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This paper investigates the extent and determinants of business cycle synchronization among the US states during the period 2002–11. Phase synchronization is not measured based on one national reference series, but rather is assessed using pairwise synchronization indicators computed over the business cycles of all US state pairs. The analysis is based on a natural and intuitive measure of synchronization: the fraction of observations when the cyclical phase is the same for both states in each state pair. Synchronization indicators have a spatially correlated structure. The economic determinants of synchronization are studied using spatial econometric models. Business cycles are more synchronized between those states characterized by strong commercial links and a similar structure in terms of industrialization, labour market characteristics and openness.

This paper presents new perspectives and methodological instruments for verifying the validity of Benford’s law for a large given dataset. To this aim, we first propose new general tests for checking the statistical conformity of a given dataset with a generic target distribution, we also provide the explicit representation of the asymptotic distributions of the relevant test statistics. Then, we discuss the applicability of such novel devices to the case of Benford’s law. We implement extensive Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the size and the power of the introduced tests. Finally, we discuss the challenging theme of interpreting, in a statistically reliable way, the conformity between two distributions in the presence of a large number of observations.

This paper extends the understanding of the relationship between accounting and the political process beyond the political cost hypothesis, documenting the fact that a positive relationship exists between elections and earnings management in Municipally-Owned Entities (MOEs). While State ownership is normally believed to be negatively related to earnings management, we document that, during an election period, the political links it creates increase political costs to such a level that this relation is inverted. We perform our analysis using a sample of 3557 Italian utility entities including 506 entities for which one single municipality has the absolute majority of shares. The sample spans a 6-year period including, on average, two election dates for each entity. Our empirical results support the existence of a relationship between elections and earnings management of MOEs and they confirm the intuition of Ramanna and Roychowdhury (J Account Res 48: 445–475, 2010) on the existence of a relationship between political connectedness and pre-electoral earnings management. We corroborate our main results using earnings variation frequency distribution analysis to check whether there is a tendency to adjust the published results upwards. Our results illustrate that, during election periods, MOEs are more likely to publish an increase in their income. While recognising the possibility that politicians might also benefit from the pre-electoral MOE earnings management detected, our paper does not attempt to prove their involvement in the EM activity, so the possibility that a “political State-Owned Entities Earnings cycle” exists is an avenue for further research.

Rank–size analysis is a powerful methodological instrument for describing the main features of a unified system by moving from an available sample of its disaggregated elements. We here study the rank–size relationship of banks’ total assets in a sample of 13 advanced economies. We show that a standard power-law function is unable to provide an adequate fit of the data, while a Discrete Generalized Beta Distribution provides a statistically satisfactory fit, being able to capture the behaviour of the distribution at low and high ranks. We then analyse the relationship between the parameters of the Discrete Generalized Beta Distribution estimated in each country and the main features of the country’s banking industry. Our results point to a connection with the degree of development of the banking sector and with some regulatory and institutional characteristics, but no relationship with riskiness.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contribute to the current literature on consumer acceptance of cultured meat and to investigate the main factors that might affect it.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from a sample of 490 consumers in Italy, using a web-based survey. The empirical analysis follows an exploratory approach based on the training and checking of a random forest model.FindingsAn important finding of this study concerns the overall positive perception of cultured meat on the part of the interviewees in a country that is the fifth-largest meat producer at the European level. Age, environmental and ethical issues, and scepticism about new food technologies are the most important factors that guide consumer acceptance of cultured meat. The results suggest that in order to increase cultured meat acceptance it would be important to inform and educate consumers towards new food and new food production methods.Research limitations/implicationsThe sample analysed in this study is not representative of the whole national population, as it happens in most papers dealing with new food.Originality/valueAlthough the conclusions of this exploratory study cannot be over-generalized, the results provide interesting insights on how to increase cultured meat acceptance in view of the possible development of a new market for cultured meat.

