All about ideology? Reading Piketty´s with Latin American lenses

This review essay evaluates Capital and Ideology in light of the Latin American experience. Given its history of exploitation and high levels of inequality, the region constitutes an essential case study. By considering the Latin America case, we can also benefit from the many insights coming from within the region and often overlooked by the Anglo‐Saxon (dominant) literature. The paper makes two different arguments. First, asymmetries in economic and political power are the main drivers of long‐term inequality. Following insights from structuralism, I show how the organization of the global economy has shaped domestic patterns of income distribution in many parts of the world. The dependent character of economic development together with the power of domestic elites explain Latin America's stubborn inequality; ideology has historically been more an instrument than an underlying driver. Second, we cannot understand the evolution of income distribution without considering the role of dictatorships. While Capital and Ideology explains convincingly why liberal democracies are not working, it never properly considers the risk and costs of (conservative) authoritarian regimes. In thinking about policy responses, the essay also highlights the importance of strengthening democracy, fighting dictatorships, and enhancing the influence of social movements.     

A visual planning solution to streamline the processes of hybrid cross-dockings

Cross-docking is a logistic strategy widely adopted both in manufacturing and distribution contexts. Despite the huge number of researches on this topic, most of them remain rather theoretical as they do not pay enough attention to operational aspects and daily functioning patterns of cross-dockings. This article aims at introducing a new focus for cross-docking research by proposing a visual planning solution to manage daily operation of a manufacturing cross-docking. By avoiding complex optimization algorithms and by adopting concepts belonging to the lean management theory, the article shows the potential of visual planning techniques to improve performance of cross-dockings. Starting from a specific industrial context, the shipping warehouse of an Italian company of the oil andand gas sector, a visual management methodology has been proposed to support the operation of cross-dockings. Although developed in a particular context, the proposed methodology and its underlying principles are to be considered general and potentially applicable to a wide range of cross-dockings. The methodology fully exploits an analytical tool, namely, the Safety Margin coefficientthat could be used for capacity planning purposes and to evaluate quantitatively the system performance at a given time instant.     

Underground testing: Name-altering practices as probes in electronic music

Name-altering practices are common in many creative fields—pen names in literature, stage names in the performing arts, and aliases in music. More than just reflecting artistic habits or responding to the need for distinctive brands, these practices can also serve as test devices to probe, validate, and guide the artists’ active participation in a cultural movement. At the same time, they constitute a powerful probe to negotiate the boundaries of a subculture, especially when its features are threatened by appropriation from the mass-oriented culture. Drawing evidence from electronic music, a field where name-altering practices proliferate, we outline dynamics of pseudonymity, polyonymy, and anonymity that surround the use of aliases. We argue that name-altering practices are both a tool that artists use to probe the creative environment and a device to recursively put one’s creative participation to the test. In the context of creative subcultures, name-altering practices constitute a subtle but effective form of underground testing.     

THE REPLACEMENT PROBLEM IN FRICTIONAL ECONOMIES: A NEAR‐EQUIVALENCE RESULT

We examine how technological change affects wage inequality and unemployment in a calibrated model of matching frictions in the labor market. We distinguish between two polar cases studied in the literature: a “creative destruction” economy, where new machines enter chiefly through new matches and an “upgrading” economy, where machines in existing matches are replaced by new machines. Our main results are: (i) these two economies produce very similar quantitative outcomes, and (ii) the total amount of wage inequality generated by frictions is very small. We explain these findings in light of the fact that, in the model calibrated to the US economy, both unemployment and vacancy durations are very short, i.e., the matching frictions are quantitatively minor. Hence, the equilibrium allocations of the model are remarkably close to those of a frictionless version of our economy where firms are indifferent between upgrading and creative destruction, and where every worker is paid the same market‐clearing wage. These results are robust to the inclusion of machine‐specific or match‐specific heterogeneity into the benchmark model. (JEL: J41, J64, O33)     

Stakeholder Green Pressure and New Product Performance in Emerging Countries: A Cross-country Study

Despite the burgeoning literature on stakeholder green pressure, research is scarce on how it influences eco-product innovation and new product performance. This article examines stakeholder green pressures as antecedents of eco-product innovation and new product performance in firms operating in resource-constrained countries. Using data gathered from surveys in Vietnam (N = 183) and Ghana (N = 217), we find that the positive effects of stakeholder green pressures on new product performance are serially mediated by environmental sustainability orientation and eco-product innovation. Our findings contribute to ongoing efforts to clarify the mechanisms channelling stakeholder pressures into new product performance in resource-constrained environments.     

Framing the tendency to betray one's good intentions. Akrasia as a dialogical dynamic

Akrasia, otherwise known as ‘weakness of will’, is a state of mind whereby people act deliberately against their better judgment. This paper aims to provide a conceptual framework for understanding akrasia from psychosocial perspectives that assume the self is multiple and strongly interconnected with the relational flow of which it is a part. Drawing on key ideas from Dialogical Self Theory, we analyze the main dialogical dynamics that can generate akratic episodes with reference to how individuals organize their personal position repertoire, and to the relational and socio-cultural setting in which the actions are taken. The discussion enables us to identify some indicators to frame the tendency to betray one's good intentions, and to offer some suggestions on how to reduce the occurrence of the various forms of akrasia analyzed.     

Scholarly Communication 2.0: Exploring Researchers' Opinions on Web 2.0 for Scientific Knowledge Creation, Evaluation and Dissemination

This paper presents the results of a survey aimed at gauging the potential acceptance of a collaborative and Web 2.0 inspired scholarly communication sector. While this sector has seen the birth of a multitude of innovative initiatives, there is still little empirical evidence of the acceptance of such initiatives by researchers. We received 349 completed questionnaires from researchers of many different disciplines. The results of the survey show that there is a strong positive attitude towards Web 2.0 and open publishing approaches. However, the major challenge still resides in combining free dissemination of results with robust and reliable quality control mechanisms.     

Calibrated predictions for multivariate competing risks models

Prediction models for time-to-event data play a prominent role in assessing the individual risk of a disease, such as cancer. Accurate disease prediction models provide an efficient tool for identifying individuals at high risk, and provide the groundwork for estimating the population burden and cost of disease and for developing patient care guidelines. We focus on risk prediction of a disease in which family history is an important risk factor that reflects inherited genetic susceptibility, shared environment, and common behavior patterns. In this work family history is accommodated using frailty models, with the main novel feature being allowing for competing risks, such as other diseases or mortality. We show through a simulation study that naively treating competing risks as independent right censoring events results in non-calibrated predictions, with the expected number of events overestimated. Discrimination performance is not affected by ignoring competing risks. Our proposed prediction methodologies correctly account for competing events, are very well calibrated, and easy to implement.     

Wage Dispersion and Equilibrium Search Models: Some Evidence from Italy

This paper provides a structural estimation of an equilibrium search model with on‐the‐job search and heterogeneity in firms' productivities using a sample of Italian male workers. Results indicate that arrival rates of offers for workers are higher when unemployed than when employed and firms exploit their monopsony power when setting wages. As a result, workers earn far less than their marginal product. The model is then used to study regional labour market differentials in Italy. Wide variation in frictional transition parameters across areas helps to explain persistent unemployment and wage differentials.