Endogenous fertility and human capital in a Schumpeterian growth model

This study develops a scale-invariant Schumpeterian growth model with endogenous fertility and human capital accumulation. The model features two engines of long-run economic growth: R&D-based innovation and human capital accumulation. One novelty of this study is endogenous fertility, which negatively affects the growth rate of human capital. Given this growth-theoretic framework, we characterize the dynamics of the model and derive comparative statics of the equilibrium growth rates with respect to structural parameters. As for policy implications, we analyze how patent policy affects economic growth through technological progress, human capital accumulation, and endogenous fertility. In summary, we find that strengthening patent protection has (a) a positive effect on technological progress, (b) a negative effect on human capital accumulation through a higher rate of fertility, and (c) an ambiguous overall effect on economic growth.     

Individual determinants of social behavior

By using unique data from the section on social behavior of the Bank of Italy's 2004 Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW), the paper studies the individual determinants of several aspects of social behavior: attitudes to cooperating with anonymous others; interest in politics; participation in groups and associations; and propensity to rely on favoritism both in finding a job and in dealing with government red tape. Our findings suggest that these different aspects of social behavior are only weakly correlated to each other and are explained by different individual determinants. We find that older and more educated individuals display a greater willingness to cooperate, a stronger interest in politics, and more intense association activity. By contrast, the likelihood of relying on favoritism does not depend on age and education. We also find that home-ownership is associated with good social conduct, while urban residence has mostly a negative impact on public behavior. Finally, having left-wing political opinions increases the interest in politics, while it does not affect the other aspects of social behavior.     

Strategic risk in supply chain contract design

Supply chains facing asymmetric information can either operate in a cooperative mode with information and benefit sharing or can choose a non-cooperative form of interaction and align their incentives via screening contracts. In the cooperative mode, supply chain efficiency can be achieved, but high levels of trust and trustworthiness are required. In the non-cooperative mode, the contract mechanism guarantees a second best supply chain performance, but only if all parties choose their equilibrium strategies without trembles. Experimental evidence, however, shows that both operating modes often fail due to strategic risk. Cooperation is disrupted by deceptive signals and the lack of trust, whereas non-cooperative strategies suffer from persistent out-of-equilibrium behavior. We present two means to reduce strategic risk. First, a punishment mechanism leads to a better matching of trust and trustworthiness and supports the cooperative operating mode. Second, an enforcement of self-selection supports the non-cooperative equilibrium by increasing the attractiveness of screening contracts. We find that supply chain performance can benefit from reduced strategic risk in either operating mode.     

Designing selection experiments with bernoulli populations

This paper is concerned with a fixed size subset selection problem for Bernoulli populations in the framework of the indifference zone approach. The goal is to select s populationswhich contain at least c of those with the t largest success probabilities. In order to control the probability of correct selection over the preference zone extensive tables of exact minimum sample sizes have been prepared to implement the single-stage procedure generalized from the well-known Sobel-Huyett procedure. It is shown how the tables can also be employed to design certain closedsequential procedures. These procedures curtail the sampling process of the single-stage procedureand may differ in their sampling rules. Two procedures working with play-the-winner rules are described in detail     

Estimating Cross Province and Municipal City Price Level Differences in China: Some Experiments and Results

The estimation of Sub-national purchasing power parities (PPPs) for countries where the regions and provinces have different level of development is fundamental for income, consumption, standard of living real term comparisons, as well as for measuring cross-region welfare inequality. This is even truer for large countries like China, where the above aggregates exhibit great variability among provinces. The aim of this paper is to compute the price level differences, measured by the PPPs, for 31 Chinese Provinces and Municipal Cities, based on a sample of 62 goods and services for the year 2014. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to do it since many years. After a short review of previous studies on China cross-province and municipal cities price level differences measurement and the illustration of methodology and data used, the results of our elaborations are presented and discussed. Taking Beijing as the base area, there is evidence that the PPP max/min ratio is 1.74, confirming the common belief that China cross-province and municipal cities price levels are significantly different.     

ELECTORAL RULES AND CORRUPTION

Is corruption systematically related to electoral rules? Recent theoretical work suggests a positive answer. But little is known about the data. We try to address this lacuna by relating corruption to different features of the electoral system in a sample of about eighty democracies in the 1990s. We exploit the cross‐country variation in the data, as well as the time variation arising from recent episodes of electoral reform. The evidence is consistent with the theoretical priors. Larger voting districts—and thus lower barriers to entry—are associated with less corruption, whereas larger shares of candidates elected from party lists—and thus less individual accountability—are associated with more corruption. Individual accountability appears to be most strongly tied to personal ballots in plurality‐rule elections, even though open party lists also seem to have some effect. Because different aspects roughly offset each other, a switch from strictly proportional to strictly majoritarian elections only has a small negative effect on corruption. (JEL: E62, H3)     

Just-in-time purchasing: an empirical study of operational practices, supplier development and performance

This paper examines the role of supplier development in establishing and managing efficient buyer–supplier operational links. The paper develops and assesses a measurement instrument for “operational” and “supplier development” just-in-time purchasing practices, followed by an examination of the relationships between the two sets, and an investigation into whether the use of “operational” and “supplier development” practices has a bearing on higher plant performance. A plant-level survey was carried out on a sample of electronics and machinery plants. The study empirically:

• documents the close connection between the buyer–supplier operational link and the buyer’s practices for supplier development;

• demonstrates that recourse to supplier development programs and their nature depend on the kind of vendor–vendee operational connection;

• test whether different plant performance outcomes result from the implementing of different “operational” and “supplier development” practices. It demonstrates that better-performing plants exhibit more advanced design and logistic links with sources, more formalised vendor-rating and ranking procedures, greater use of organisational devices for supplier-organisational integration and place greater importance on supplier assistance and training.

Applying fuzzy logic to personnel assessment: a case study

The main results of a research project spanning over several years are presented in this paper. The aim of the research was the improvement of the effectiveness of personnel assessment within a large Italian corporation operating in the research sector. The first step of the research consisted of the analysis of the raters’ behavior, so as to elicit the judgement categories and prototypes they used in the judgement formulation, based on the rating method adopted in the corporation. The second step consisted of improving the rating method using fuzzy logic. The corporate management tested the new rating method and found it more efficient and reliable than the previous one.