No-envy and Arrow's conditions

This paper analyzes the concept of envy-freeness in the framework of Arrovian social choice theory. We define various no-envy conditions and study their relationships with Arrow's condition of independence of irrelevant alternatives. We also propose a new condition, called Minimal Equity, that says that each individual must have the conditional power to veto at least one social state (for instance, a social state which is particularly unfair to him). We show that, under unrestricted domain, Pareto Optimality and a weak independence condition, Minimal Equity leads to an impossibility result. Received: 9 October 1997/Accepted: 27 May 1998     

Projecting Long-Term Care Expenditure in Four European Union Member States: The Influence of Demographic Scenarios

This study examines the sensitivity of future long-term care demand and expenditure estimates to official demographic projections in four selected European countries: Germany, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom. It uses standardised methodology in the form of a macro-simulation exercise and finds evidence for significant differences in assumptions about demographic change and its effect on the demand for long-term care, and on relative and absolute long-term care expenditure. It concludes that mortality-rate assumptions can have a considerable influence on welfare policy planning. Relative dispersion between country-specific and Eurostat official estimates was found to be higher for the United Kingdom and Germany than for Italy and Spain, suggesting that demographic projections had a greater influence in those countries.

Nash Bargaining Theory,Nonconvex Problems and Social Welfare Orderings

In this paper we deal with the extension of Nash bargaining theory to nonconvex problems. By focussing on the Social Welfare Ordering associated with a bargaining solution, we characterize the symmetric Nash Bargaining Solution (NBS). Moreover, we obtain a unified method of proof of recent characterization results for the asymmetric single-valued NBS and the symmetric multivalued NBS, as well as their extensions to different domains.     

THEORIES OF THE STATE: THE CASE OF LAND REFORM IN ITALY, 1944–1961

This article examines the case of land reform in Italy from 1944 to 1961 in relation to the role of the State in capitalism. Through an analysis of recent debate on the capitalist State, it offers an investigation of the generation and outcomes of the process of land reform. It is important to note that the social pressure exerted by landless peasants and farm workers for the redistribution of land and the dissolution of the dominant social bloc generated the conditions for a land reform that only partially satisfied the needs of the agricultural working class. Simultaneously, the mediation of the State enhanced the overall interests of the domestic bourgeoisie. In this context, land reform produced contradictory results that favored the processes of accumulation of capital and legitimation of social dissent.     

Global Agro-Food Corporations and the State: The Ferruzzi Case

The relationship between transnational corporations (TNCs) in the agro-food sector and the nation-state in the context of global post-Fordism is examined through a case study of recent events involving the Ferruzzi transnational corporation. TNCs have a complex and contradictory set of relations with the state that are affected by competition among TNCs, by TNCs' internal disagreements, and by the fragmented nature of the state. The state assists TNCs through formal and informal channels. In this specific case, the informality of the system is underscored by the openly illegal arrangement that was operated for years by Ferruzzi officials and members of the officialdom of the state. However, the state also has the capacity to counter the actions of TNCs and to enforce the interests of subordinate groups.     

Some further results on nonbinary social choice

The theory of nonbinary social choice deals with cases where choice over two-element sets may not be possible. In this paper we extend the two main approaches to this problem, initiated respectively by Fishburn (1974) and by Grether and Plott (1982). The difference between the two approaches lies essentially in the structure of the family of feasible sets of alternatives. Nonbinary versions of Arrow's General Possibility Theorem and of Gibbard's oligarchy result are established using weak feasibility conditions. The method of proof relies on deeper (fixed agenda) impossibility theorems.     

The Relationship Between Cognitive Maps,Industry Complexity and Strategies Implemented: The Case of the Carpi Textile-Clothing Industrial System

This paper discusses the relationship between the subjective organisation and the perceived competitive structure of an industry based on an empirical study of the Carpi textile-clothing district, which partially replicates a previous study of the Scottish knitwear industry conducted by other authors (Porac et al., 1995). The initial hypothesis to be tested is that an industry may be broken down into a number of subsets of firms within which competition is perceived as being fiercer as compared with firms in different subsets. These subsets, or groups, correspond to the groups or types of firms into which decision-makers -- managers and entrepreneurial business owners alike -- perceive the industry as being divided.The results of the study are then compared to the empirical evidence from the research conducted by other authors. This comparison provides some interesting elements for investigating the relationships between industry complexity, cognitive maps and strategies implemented by the firms belonging to it. After suggesting a definition of complexity of an industry as the number of strategies implemented in it by competitors, we discuss the hypothesis that key-actors in the firms develop a mental picture of their environment that tends to become less comprehensive and accurate as the degree of complexity of the environment itself increases.     

An R package for the simulation of correlated discrete variables

A package for the stochastic simulation of discrete variables with assigned marginal distributions and correlation matrix is presented and discussed. The simulating mechanism relies upon the Gaussian copula, linking the discrete distributions together, and an iterative scheme recovering the correlation matrix for the copula that ensures the desired correlations among the discrete variables. Examples of its use are provided as well as three possible applications (related to probability, sampling, and inference), which illustrate the utility of the package as an efficient and easy-to-use tool both in statistical research and for didactic purposes.     

Tensions and paradoxes of humanitarianism. Dialogue with Lilie Chouliaraki

Lilie Chouliaraki is Professor of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has a background in Languages and Linguistics and her research has a strong interdisciplinary orientation, drawing on social and cultural theory, moral philosophy and sociology, visual communication and discourse theory. Her main interest lies in understanding how the media shape our ethical and political relationship to distant others; how they inform the ways we witness the vulnerability of these others and the ways we are invited to feel, think and act towards them. In 2006, she published The spectatorship of suffering, which is a seminal piece of work within the field of Media Studies, opening up the domain of mediated suffering studies. In 2013, Lilie published The ironic spectator: solidarity in the age of post-humanitarianism, which was awarded the Outstanding Book of the Year Prize by ICA 2015, and has been widely reviewed and acclaimed. In this recent work, Chouliaraki explores how digital media are today changing the traditional relationship between humanitarian practice and politics, focusing on the ways humanitarian agencies try to - and fail to - combine a dominant market logic with a political vision of justice and social change.