A Measure of Trust: The Italian Regional Divide in a Latent Class Approach

Social differences within countries may partly explain the lack of economic convergence and the persistence of regional disparities. The case of Italy is emblematic: economic gap between North and South remains at high levels with large differences in social capital and in trust. In this paper, we use the micro data from the ISTAT “Aspects of Daily Life” Survey to build a measure of “trust in others” and a measure of “trust in institutions” through a latent class model to attribute a trust score to the Italian households and the Italian regions and, in this way, to add elements of knowledge useful to policies. Our measures confirm a persistent territorial divide although the regional mapping appears more complex than the classical North–South partition. At last, a discussion on the household typology shows that the territorial gaps of trust persist even among households with similar socio-economic characteristics.     

Students Mobility: Assessing the Determinants of Attractiveness Across Competing Territorial Areas

A central question for education authorities has become “which factors make a territory attractive for tertiary students?” Tertiary education is recognised as one of the most important assets for the development of a territory, thus students’ mobility becomes a brain drain issue whenever there are prevalent areas that attract students from other territories. In this paper, we try to identify the most important factors that could affect student mobility in Italy. In doing that we analyse students’ flows across competing territorial areas which supply tertiary education programs. We will consider a wide range of determinants related to the socio-economic characteristics of the areas as well as resources of the universities in the territories in terms of variety and quantity of the degree programs there available, financial endowments provided by Central Government, and services available to students. The Bradley–Terry modelling approach based on pair comparisons has been adopted to define the attractiveness of competing territories and assess how much the detected divergences can be attributed to factors directly related to the considered characteristics of the universities in the territory and how much is ascribable to inherent characteristics of the areas where the universities are located such as the labour market conditions. Furthermore, the adopted approach allows us to consider uncertainty in defining territorial attractiveness and making comparisons. In this way, we would like to provide some evidences to assess if the rules currently used by the Central Government to finance public universities on the basis of their capabilities to attract students really reward the efforts made by the university system in the area to improve their standard of quality or, on the contrary, reward the territorial features.     

Family Structure and Subjective Economic Well-Being: Some New Evidence

The paper investigates the main socio-demographic and economic determinants of subjective economic well-being in different typologies of households. Previous studies have used dummy variables to explore the effect of family structure. In this paper, however four different models—one for each family typology—have been estimated to test if each selected explanatory variable is significant and how it acts in determining the level of subjective economic well-being. To achieve this, we apply an under-used logit model—the partial proportional ordered model. Our analysis, based on data from the 2005 Italian Survey on Income and Living Conditions highlights the main variables affecting the subjective economic well-being of all household typologies. These main variables are related to income adequacy, such as being able to afford housing, clothes and holidays, and also include the work-status and level of education of the respondent. These variables produce notable differences in the level of subjective economic well-being. We find that couples with no children have the highest level of perceived economic well-being, while couples with two or more children and even more so one-person households are more economically insecure.     

Composite Indicator of Social Inclusion for European Countries

Social inclusion is one of the key challenges of the European Union (EU) Sustainable Development Strategy. We use four indicators from EU policies to measure social inclusion for the 27 member countries of Europe. In particular, we aggregate the four indicators in a multiplicative composite indicator via a DEA-BoD approach with weights determined endogenously with proportion constraints. We obtain a score of social inclusion that allows us to grade the 27 EU countries from 2006 to 2010. In this way, we highlight the specific role played by the four indicators in determining improvements and deteriorations of social inclusion during the European phase of the financial and economic crisis.     

Correction to: Detecting economic insecurity in Italy: a latent transition modelling approach

Statistical Methods & Applications -     

Detecting economic insecurity in Italy: a latent transition modelling approach

Statistical Methods & Applications - Economic insecurity has increased in importance in the understanding of economic and socio-demographic household behaviour. The present paper aims to...     

SME manager development in virtual learning communities and the role of trust: A conceptual study

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are seen as vital to economic development. However, managers in these organizations generally have fewer opportunities for training and development than their counterparts in larger organizations. In this paper, the authors argue the need for development opportunities based around ‘virtual’ learning and develop a conceptual framework. The increasing penetration of broadband technologies offers the opportunity to create learning communities to engage SME managers with peers facing similar challenges. For a meaningful experience to be achieved in a virtual community, the role of the facilitator is established as important; however, an area largely overlooked in prior research into networked learning is that of the role of trust and how facilitators can generate it. In order to develop the framework for this paper, the authors review prior research into trust, learning, facilitation and virtual learning communities – the main aim being the identification of those aspects of the facilitator intervention that are most likely to engender trust and participation. Finally, areas for further research are identified.