Public investment and growth: Lessons learned from 60-years experience in Southern Italy

This article analyses the contribution of public investment to economic growth in Southern Italy in the second half of the twentieth century (1951–2011). The Bai–Perron tests suggest that economic growth followed three distinct regimes: accelerated growth in the years 1951–1973 (average growth rate 5.3%); low growth in the period 1974–1995 (average growth rate 1.6%); zero growth on average after 1995. Using cointegration analysis, we find a positive effect of public investment on per unit of labour output of the Mezzogiorno in the whole period, 1951–2011. However, the estimates of the model show statistically significant parameters of public investment in the first regime, but not in the second regime, when economic growth is sustained by business investment and technical change. The last phase of growth sees the negative influence of the social and institutional environment on the functioning of the economy. The different impact of public investment on growth over time is ascribed to changes in the quality of institutions.     

Frailty in the Old Age as a Direct Marker of Quality of Life and Health: Gender Differences

Social Indicators Research - Aging of the population emphasizes the need for research on aging-related problems, among which frailty is a key element because of its clinical as well as social...     

Implementation challenges for seafarers’ social security protection: The case of the European Union

In a world of competing flag States and short-term employment, enjoying the benefits provided by a social security system is a difficult, if not impossible, task for many seafarers. The Maritime Labour Convention, 2006, has abandoned the flag State principle in favour of the residence principle for that reason. This article addresses the implementation challenges of this approach by examining the European Union case, and highlights the advantages of the residence principle in terms of administrative efficiency and effectiveness, enhanced coordination between social security contributions and personal income tax in cross-border situations, and better use of State aid measures.     

Privilege and burden of im‐/mobility governance: On the reinforcement of inequalities during a pandemic lockdown

In order to contain the COVID‐19 pandemic, nation states have focused on the governance of im‐/mobilities: certain mobility restrictions have been enforced, while simultaneously some forms of mobility have been maintained or even enhanced in order to keep the system running in crisis mode. With a special focus on Austria, we analyse the specific politics of im‐/mobilities concerning the organization of paid work and show how the socio‐spatial conditions of who is permitted, denied or urged to work are inextricably linked to inequalities. It becomes apparent that while in principle all bodies are equally dependent on collective social relations and enduring infrastructure, not everybody contributes equally to their maintenance. In fact, the governance of im‐/mobilities follows and reinforces already prevalent inequality regimes based on class, gender and migration relations, thereby differentiating between bodies perceived as highly valuable and worth protecting and those categorized as less valued and potentially disposable.     

Why the paradigm of work–family conflict is no longer sustainable: Towards more empowering social imaginaries to understand women's identities

The paradigm of work–family conflict is challenged by the fluid realities of the actual world. Through an innovative phenomenographic study of women's understanding of their lives, we show that the social imaginary of work–family conflict assumes that vulnerability is a constitutive reality for women. Consequently, with respect to the perspectives through which women are invited to make sense of their lives, the metaphor of conflict enforces a worldview based on traditional gender roles. Organizational policies that rely heavily on a social imaginary of work–family conflict may prove ineffective. On the one hand, they ignore the diversity of morphologies and vocabularies used by women today to understand themselves in relation to their family and workplace. On the other, work–family conflict arises as a product of policy measures and bureaucratic practices rather than as an experiential reality. Policy statements on work–family conflict have a performative character: they communicate a message about women's social status and identity. Therefore, effective organizational policies should integrate vocabularies and assumptions that make women aware of themselves in a confident manner by relying on social imaginaries that encourage agency and empowered participation in the world.     

Historical Trends in Concerns About Social Issues Across Four Decades Among U.S. Adolescents

This study examined adolescents’ concerns about social issues and how these concerns have changed over historical time. Separate cohorts of U.S. high school seniors (N = 110,953; 51.1% female) reported their worries about four social issues (crime/violence, economic problems, hunger/poverty, race relations) every year from 1976 to 2015. Youth were most concerned with crime/violence, followed by economic problems, hunger/poverty, and race relations. Adolescents’ social concerns varied by demographic characteristics and cohort, paralleling specific historical events and appearing responsive to the political challenges of the time. Initiatives seeking to engage youth within the political process may benefit from providing opportunities for teens to participate in civic activities aimed to address these issues.     

