The Golden Age and the Second Globalization in Italy

After the Golden Age, Italy experienced increasing difficulties in adjusting its economy to the changing external context and to the requirements for sustaining catch-up growth at a higher level of economic development. The adjustment issue is common to advanced countries but the difficulties experienced in Italy look particularly severe. Cushioned by inflation and devaluation, growth remained relatively high in the 1970s. In the subsequent decade, in spite of improved conditions for addressing macroeconomic disequilibria structural adjustments were neglected. Major supply side reforms were eventually implemented in the aftermath of the 1992 crisis. Nevertheless, in the second half of the decade growth fell below the EU average. These necessary reforms fell however short of what was required. Participation in EMU did not help as far as the improvement of growth prospects was concerned. In the last section some of the economic and meta-economic factors explaining the ineffectiveness of the reform process are briefly exploredcatching-up; economic growth; economic reform; productivity performance

The Golden Age and the Second Globalization in Italy

After the Golden Age, Italy experienced increasing difficulties in adjusting its economy to the changing external context and to the requirements for sustaining catch-up growth at a higher level of economic development. The adjustment issue is common to advanced countries but the difficulties experienced in Italy look particularly severe. Cushioned by inflation and devaluation, growth remained relatively high in the 1970s. In the subsequent decade, in spite of improved conditions for addressing macroeconomic disequilibria structural adjustments were neglected. Major supply side reforms were eventually implemented in the aftermath of the 1992 crisis. Nevertheless, in the second half of the decade growth fell below the EU average. These necessary reforms fell however short of what was required. Participation in EMU did not help as far as the improvement of growth prospects was concerned. In the last section some of the economic and metaeconomic factors explaining the ineffectiveness of the reform process are briefly explored.Italy, Europe, Postwar Economic Growth and Policy

Labor Market Regulation and Retirement Age

The present paper analyzes the determinants of political consensus on relevant aspects of the Social Security System and focus on the choices over employment protection and retirement age; a theoretical model is build where an equilibrium setup results from a political process involving three social groups: young, low and high productivity old. Hypothesis and results of the model are tested using macro data. The aim of the analysis is to provide some insight on the reasons why some institutional setups are supported by voters and implemented while others don’t

On Labour Shares in Recent Decades: A Survey

We survey the rich literature studying the behaviour of labor shares in recent decades. To explain their dynamics – the main feature being the decline of European and American shares starting in the 1980s – such literature considers models that use either neoclassical or Leontief-type production functions, with both perfectly competitive markets and monopolistic competition coupled by bargaining between firms and workers. These empirical studies in general have produced results that are scarcely robust. However, they suggest that technical change has a negative and significant impact on the labor share. Evidence for a negative effect of globalization variables is clearly brought out for developing countries, whilst for advanced countries, this effect finds less support. Also, they show that product and labor market regulation issues have mixed effects on the labor share. An alternative to the econometric explanation of labor share is given in the final section.Factor Shares, Functional Income Distribution

What policies do we need for Southern Italy? The role of national and regional policies in the last decade

In this paper we examine the Italian regional policies launched in the second half of the 1990s and aimed at promoting the development of Southern Italy. Ten years on, the goals have not been reached, either in terms of social and economic development, or of the performance of firms receiving government aid. In evaluating the discrepancy between targets and results we argue that the failure of regional policies is a facet of the more general failure of Italian economic policies in the last fifteen years, clearly witnessed by the stagnation of growth and productivity both in the North and Centre and in the South. Two main aspects are highlighted: the effectiveness of regional policies has been affected by national legal rules that have had different effects across regions and have usually allowed a lower quality of public expenditure in the South; the effectiveness of regional policies has been diminished also by attributing importance to regional governments as control centres of public intervention.regional policies, regional development, cohesion

Social Influence Bias in Online Ratings: A Field Experiment

The aim of this paper is to study the empirical phenomenon of rating bubbles, i.e. clustering on extremely positive values in e-commerce platforms and rating web sites. By means of a field experiment that exogenously manipulates prior ratings for a hotel in an important Italian tourism destination, we investigate whether consumers are influenced by prior ratings when evaluating their stay (i.e., social influence bias). Results show that positive social influence exists, and that herd behavior is asymmetric: information on prior positive ratings has a stronger influence on consumers’ rating attitude than information on prior mediocre ratings. Furthermore, we are able to exclude any brag-or-moan effect: the behavior of frequent reviewers, on average, is not statistically different from the behavior of consumers who have never posted ratings online. Yet, non-reviewers exhibit a higher influence to excellent prior ratings, thus lending support to the social influence bias interpretation. Finally, also repeat customers are affected by prior ratings, although to a lesser extent with respect to new customers

Synthesis, biological evaluation and SAR study of novel pyrazole analogues as inhibitors of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

As a continuation of our previous work that turned toward the identification of antimycobacterial compounds with innovative structures, two series of pyrazole derivatives were synthesized by parallel solution-phase synthesis and were assayed as inhibitors of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB), which is the causative agent of tuberculosis. One of these compounds showed high activity against MTB (MIC = 4 μg/mL). The newly synthesized pyrazoles were also computationally investigated to analyze their fit properties to the pharmacophoric model for antitubercular compounds previously built by us and to refine structure–activity relationship analysis

The theory of precautionary saving: an overview of recent developments

This work reviews recent developments in the literature analyzing precautionary saving. After a description of traditional precautionary saving theory, which considers labor income risk and interest rate risk, we present different research lines which introduce a wide range of extensions and generalizations of the classical model: the contemporaneous presence of multiple risks, changes in risks of different types, multiple variables affecting household utility, preferences non-featuring risk aversion and joint decisions on many choice variables. For each of these issues, we provide specific highlights which summarize the main results obtained in the literature. Lastly, we briefly discuss the analyzes beyond the classical model

Social influence bias in ratings: A field experiment in the hospitality sector

We investigate the empirical phenomenon of rating bubbles, that is, the presence of a disproportionate number of extremely positive ratings in user-generated content websites. We test whether customers are influenced by prior ratings when evaluating their stay at a hotel through a field experiment that exogenously manipulates information disclosure. Results show the presence of (asymmetric) social influence bias (SIB): access to information on prior ratings that are above the average positively influences the consumers’ rating of the hotel. In contrast, information on ratings that are below the average does not affect reviewers. Furthermore, customers who have never been to the hotel before the intervention are more susceptible to prior ratings than customers who have repeatedly been to the hotel before. Finally, customers who are not used to writing online reviews are more prone to SIB than customers who frequently write online reviews. Our findings suggest that online rating systems should be adjusted to mitigate this bias, especially as these platforms become more relevant and widespread in the hospitality sector