HUMAN CAPITAL AND DEVELOPMENT: SOME EVIDENCE FROM EASTERN EUROPE

The concept of development is not only referred to the level or to the growth rate of GDP of a country, but it concerns different aspects of individual life. Development leads to a changing of values, behaviours and attitudes of people interested in it and in the well-being of the whole society. \\r\\nSince the second part of the last century, more and more economists always assert that human capital is a fundamental asset to promote economic growth and development. Health and education are the two principal ingredients of human capital. There is a strong positive bidirectional relationship between education and health; in fact, it is statistically supported that the two variables move together, so healthy people are more likely to achieve an higher level of education rather than sick people and, vice-versa, more educated people are more likely to enjoy good health status. This generates a virtuous cycle that can lead to greater development. Indeed, health increases people's capabilities allowing achievement in their well-beings, since healthy people can work longer and with higher productivity than poor health people. For this reason individuals' income rises allowing them major choices in terms of consumption, savings and investments. Considering the economic benefits that start from health and education, not only at microeconomic level but also for a country, it is important to pay attention to the role of this two variables in the economic development process. There are several channels through which health and education can be associated with better enhancement in economic results. They can be find in the labour market and in the participation in the labour market; worker productivity; human capital investments; saving capacity; availability of save to invest in physical and intellectual capital; fertility choices and structure of population.\\r\\nThe present paper analyzes the two-way linkage between education and health and their relationship with economic development identifying the conditions of some Eastern European countries. The methodology through which the results are obtained is the multidimensional scaling method which allows to define relations between countries in terms of proximity/distance with respect to the considered indicators, providing a spatial representation of themhuman capital, education, health, economic development, multidimensional scaling

EU INTEGRATION, HEALTH STANDARDS AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Health is one of the most important assets for human beings, since it allows people to fully use their capacity. Poor or compromised health reduces the well-being of individuals, by affecting their future incomes, wealth and consumption. For policy implicHealth, Human capital, Development

CLUSTERING THE HETEROGENITY OF EU URBAN PERFORMANCES

Cities represent today the intrinsic socio-economic complexity of local systems. Looking at the performances of urban systems enable us to explaining the main factors of territorial development. By moving from the theory of "progressive systems", and assigning to the cities some of this theory's properties, it is possible to outline a methodological perspective to capture the emerging phenomena describing the cities' performances. Keeping this view in mind, the aim of the paper is facing the intrinsic socio-economic complexity and heterogeneity of cities within the EU integration policies.. In order to better qualify this issue, we provide a multidimensional scaling approach, as a quantitative method useful to compare the several urban performances by letting a cluster evidence among the EU cities emerge.Urban trajectories, progressive system, multidimensional scaling.

PRICE VS QUALITY COMPETITION AND THE SPATIAL PATTERN OF AVERAGE PRICES IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE

This work investigates the relationship between the average export prices and the distance between the origin and the destination market in international trade. Distance between trading partners obviously stands at the core of I international trade literature and is strictly related with the issue of how countries and firms compete on export markets when transport costs become increasingly stiff. Heterogeneous-Firm Trade (HFT) models predict that only most competitive firms are able to export on distant markets, where it is more difficult to recover from freight costs. However, this simple concept does not lead to unambiguous predictions on the spatial pattern of average export f.o.b. prices. \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\r\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\nThis work uses bilateral product-level data for five top-exporters (US, Germany, China, France, Italy) and all their world partners in order to test the main hypotheses derivable on this issue from theoretical literature. An huge dataset of bilateral international trade flows, the BACI dataset of CEPII, provides data both on values and quantities, allowing to construct products’ unit values (at the 6 digit level of the Harmonized System), approximating average exports’ prices. These data are used as the dependent variable of the econometric test and regressed on a set of explanatory variables: the distance of the destination market from the exporter and other importer’s characteristics. Thus, this test assesses which of the considered theoretical models fit the data best, shedding some light both on the sign and on the determinants of the spatial pattern of average prices. The main finding of this work is that theoretical models not embedding a quality dimension for products do not seem to fit the data very well: it is clear from the econometric test that a positive correlation between average exports’ prices and distance often emerges, denoting a “quality competition†pattern in addition to a possible alternative pattern of “price competitionâ€. Moreover, theoretical models with a quasi-linear demand function (in contrast with a CES one) are able to better explain same evidences emerging from the data. \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\r\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

The Christian ethics of socio-economic development promoted by the Catholic Social Teaching

This paper highlights the relationship between economic scienceand Christian moral in order to analyze the idea of socio-economic development promoted by the Catholic Social Teaching (CST). In the first period leading up to the Second Vatican Council (1891-1962), from Pope Leo XIII to Pope John XXIII, the idea of development was connected both to technical and industrial progress, and to the universal values of justice, charity, and truth,which national communities were asked to follow. During the Conciliar period (1962-1979), the concept of development assumes a social and economic dimension, and so it becomes one of the main pillars of Catholic Social Teaching, which introduces the earliest definition of integral human development. Ultimately, in the post-Conciliar phase (1979-2009) including Benedict XVI’s pontificate, the idea of integral human development reaches its maturity by incorporating the complexity of real-world economic interactions. Finally, this paper shows how the ethics bolstered by the Catholic Social Teaching is characterized by two distinct but complementary lines of thought: moral rules for both political action, and for socio-economic issues

THE LISBON STRATEGY: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

This paper investigates the European economic integration within the frame work of the 2000 Lisbon Council with the aim of studying the dynamics affecting the social and economic life of European Countries. Such a descriptive investigation focuses on certain significant variables of the new theories highlighting the importance of technological innovation and human capital. To this end the multivariate statistic technique of Principal Component Analysis has been applied in order to classify Countries with regard to the investigated phenomenon