This paper studies the features of Italian agritourism farms (agritourisms) by analysing their economic, structural and localization features, in order to examine the relations of agritourism with rural development and land use policy. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of about 11,000 farms from the Italian Farm Accountancy Data Network (Fadn) dataset. Given that agritourisms represent a minority among farms, the sample is strongly imbalanced towards farms without agritourism activities. In order to avoid the difficulties arising when analyzing imbalanced samples, we use the Random OverSampling Examples (Rose) approach that has been recently proposed in the statistical literature to obtain representative balanced samples from imbalanced ones. The empirical results show that landscape and environmental variables are important in shaping the probability that a farm runs agritourism activities. This results, together with others related to the economic dimension of the farm, its specialization, and the characteristics of the farmer make it possible to argue that there are areas of the country that can offer potential to agritourism, and that agritourism in turn can open new horizons in rural development with possible beneficial effects on the environment, the landscape, and the reduction of depopulation.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the main factors that may affect Italian consumers’ willingness to eat insects. Italy is a fairly special case among Western countries: in many Italian regions, there is old traditional food with insects. Design/methodology/approach Data come from a sample of 456 consumers living in four Italian regions. The empirical investigation involves several steps: modification of class distributions to obtain a balanced sample; model estimation using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator; model evaluation using out-of-sample classification performance measures; and estimation of the “effect” of each explanatory variable via average predictive comparisons. The uncertainty associated with the whole procedure is evaluated using the bootstrap. Findings The interviewed consumers are generally unwilling to eat insect-based food. However, factors such as previous experience, taste expectations and attitude towards both new food experiences and sustainable food play an important role in shaping individual inclination towards eating insects. Research limitations/implications The sample analysed in this study is not representative of the whole national population, as it happens in most papers dealing with entomophagy. Originality/value The paper revisits the issue using a relatively large sample and sophisticated statistical methods. The likely average effect of each explanatory variable is estimated and discussed in detail. The results provide interesting insights on how to approach a hypothetical Italian consumer in view of the possible development of a new market for edible insects.

The false discovery rate ( fdr ) is a powerful approach to multiple testing. However, dependence among test statistics is critical for fdr control. The way in which this dependence structure is described represents the most prominent source of uncertainty of this statistical theme. Copulas play a relevant role among the techniques used to deal with uncertainty and dependence. This paper contributes to fill an existing gap in the scientific debate by exploring the connections between the literature on fdr and that on copulas. In particular, we aim at attracting the interest of the scientific community on this topic by identifying suitable classes of nonstandard copulas which ensure that fdr control can be attained for dependent test statistics.

In the context of portfolio theory, the evaluation of risk is of paramount relevance. In this respect, the connections among the risky assets of the portfolio should be carefully explored. This paper elaborates on this topic. We define a portfolio through a network, whose nodes are the assets composing it. The weights on the nodes and the arcs represent the share of capital invested on the assets and the dependence among them, respectively. The risk profile of the portfolio will be given through a suitably defined risk measure on the portfolio-network. The standard Markowitz theory will be rewritten in this particular setting. Surprisingly, we will note that the resulting decision problem is not consistent with an adapted version of the axiomatization of the standard expected utility theory.

This paper explores a large collection of about 377,000 observations, spanning more than 20 years with a frequency of 30 minutes, of the streamflow of the Paglia river, in central Italy. We analyze the long-term persistence properties of the series by computing the Hurst exponent, not only in its original form but also under an evolutionary point of view by analyzing the Hurst exponents over a rolling windows basis. The methodological tool adopted for the persistence is the detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), which is classically known as suitable for our purpose. As an ancillary exploration, we implement a control on the data validity by assessing if the data exhibit the regularity stated by Benford's law. Results are interesting under different viewpoints. First, we show that the Paglia river streamflow exhibits periodicities which broadly suggest the existence of some common behaviour with El Nino and the North Atlantic Oscillations: this specifically points to a (not necessarily direct) effect of these oceanic phenomena on the hydrogeological equilibria of very far geographical zones: however, such an hypothesis needs further analyses to be validated. Second, the series of streamflows shows an antipersistent behaviour. Third, data are not consistent with Benford's law: this suggests that the measurement criteria should be opportunely revised. Fourth, the streamflow distribution is well approximated by a discrete generalized Beta distribution: this is well in accordance with the measured streamflows being the outcome of a complex system., prepared for Physica A; 23 pages; 42 references; 3 tables; 11 figures

This paper explores the relation between vertical disintegration and the co-localization of knowledge intensive business service (Kibs) firms in the metropolitan region of Milan, using micro-geographic data and nonparametric methods. Our main results are that: (i) compared to other manufacturing and service industries, Kibs firms show a “natural tendency” to cluster; (ii) this tendency increases with the degree of vertical disintegration of Kibs firms.

