University Quality and Labour Market Outcomes in Italy

Abstract. This paper uses proxies for university quality derived from Performance Indicators to evaluate the impact of university quality on the early labour market outcome of a cohort of recent Italian graduates. Institutional research quality is found to have a negative effect on the probability that both male and female graduates will be overeducated. Additionally, research inputs are positively related to men's wages. In contrast, teaching quality does not appear to enhance students’ economic success.     

Occupational mobility and wealth evolution in a model of educational investment with credit market imperfections

We study the implications of individual heterogeneity for occupational mobility and the evolution of wealth distribution. These issues are investigated within a model of occupational choice with credit market imperfections and local non convexities in educational investment. Whether and under which conditions private wealth accumulation leads to the elimination of the effects of credit market imperfections is also studied. In the cases where steady states feature wealth and occupational mobility we show that private wealth accumulation cannot eliminate the effects of credit market imperfections if, at any point in time, investment correlates with wealth within households in the skilled occupation. Persistence of wealth constraints in the economy with occupational mobility motivates our exploration of policies. Compared to the case of homogeneous ability, we show that heterogeneity requires more persistent policies to achieve similar results in terms of enhanced investment opportunities and income per capita. It is also shown that the scope for policies is larger under heterogeneity: policies can be effective in environments where they would fail in a world of homogeneous abilities.     

Governing Local Area Development through Dynamic Performance Management

Public Organization Review - Several attempts of local areas development fail due to a predominant attention to the internal performance of public organizations. The perspective of local area...     

《凤子》中反讽的各个侧面（下）

在《凤子》中,沈从文破除了归隐的基础、文化预设、物质可能和终极目的,涉及的是归隐的不可能性。沈从文以反讽为特色的隐士的归隐应当被理解为哲学和神秘意义上的归隐。沈从文的所有思考经过了反讽的筛选都被改头换面了,反讽性的超脱,相对于严肃的彻底超脱只是局部的。另外,这是一种双重的超脱：一方面,作者虽不乏公民与政治意识,但这却不成为一种崇拜;另一方面,生命的张力和对知识的相对化阻止了向神秘主义的转变。沈从文的人物并不逃避,他们生活在现实中。从根本上,沈从文将一个以极端化为特色的时代加以相对化。     

Population dynamics and life-cycle consumption

This paper presents a model where aggregate consumption depends on both the level of wealth and the age structure of population. The explicit consideration of an endogenous rate of time preference permits to analyze the important role of population ageing as a determinant of aggregate saving. Received: 23 October 2001/Accepted: 13 February 2002 I would like to thank an anonymous referee for his comments. Financial support from CNR and MURST is gratefully acknowledged. Responsible editor: Alessandro Cigno.     

The Gini concentration test for survival data

We apply the well known Gini index to the measurement of concentration in survival times within groups of patients, and as a way to compare the distribution of survival times across groups of patients in clinical studies. In particular, we propose an estimator of a restricted version of the index from right censored data. We derive the asymptotic distribution of the resulting Gini statistic, and construct an estimator for its asymptotic variance. We use these results to propose a novel test for differences in the heterogeneity of survival distributions, which may suggest the presence of a differential treatment effect for some groups of patients. We focus in particular on traditional and generalized cure rate models, i.e., mixture models with a distribution of the lifetimes of the cured patients that is either degenerate at infinity or has a density. Results from a simulation study suggest that the Gini index is useful in some situations, and that it should be considered together with existing tests (in particular, the Log-rank, Wilcoxon, and Gray–Tsiatis tests). Use of the test is illustrated on the classic data arising from the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group melanoma clinical trial E1690.     

A new spatial shift-share decomposition for the regional growth analysis: a local study of the employment based on Italian Business Statistical Register

This paper presents a new shift-share model to decompose the employment growth rate of a territorial unit by taking into consideration the association between industry mix and firm legal status effects measured in its neighborhood. We explicitly consider this kind of association to go beyond the problem of asymmetry found in a previous work. The empirical application refers to the data collected in the Italian Business Statistical Register and, in particular, regional employment figures in Friuli Venezia Giulia (NUTS2 level), for 219 territorial units (LAU2 level) and 12 Local Labour Systems (LLS), for the years 2001 and 2004.     

Maximum likelihood estimation of heterogeneous mixtures of Gaussian and uniform distributions

Existence and consistency of the Maximum Likelihood estimator of the parameters of heterogeneous mixtures of Gaussian and uniform distributions with known number of components are shown under constraints to prevent the likelihood from degeneration and to ensure identifiability. The EM-algorithm is discussed, and for the special case with a single uniform component a practical scheme to find a good local optimum is proposed. The method is compared theoretically and empirically to the estimation of a Gaussian mixture with “noise component” as introduced by Banfield and Raftery (1993) to find out whether it is a worthwhile alternative particularly in situations with outliers and points not belonging to the Gaussian components.