Non-linear adjustments in fiscal policy

This paper provides evidence that the Italian public finances are sustainable, as the country meets its intertemporal budget constraint. Nevertheless, the burden of correcting budgetary disequilibria is entirely carried by changes in taxes, which can have some detrimental economic effects, rather than changes in government spending or policy mixes. Our non-linear analysis, in particular, shows that taxes adjust more rapidly when deviations from the equilibrium level get larger, and that they are downward inflexible not only with respect to their long-run level, but also during periods of decreasing economic growth. In order to correct the undesirable trend of high fiscal pressure and high public debt in Italy, structural expenditure reforms aiming at a higher degree of government expenditure adjustment are needed. This would also relax the asymmetries reported in the paper

Asymmetric and non linear adjustment in the revenue expenditure models

The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyse the revenue-expenditure models of public finance by considering the possibility of non-linear and asymmetric adjustment. A long-run relationship between general government expenditure and revenues is identified for Italy. Following system-wide shocks, the estimated relationship adjusts slowly to equilibrium, mainly due to complex administrative procedures that add to the sluggishness of tax collection and undermine the effective monitoring of public spending. Exogeneity of public expenditure implies that taxes rather than spending, carry the burden of short-run adjustment to correct budgetary disequilibria. Allowing for non-linear adjustment and the possibility of multiple equilibria, our findings show evidence of asymmetric adjustment around a unique equilibrium. In particular, we find that when government expenditure is too high, adjustment of taxes takes places at a faster rate than when it is too low. Further, there is evidence of a faster adjustment when deviations from the equilibrium level get larger, pointing to a Leviathan-style, revenue-maximiser government

Changes in sovereign debt dynamics in Central and Eastern Europe

The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the degree of sustainability of fiscal debt for a group of Central and Eastern European countries. We apply a battery of time series econometrics methods to show how the financial crisis has affected the debt‐to‐gross domestic product ratio and how the ratio has behaved recently. The results give us important insights into how governments in Central and Eastern Europe have reacted to the accumulation of debt. We distinguish between two groups of countries: one group where the sovereign debt stock stabilized after the crisis, and another where debt has been accumulated more quickly in recent years. The results provide important policy lessons for the authorities responsible

Zoo-technical application of Ground Source Heat Pumps: a pilot case study

Ground Source Heat Pumps are energy-efficient HVAC systems usually adopted in residential and commercial buildings. However the control of the thermal environment is required not only in spaces occupied by people, but also in intensive breeding farms, in order to maintain healthy conditions and to increase productivity. In the Italian livestock breedings, heating is usually provided by means of gas or Diesel burners directly installed in the stable. An important part of the heating load is due to the large ventilation rates required for the livestock wellbeing. Cooling is either absent or achieved by evaporative systems that also increase the humidity level in the stables, thus requiring even larger ventilation rates. Therefore the applicability of geothermal heating and cooling in breeding farms was analysed in a research project co-funded by the Lombardy Region and the Italian Ministry of Research and Education. A pilot system for heating, cooling and ventilation was designed and installed in a piglets room at the Experimental and Didactic Zoo-technical Center of the University of Milan. Five Borehole Heat Exchangers (BHEs), installed down to a depth of 60 meters into an alluvial aquifer, were coupled with a Ground Source Heat Pump. The heat pump provides heating and cooling to an Air Handling Unit, including a Heat Recovery system. A monitoring system was installed in order to measure comfort conditions in the piglet room, operating conditions and energy consumption of the HVAC system, together with the spreading of the thermal plume in the ground. In this paper the results of a monitoring campaign carried out in a typical winter period are presented and discussed. The overall energy efficiency of the system, expressed in terms of a COP, results to be equal to 4.04. A comparison between the pilot HVAC system and a traditional one is also carried out, showing that the proposed solution can provide over 40% primary energy saving. Following, cost savings in energy bills for farmers are found, although the ratio between electricity cost and fuel cost is a key parameter

Behavioral challenges in policy analysis with conflicting objectives

Public policy problems are rife with conflicting objectives: efficiency versus fairness, technical criteria versus political goals, costs versus multiple benefits. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis provides robust methodologies to support policy makers in making tough choices and in designing better policy options when considering these conflicting objectives. However, important behavioral challenges exist in developing these models: the use of expert judgments, whenever evidence is not available; the elicitation of preferences and priorities from policy makers and communities; and the effective management of group decision processes. The extensive developments in behavioral decision research, social psychology, facilitated decision modeling, and incomplete preference models shed light on how decision analysts should address these issues, so we can provide better decision support and develop high quality decision models. In this tutorial I discuss the main findings of these extensive, but rather fragmented, literatures providing a coherent and practical framework for managing behavioral issues, minimizing behavioral biases, and optimizing the quality of human judgments in policy analysis models with conflicting objectives. I illustrate these guidelines with policy analysis interventions that we have conducted over the last decade for several organizations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the UK Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the Malaria Consortium/USAID, the UK National Audit Office, among others

The Shackles of Practice: History of psychology, research assessment and the curriculum

The history of psychology is being increasingly marginalized in British universities. In this article we argue that this marginalization has been brought about by a combination of material circumstances resulting from the marketization of the UK Higher Education sector. One consequence of this, the statutory audit known as the Research Excellence Framework, has made it increasingly difficult to undertake historical work as it has traditionally been done in UK Psychology Departments. At best such a situation challenges the ambition for historical work to have an impact on psychology. At worst it potentially renders the history of psychology irrelevant. Yet the theoretical justification for history of psychology has never been stronger. Psychology’s subject matter is neither exclusively natural nor entirely socially constructed, but lies on that “somewhat suspect borderland between physiology and philosophy” as Wilhelm Wundt put it. The discipline’s ontological claims are therefore always made from within epistemological frameworks which are themselves products of particular historical contexts. Such arguments have persuaded us that history of psychology has a fundamental role to play within the wider discipline. Yet as historians we cannot ignore the constraining social and material circumstances in which our field operates. We conclude that although the constraints of practice suggest that its prospects for influencing its parent discipline are seriously challenged, there are nevertheless opportunities for the history of psychology areas such as the undergraduate curriculum