Institutions and Development Processes: the Role of Strategic Complementarities. A Review of main Literature

This survey is an overview on the literature that investigates the relationship between the institutions and development processes. The attention it has been focus, in sequence, on the ways in which it has been performed the empirical and the theoretical analysis of the relationship between the economic development and the role of institutions. As it is clear the first difficulty is the definition of what an institution is, so the survey gives dig relevance to the different manners to conceptualize the notion of institution. Another difficulty arises from the perplexity about how the efficiency of the institutions can be evaluated. This problem is related to the necessity to close off in the right way the weight and the influence of the institutions respect to the other variables on the economic development. The analysis of the complementarities involved in the development processes, can be a useful way to explain some kinds of relationship between institutions and development processes especially in the short run. The use of more elaborated indices to measure the in�uence of institutions in the economic system and of the coentegration models can improve the reliability of the empirical analysis. In the same manner the supermodularity and the supermodular games can efficiently explain the mechanism of the strategic complementarity between di¤erent kinds of institution generating virtuous development processes from a theoretical point of view. Necessarily, in the future, both the analysis must be integrated but, for the time being, the state of art in the two approaches represent a very good starting point for new outcomes related to the investigation on these type of kind of economic phenomena.Institutions, Complementarities, Development Process

Who Contributes? A Strategic Approach to a European Immigration Policy

According to the Lisbon Treaty the increasing cost of enforcing the European border against immigration shall be shared among the EU members. Nonetheless, the Treaty is rather vague with respect to the "appropriate measures" to adopt in order to distribute the financial burden. Members who do not share their borders with source countries have an incentive to free ride on the other countries. We study a contribution game where a northern government and a southern government minimize a loss function with respect to their national immigration target. We consider both sequential and simultaneous decisions and we show that the contribution of both governments is positive when their immigration targets are not too different. We show that total contribution is higher when decisions are simultaneous, but the conditions for both contributions to be positive are less restrictive in the sequential framework.Policy making, Government expenditures, Local government expenditures, Federalism

Institutions and Development Processes: the Role of Strategic Complementarities. A Review of main Literature

This survey is an overview on the literature that investigates the relationship between the institutions and development processes. The attention it has been focus, in sequence, on the ways in which it has been performed the empirical and the theoretical analysis of the relationship between the economic development and the role of institutions. As it is clear the first difficulty is the definition of what an institution is, so the survey gives dig relevance to the different manners to conceptualize the notion of institution. Another difficulty arises from the perplexity about how the efficiency of the institutions can be evaluated. This problem is related to the necessity to close off in the right way the weight and the influence of the institutions respect to the other variables on the economic development. The analysis of the complementarities involved in the development processes, can be a useful way to explain some kinds of relationship between institutions and development processes especially in the short run. The use of more elaborated indices to measure the in�uence of institutions in the economic system and of the coentegration models can improve the reliability of the empirical analysis. In the same manner the supermodularity and the supermodular games can efficiently explain the mechanism of the strategic complementarity between di¤erent kinds of institution generating virtuous development processes from a theoretical point of view. Necessarily, in the future, both the analysis must be integrated but, for the time being, the state of art in the two approaches represent a very good starting point for new outcomes related to the investigation on these type of kind of economic phenomena

A Note on Contribution Games with Loss Functions

Decisions on joint funding of continuous public goods between two agents often involve heterogeneous targets. We introduce loss functions in a contribution game in order to study the effect of this conflict. Unlike Varian (1994), joint contribution occurs only if the players’ targets are sufficiently close and the sequential game reduces free riding problems, while total contribution is higher in the simultaneous game

Self Image and Environmental Attitude and Behavior

In this paper, we examine some important aspects related to safeguarding environmental quality. Beginning by defining the identity of the agents considered, we conceptually describe how whilethey have different identities, they can be simultaneously influenced by three distinct elements: self image and environmental attitude and behavior. We define self image as the individual's willingness to cooperate for the sake of the public good, we define environmental attitude as the individual's concern regarding waste prevention and disposal, and the environmental behavior as the individual's recycling behavior. Using the 1998 wave of the Multipurpose Household Survey (MHS), which is conducted annually by the Italian Central Statistical Offce, and univariate probit models, we show that there is a positive relationship among these factors that is robust to the inclusion of social participation variables and to the use of a sub-sample of individuals who have no interest in environmental issues

Who Contributes? A Strategic Approach to a European Immigration Policy

According to the Lisbon Treaty the increasing cost of enforcing the European border against immigration shall be shared among the EU members. Nonetheless, the Treaty is rather vague with respect to the "appropriate measures" to adopt in order to distribute the financial burden. Members who do not share their borders with source countries have an incentive to free ride on the other countries. We study a contribution game where a northern government and a southern government minimize a loss function with respect to their national immigration target. We consider both sequential and simultaneous decisions and we show that the contribution of both governments is positive when their immigration targets are not too different. We show that total contribution is higher when decisions are simultaneous, but the conditions for both contributions to be positive are less restrictive in the sequential framework

Acute Delta Hepatitis in Italy spanning three decades (1991–2019): Evidence for the effectiveness of the hepatitis B vaccination campaign

Updated incidence data of acute Delta virus hepatitis (HDV) are lacking worldwide. Our aim was to evaluate incidence of and risk factors for acute HDV in Italy after the introduction of the compulsory vaccination against hepatitis B virus (HBV) in 1991. Data were obtained from the National Surveillance System of acute viral hepatitis (SEIEVA). Independent predictors of HDV were assessed by logistic-regression analysis. The incidence of acute HDV per 1-million population declined from 3.2 cases in 1987 to 0.04 in 2019, parallel to that of acute HBV per 100,000 from 10.0 to 0.39 cases during the same period. The median age of cases increased from 27 years in the decade 1991-1999 to 44 years in the decade 2010-2019 (p < .001). Over the same period, the male/female ratio decreased from 3.8 to 2.1, the proportion of coinfections increased from 55% to 75% (p = .003) and that of HBsAg positive acute hepatitis tested for by IgM anti-HDV linearly decreased from 50.1% to 34.1% (p < .001). People born abroad accounted for 24.6% of cases in 2004-2010 and 32.1% in 2011-2019. In the period 2010-2019, risky sexual behaviour (O.R. 4.2; 95%CI: 1.4-12.8) was the sole independent predictor of acute HDV; conversely intravenous drug use was no longer associated (O.R. 1.25; 95%CI: 0.15-10.22) with this. In conclusion, HBV vaccination was an effective measure to control acute HDV. Intravenous drug use is no longer an efficient mode of HDV spread. Testing for IgM-anti HDV is a grey area requiring alert. Acute HDV in foreigners should be monitored in the years to come

Towards a Muon Collider

A muon collider would enable the big jump ahead in energy reach that is needed for a fruitful exploration of fundamental interactions. The challenges of producing muon collisions at high luminosity and 10 TeV centre of mass energy are being investigated by the recently-formed International Muon Collider Collaboration. This Review summarises the status and the recent advances on muon colliders design, physics and detector studies. The aim is to provide a global perspective of the field and to outline directions for future work.Comment: 118 pages, 103 figure