The short editorial introduces to the new issue of the Review. Startgin from the 2015 volume, the journal has changed its copyright policy as well as its open access policy

D'Ippoliti, Carlo

English

D'IPPOLITI, Carlo

Archivio della ricerca- Università di Roma La Sapienza

PSL Quarterly Review, vol. 68 n. 272 (March 2015), 3-7 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non-Commercial – No Derivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/  Introduction  CARLO D’IPPOLITI*   The present issue of our Review opens its 2015 volume, the sixty-eighth since the foundation under the old name Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, with a number of new developments. First, the whole old and new series of the Review, together with its Italian sister journal Moneta e Credito, are now fully available online at the respective websites. Completion of the two archives has proved a demanding task for a small non-profit association as Economia civile, though an effort we deemed well worth undertaking. In the spirit of open access, both online archives are available free of charge, as is each new issue. Economia civile and the board of editors believe that both scientific progress and social development require as much diffusion of knowledge and debate as is possible.1 To highlight this commitment, starting from this volume the Review (as well as Moneta e Credito) radically changed its copyright policy. As shortly explained in the note at the bottom of this page, and on the first page of each article, every material published by the Review – unless explicitly specified to the contrary, and excluding any elements of the material in the public domain or where our publication was permitted by an applicable exception or limitation – are now published under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivatives 4.0 (A-NC-ND) International License. The legal code underlying the license can be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode.  Accordingly, anyone may copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format (namely both online and on print) without the need to previously acquire an explicit consent. Such open permission, however, is subject to the three following conditions.                                                   * Sapienza University of Rome; email: carlo.dippoliti@uniroma.it.  1 On the role of open access journals in economics, see e.g. Chandrasekhar (2014). 4  PSL Quarterly Review 1) Attribution: anyone wishing to copy or redistribute the material must give appropriate credit both to the Review and the author(s) and provide a link to the original article and to the license. They may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests Economia civile and/or the author(s) endorse them or their use.  2) Non-Commercial: the material published on the Review and/or on its website may not be copied or redistributed for commercial purposes.  3) No Derivatives: if anyone modifies, transforms or builds upon the material, they may not distribute the modified material (unless, of course, the resulting material may be considered as a new and different product, in which case the usual norms concerning citations and plagiarism apply).   Finally, the board of Economia civile has adopted a code of ethics for the Review, which can be found on its website and at the end of the present introduction. The code has been adapted from that laid down by the American Economic Association and that adopted by the Italian Economic Association (SIE). Following the suggestion e.g. by Dow (2012), the code is not exceedingly specific and does not aim at comprehensiveness. While the code does not aim to exhaust all possible ethical issues arising from authors’, referees’ or other stakeholders’ behaviours, it is intended to highlight the main potential cases of conflict of interest and scientific misbehaviour, with a specific emphasis on the requirements of transparency. Economia civile association, owner and publisher of the Review, is committed to prevent and address any ethical issue arising from authors’, referees’ or other stakeholders’ behaviours – both included and not included in the code below – in a fair manner, respectful and in the interest of scientific integrity and social welfare.  While in some cases it may amount to little more than lip service, restating basic rules of ethics seems all the more relevant within a discipline, economics, that curiously often considers everyone susceptible to respond to incentives apart from economists themselves. On the contrary, as shown for example by Necker (2014), “scientific misconduct” is very much diffused in economics, with e.g. almost one in five economists admitting refraining from citing works in low-ranking  Introduction 5 journals, more than half (51.9%) admitting of not always checking the contents of the works they cite, and lower but equally alarming percentages of economists admitting of copying and plagiarising or massaging the data and faking empirical results.  