An Economic Model of Friendship: Homophily,Minorities, and Segregation

We develop a model of friendship formation that sheds light on segregation patterns observed in social and economic networks. Individuals have types and see type‐dependent benefits from friendships. We examine the properties of a steady‐state equilibrium of a matching process of friendship formation. We use the model to understand three empirical patterns of friendship formation: (i) larger groups tend to form more same‐type ties and fewer other‐type ties than small groups, (ii) larger groups form more ties per capita, and (iii) all groups are biased towards same‐type relative to demographics, with the most extreme bias coming from middle‐sized groups. We show how these empirical observations can be generated by biases in preferences and biases in meetings. We also illustrate some welfare implications of the model.     

Early Labour Market Returns to College Subject

Abstract. We estimate early labour market outcomes of Italian university graduates across college subjects. We devote great attention to endogenous selection issues using alternative methods to control for potential self‐selection associated with the choice of the degree subject in order to unravel the causal link between college major and subsequent outcomes in the labour market. Our results suggest that ‘quantitative’ fields (i.e. Sciences, Engineering, and Economics) increase not only the speed of transition into the first job and employment probability but also early earnings, conditional on employment.     

Fight Club and the World Trade Center: On Metaphor,Scale, and the Spatio-temporal (Dis)location of Violence

In this essay we examine the metaphorical rendition of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, which took place on 11 September 2001, as attacks on “civilization.” Our principal aim is to understand how it has proven to be as affective as it seems to have been thus far. We do so by turning to film, a medium that is quintessentially metaphorical and whose own affective power rests on the reconfiguration of time and space. More specifically, we do so by turning to David Fincher's Fight Club (1999). In contrast to the textual approach offered by Slavoj [Zbreve]i[zbreve]ek (2002), we explore how the formal play of different temporal and spatial scales, which would articulate a trenchant critique of alienation, in fact reproduces an understanding of the subject that is deeply complicit with capital. The play of time and space, on which the affective power of the film rests, articulates a rejection of the fundamentally schizophrenic nature of the subject of capital. Our claim is that this exploration of time, space, and political critique illuminates how the elisions of the historical and geo-political that characterize the metaphorical rendition of the attacks on New York and Washington might easily be overlooked. This essay also advances our more general understanding of both the articulation of time and space within the dominant form of metaphorical representation and how this enacts and consolidates a particular politics.     

Innovation, workers skills and industrial relations: Empirical evidence from firm-level Italian data

The shifting of labour demand toward relatively more skilled workers has been a hot issue in the economic field for many years. A consolidated explanation for the upskilling phenomenon is that technological–organisational changes have driven the labour demand with detrimental consequences for less skilled workers (skill-biased technological–organisational change). In order to upgrade the skill workforce the firm has at least two main channels at its disposal: the external labour market strategy, mainly based on hiring and firing mechanisms; the internal labour market strategies, which improve the skill base of the employees through training activities.The main objective of the present work is to verify the relations between innovative strategies and both the workforce composition and the training activities, within an integrated framework that also leads us to consider the role of specific aspects of the industrial relations system.The firm level analysis is based on original datasets which include data on manufacturing firms for two Italian local production systems, located in the Emilia-Romagna region.The results suggest that the firms use both the two channels to improve their skill base, which is actually related to the innovation activities, although there is weak supporting evidence of the use of external labour markets to upgrade the workforce skills: the upskilling phenomenon seems to be associated to specific innovative activities in the technological sphere, while specific organisational aspects emerge as detrimental for blue collars. On the side of internal labour market strategies the evidence supports the hypothesis that innovation intensity induces the firms to implement internal procedures in order to upskill the workforce, confirming the importance of internal labour market strategies. Moreover, we have recognized the important role of firm level industrial relations in determining the training activities for the blue collar workers.     

ALLIANCES BETWEEN COMPETITORS AND CONSUMER INFORMATION

Alliances between competitors in which established firms provide access to proprietary resources—for example, their distribution channels—are important business practices. We analyze a market where an established firm, firm A, produces a product of well‐known quality, and a firm with an unknown brand, firm B, has to choose to produce high or low quality. Firm A observes firm B's quality choice but consumers do not. Hence, firm B is subject to a moral hazard problem which can potentially be solved by firm A. Firm A can accept or reject to form an alliance with firm B, which is observed by consumers. If an alliance is formed, firm A implicitly certifies the rival's product. Consumers infer that firm B is a competitor with high quality, because otherwise why would the established firm accept to form an alliance? The mechanism we discover allows for an economic interpretation of several types of business practices. (JEL: L15, L13, L24, L42, M21, M31, D43)     

17至18世纪意大利人对中国的印象和想象

在意大利,关于中华帝国及其文化的详细知识是从16世纪就开始流传的,但这些信息为更多人所知却是在17和18世纪。对中国的大规模发现始于访问过中国的耶稣会士寄回的各种报告的出版以及他们向欧洲介绍中国经书的译作。这些知识在学术界被不断地讨论,最初是耶稣会士和宗教阶层,接着是启蒙运动的信徒。它们同时也成了整个欧洲就福音传道方法或"礼仪"的种类而引起的广泛辩论中所使用的工具:中国的贤明形象、自然神论、开明的专制政体,这些都为意大利及欧洲的思想家们的辩论提供了有趣的素材。同样的,关于"中国礼仪"的争论最初只限于教会内部和不同教派之间,但慢慢地就冲破了宗教论争和福音传道方法的限制,牵涉到了更广泛的议题:儒家学说本质上是一种道德体系还是一种宗教?讨论的对象也变成了对宗教本身的定义、文化与信仰的关系、对上帝的看法、不同社会的价值观相对性这些问题。这些信息从而被用于更深层次的辩论之中,中国的体系被当作是这样或那样的国家的和道德的观念的标准。启蒙运动将辩论的焦点集中于以儒家学说为基础的中国体系的"合理性"上。因此,一种或多种关于中国的传说就如在欧洲其他国家一样在意大利滋生出来。我们将介绍几种观点,其中从无条件的赞美到苛刻的批判都有。意大利的作家们参与了欧洲关于中国问题的论战并考察了最新出版的关于中国的著作。我们可以把他们分为三类:"亲华者"、"排华者",及以调和的方法破除关于中国的早期传说者。     

Robust winner determination in positional scoring rules with uncertain weights

Theory and Decision - Scoring rules constitute a particularly popular technique for aggregating a set of rankings. However, setting the weights associated with rank positions is a crucial task, as...     

Measuring Health Inequality in US: A Composite Index Approach

Social Indicators Research - In this paper, we use the standardized mortality rates for 21 mutual exclusive causes of death to propose a composite index of US county-level health performances in...