in this context. In this work I propose an analysis that may be thought as divided into two main parts. The first one with the aim to provide a synthesis of the main results achieved in literature about this issue and in particular the debate between Multilevel-Governance and State Centric literature. In a second part, as I said before, I investigate the empirical evidence concerning the EU model of governance with particular attention to the EU regional policy. The empirical evidence here considered is consistent with some assertion provided by Multilevel Governance literature.Multilevel governance; European regional policy

Simulating the tail of the interference in a Poisson network model

Interference among simultaneous transmissions represents the main limitation factor for the capacity and connectivity of dense wireless networks. In this paper we provide efficient simulation laws for the tail of the interference in a simple wireless ad hoc network model. Particularly, we consider node locations distributed according to a Poisson point process and various classes of light-tailed fading distribution