Ethics is also the main concern of the first article published in this issue. There, Abdullah et al. (2015) deal with economic crimes, a topic often overlooked by economists. They claim that the main reason for failure to tackle the issue may be the lack of a clearly articulated and unanimously shared moral foundation. In their view, a universal moral principle that could serve as the foundation for action must be concerned with harm and its prevention, and attract universal ‘consent’. The authors argue that the Golden Rule (i.e. not doing onto others what we wish was not done to us) satisfies these requirements. Besides the specific proposal, the journal hopes that the issue of the moral foundations of economic systems and economic policy will be taken on and commented in future issues. To make an example, though economic contributions are seldom articulated on an explicit ethical foundation, a pressing moral dimension specifically lies at the hearth of the environmental debate. Guarini (2015) deals with the issue in the second article that follows. While mainstream economists often consider a trade-off between the safeguard of our planet and economic growth, Guarini theorises and tests for a complementarity between the two. Specifically, the author considers the positive role of product and process innovations in fostering both environmental efficiency and labour productivity within a capitalist growth process. He defines environmental efficiency as the ratio between income and pollutant emissions, and considers its growth rate as a proxy of eco-innovations. An analysis for the European countries in the period 1992-2012 at the macro level and for the manufacturing sector separately provides first empirical evidence of a certain complementarity between the two kinds of efficiencies. Finally, Detzer (2015) considers an issue frequently discussed on our Review, i.e. capital requirements for banks. The author reviews capital adequacy regulation from the 1930s up to the financial crisis in Germany, and identifies two main trends: a gradual softening of the 6  PSL Quarterly Review eligibility criteria for equity and increasing reliance on internal risk models. While the first trend has been reversed following the financial crisis, internal risk models still play a central role. Therefore, in light of the deep problems with the use of internal risk models, discussed in the article, Detzer concludes that several relevant problems are not solved yet.    Code of ethics  1. Every article submitted to the Review or presented at any conference organised by Economia civile shall report in its first footnote, together with the acknowledgements, the sources of financial support for the research(es) described in the article. 2. Each author shall identify and list in the same first footnote any interested party from which he or she received financial support including as a remuneration, consultancy fees, grants and the like, summing to at least 10.000€ in the last three years. An “interested” party is any individual, group, or organization that has a financial, ideological, or political stake related to the article. The disclosure requirement also includes in-kind support, such as providing access to data. If the support in question comes with a non-disclosure obligation, that fact should be stated, along with as much information as the obligation permits.  3. Each author should disclose any paid or unpaid positions as consultant, employee, officer, director, or board member of any relevant non-profit organization or profit-making entity. A “relevant” organization or entity is one whose policy positions, goals, or financial interests relate to the article. 4. The disclosures required above apply to any close relative or partner of any author. 5. Each author must disclose if another party had the right to review the paper prior to its circulation.  Introduction 7 REFERENCES  ABDULLAH D.V., ASKARI H. and MIRAKHOR A. (2015), “The Moral Foundation of Collective Action against Economic Crimes”, PSL Quarterly Review, vol. 68 n. 272, pp. 9-39. CHANDRASEKHAR C.P. (2014), “Open Access vs Academic Power”, real-world economics review, n. 66, pp. 127-130. DETZER D. (2015), “Financial Market Regulation in Germany: Capital Requirements of Financial Institutions”, PSL Quarterly Review, vol. 68 n. 272, pp. 57-86. DOW S. (2012), “Codes of Ethics for Economists: A Pluralist View”, contribution to the World Economics Association Conference on Economics in Society: The Ethical Dimension, January, available at https://weaethicsconference.files.wordpress. com/2012/03/dow-ethics-for-wea1.pdf GUARINI G. (2015), “Complementarity between Environmental Efficiency and Labour Productivity in a Cumulative Growth Process”, PSL Quarterly Review, vol. 68 n. 272, pp. 41-56. NECKER S. (2014), “Scientific Misconduct in Economics”, Research Policy, vol. 43 n. 10, pp. 1747-1759. THIRLWALL A.P. (1979), “The Balance of Payments Constraint as an Explanation of International Growth Rate Differences”, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review, vol. 32 n. 128, pp. 45-53. ––––– (2011), “Balance of Payments Constrained Growth Models: History and Overview”, PSL Quarterly Review, vol. 64 n. 259, pp. 307-351. 

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