Reports of Conferences,Institutes, and Seminars

This quarter's column features a report from Electronic Resources and Libraries held March 16–19, 2014, in Austin, TX; another from Potomac Technical Processing Librarians (PTPL) held in Annapolis, MD, on October 17, 2014; and several reports from ALA Midwinter held January 30–February 3, 2015, in Chicago, IL. By necessity, these reports are not exhaustive in covering the respective conferences.     

Control Premium in Legally Constrained Markets for Corporate Control: The Italian Case (1993–2003)*

We discuss the simple model pioneered by Barclay and Holderness (1989, Journal of Financial Economics 25: 371–395) and recently reproposed by Dyck and Zingales (2004a, Journal of Finance 2, 537–600; 2004b Journal of Applied Corporate Finance 16, 51–72) in order to measure the value of control in countries, like Italy, where transfer of control is regulated by law. We demonstrate that it is possible to broaden the application of B&;H approach to block trades followed by mandatory tender offers and we show the conditions under which we may obtain significant measures of private benefits also when voluntary tender offers are considered. In order to test for our theoretical predictions, we analyse the pricing of 27 control transactions involving the common stock of Italian listed corporations between 1993 and 2003. We find that block-transaction (tender) premium equals on average 8% of the firm’s equity value in the case of pure block-trades, 9% in the case of block trades followed by a mandatory tender offer, while it increases to 18% in the case of voluntary tender offers. The results suggest that, in the case of block trades followed by a mandatory tender offer, the acquirer does not transfer a larger portion of its surplus. This doesn’t take place in the case of voluntary tender offers, in which the raider’s bargaining power collapses. Our estimate of the control premium is sensibly lower than that presented in previous studies based on similar methodologies, providing up-to-date evidence for control stake valuation purposes and for comparison with cross country studies aiming at assessing the quality of rules devoted to minority shareholders’ protection. We also perform a cross-sectional regression analysis of private benefits of control and confirm some of the findings presented in the previous literature: particularly, we find evidence of a positive relation between the magnitude of private benefits of control and the target’s degree of stock-pyramiding. We also find that foreign acquirers and financial investors seem likely to face greater difficulties in extracting private benefits of control.     

Organizing for Public Policy Effect: Aggregate Affiliated Interests in the American States*

Recent advances in the study of organizations suggest that various environmental characteristics should affect the structural characteristics of interest groups. We explore this thesis using a data set of lobbying in the American states. We use OLS regression to determine the effect of variables to measure the concepts of societal system, political culture, lobbyist registration, and state expenditures. We find that the most important variable is the total number of state lobbying efforts. In addition, as the number of lobbying increases among the states we found that a larger proportion of lobbying has been conducted by interest groups acting on their own, instead of creating affiliated aggregates. In addition, adding more variables does not increase the explanative value of the model.     

Quantifying the Effects of Expert Selection and Elicitation Design on Experts’ Confidence in Their Judgments About Future Energy Technologies

Expert elicitations are now frequently used to characterize uncertain future technology outcomes. However, their usefulness is limited, in part because: estimates across studies are not easily comparable; choices in survey design and expert selection may bias results; and overconfidence is a persistent problem. We provide quantitative evidence of how these choices affect experts’ estimates. We standardize data from 16 elicitations, involving 169 experts, on the 2030 costs of five energy technologies: nuclear, biofuels, bioelectricity, solar, and carbon capture. We estimate determinants of experts’ confidence using survey design, expert characteristics, and public R&D investment levels on which the elicited values are conditional. Our central finding is that when experts respond to elicitations in person (vs. online or mail) they ascribe lower confidence (larger uncertainty) to their estimates, but more optimistic assessments of best‐case (10th percentile) outcomes. The effects of expert affiliation and country of residence vary by technology, but in general: academics and public‐sector experts express lower confidence than private‐sector experts; and E.U. experts are more confident than U.S. experts. Finally, extending previous technology‐specific work, higher R&D spending increases experts’ uncertainty rather than resolves it. We discuss ways in which these findings should be seriously considered in interpreting the results of existing elicitations and in designing new ones.