The Performances of Italian Vertical Intra-Industry Trade in Cultural vs ICT Goods

We assess if systematic differences arise in Italian vertical intra-industry trade in ICT and cultural products. We study the factors leading to increasing levels of VIIT since vertical two-way trade flows are prevalent and (in opposition to those of the horizontal type) result in complementary rather than competitive production and trading patterns. We decompose Italian bilateral flows in ICT and cultural goods (2000-2009) into three trade types: inter-industry, horizontal and vertical intra-industry trade, then provide a top-10 list of the Italian partners in terms of percentage of VIIT and finally analyze the Italian performances in terms of products relative quality

STABILITY, BIFURCATIONS AND CHAOS IN UNEMPLOYMENT NON-LINEAR DYNAMICS

The traditional analysis of unemployment in relation to real output dynamics is based on some empirical evidences deducted from Okun’s studies. In particular the so called Okun’s Law is expressed in a linear mathematical formulation, which cannot explain the fluctuation of the variables involved. Linearity is an heavy limit for macroeconomic analysis and especially for every economic growth study which would consider the unemployment rate among the endogenous variables. This paper deals with an introductive study about the role of non-linearity in the investigation of unemployment dynamics. The main idea is the existence of a non-linear relation between the unemployment rate and the gap of GDP growth rate from its trend. The macroeconomic motivation of this idea moves from the consideration of two concatenate effects caused by a variation of the unemployment rate on the real output growth rate. These two effects are concatenate because there is a first effect that generates a secondary one on the same variable. When the unemployment rate changes, the first effect is the variation in the level of production in consequence of the variation in the level of such an important factor as labour force; the secondary effect is a consecutive variation in the level of production caused by the variation in the aggregate demand in consequence of the change of the individual disposal income originated by the previous variation of production itself. In this paper the analysis of unemployment dynamics is carried out by the use of the logistic map and the conditions for the existence of bifurcations (cycles) are determined. The study also allows to find the range of variability of some characteristic parameters that might be avoided for not having an absolute unpredictability of unemployment dynamics (deterministic chaos): unpredictability is equivalent to uncontrollability because of the total absence of information about the future value of the variable to be controlled

RESTRICTION OF CREDIT AFTER THE CRISIS OR A DIFFERENT ALLOCATION OF RESOURCES? THE ITALIAN CASE

The granting of credit, whose excessive diffusion was one of the causes of the economic and financial crisis of 2007, has suffered profound changes during the following period of economic recession. The granting of credit to households and businesses has been strongly influenced by the effects of the economic downturn, the banks’ choices and the intervention of the supervisory authorities. The credit, however, is also an instrument of monetary policy through which governments and central banks try to stimulate the economic growth. There are, nevertheless, several and complex limitations to the actions of banks and other financial intermediaries, information asymmetries and structural limits of the credit market. Should also be considered that in many Countries the economic recession had a strong influence on the choices and opportunities for all economic agents, making it difficult to lay the foundations for economic recovery. In the previous years, the lowering of standards of borrowers and the presence of low interest rates, setting the conditions for the so-called housing bubble. The subsequent reactions, the general worsening of the economy, the lack of funding and liquidity, in addition to the strict rules imposed by the supervisory authorities, have led banks to tighten securely controls on the characteristics of borrowers, being also obliged to put more attention on the composition of the balance sheet. Under these conditions, have risen subjects that do not meet the requirements to receive funding, and at the same time increased the difficulty to repay loans and interest. In this paper a multidimensional scaling analysis is used to observe the situation of credit in the Italian regions before and after the outbreak of the crisis, considering the average values for nine variables and for two different period, before and after 2007. Searching for dissimilarity between areas of the Country, is highlighted a clear separation before the crisis and remained essentially unchanged between northern and southern regions. Furthermore the analysis of time series showed that the granting of credit has declined slightly, but above all has changed destination, from productive purposes and investments, to support consumption

CREDIT AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: STRUCTURAL DIFFERENCES AMONG THE ITALIAN REGIONS

The international economic crisis of 2007 has had long-lasting negative effects on the financial markets and the real economy of many countries. The occurred uncertainty and the complications of the balance sheets of many banks, due to the strong international connections, particularly impacted on the ability and willingness of financial market, on granting credit to consumer households and companies. Credit, and the financial system in general, represent according to the economic literature, one of the determinants of economic development and, particularly, its efficiency determines the speed of growth and the potential level. The difficulties in the transmission of monetary policy and the structural inefficiency have worsened the negative effects of the economic crisis in many European countries, including Italy, where large differences in the socio-economic context of the various macro-areas still persist. The role of banks is to exploit tools and knowledge to the best addressing of funds, by subjects in excess to those in deficit, or towards who may exploit them for productive purposes. In addition, banks are locally a guidance to entrepreneurs and an entity aware of the local needs and potentials. In this paper we combine several variables on the credit and the quality of banking contracts, in addition to real economic and R&D variables, with reference to the Italian regions. The aim is to identify structural differences among the Italian regions in terms of financial and economic development, and in addition to observe the discrepancy between the various macro areas, even considering the effects of the international financial crisis broken out in the U.S. in 2007. We consider data over sufficiently long periods before and after the advent of the crisis and the long subsequent period of economic recession. The detail of the analysis is regional, in order to have a sufficient number of contexts that are grouped into homogeneous groups, helping to clarify and explain the dynamics of the socioeconomic differences that still exist. We use a Multidimensional scaling analysis with the aim of exploring the relationship between credit and socioeconomic development in the different Italian areas, observing in particular the structural differences that could lead to a deeper distance of the wellbeing of the poorest regions in the South compared to that of North-central