The influence of larval diet source in Sitophilus oryzae (L.), a primary grain feeder, on the choice of a new cereal host by young adult was investigated through a multiple choice comparative bioassay. For this purpose, virgin male and female adults, which had been reared as immatures in different grain commodities, were monitored according to their food preference in cylindrical arenas containing whole kernels of maize, rice, barley and wheat. The adults showed a clear individual preference for maize kernels, regardless of the previous food experience, sex and also the interval on which the adults are exposed to food. Males were much more mobile than females and visited more vigorously different commodities before the final choice. Female response was found to be related with male response to specific food sources. Hence, our results indicate that there was no natal habitat preference induction, since maize was, in most cases, the final commodity choice.

Multivariate total positivity of order 2 (MTP2) is a dependence property with a number of applications in statistics and mathematics. Given the theoretical and practical relevance of MTP2, it is important to investigate the conditions under which random vectors have this property. In this paper we contribute to the development of the theory of stochastic dependence by employing the general concept of copula. In particular, we propose a new family of non-exchangeable Archimedean copulas which leads to MTP2. The focus on non-exchangeability allows us to overcome the limitations induced by symmetric dependence, typical of standard Archimedean copulas.

Sequential panel selection methods (spsms — procedures that sequentially use conventional panel unit root tests to identify I(0)I(0) time series in panels) are increasingly used in the empirical literature. We check the reliability of spsms by using Monte Carlo simulations based on generating directly the individual asymptotic pp values to be combined into the panel unit root tests, in this way isolating the classification abilities of the procedures from the small sample properties of the underlying univariate unit root tests. The simulations consider both independent and cross-dependent individual test statistics. Results suggest that spsms may offer advantages over time series tests only under special conditions.

Copyright © Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the Department of Economics, University of Oxford 2012. This is the accepted version of the following article: Costantini, M. and Lupi, C. (2013), A Simple Panel-CADF Test for Unit Roots. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 75: 276–296, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0084.2012.00690.x/abstract.

This paper investigates the order of integration of inflation and interest rates in a panel of 19 countries. The results show that once multiple endogenous breaks are allowed for and appropriate critical values are used, the series appear to be I (0).

In this paper we estimate the Italian NAIRU using annual data for the period 1951-96. We find evidence consistent with aggregate wage setting in Italy depending only on the rate of unemployment prevailing in the Northern and Central areas of the country. There is evidence supporting the presence of a long-run cointegrating relationship among unemployment in the Northern and Central areas, the tax wedge, the real interest rate and a measure of union power. The response of unemployment to exogenous shocks is sluggish, suggesting that persistence is an important feature of the Italian labor market. Copyright 2000 by Oxford University Press.

Many central statistical offices use indirect time series disaggregation methods to produce quarterly national accounts estimates or other high frequency variables. This paper investigates the relation existing between the statistical properties of indirectly estimated time series and the contemporaneous aggregation level at which estimation is carried out, when a version of the Chow-Lin (1971, 1976) method is used to evaluate quarterly time series. It is shown that estimation at the lowest possible level of contemporaneous aggregation is not always optimal. In order to choose the level of contemporaneous aggregation at which time series disaggregation should be carried out, the use of formal econometric tests is suggested.

The paper analyses preferences and motivations of Italian consumers of flowers and ornamental plants, both conventional and organic. The results helped to outline their profile. Purchases are still done in the traditional places (flower shops for cut flowers and plant nurseries for potted plants), however positive trend is found for potted plants purchases at large distribution chains. Some differences came out as to purchase motivations: cut flowers are mainly bought in special occasions whereas potted plants purchases are linked to personal use. The results confirm a positive relationship between the purchase of flowers and plants and the age of the interviewees, besides showing that women are interested on purchases. The information we obtained is relevant not only for the sector's operators in order to define effective managerial strategies, but also for the policy maker to address new market and consumption policies.

The size, power, and robustness properties of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Cramer-von Mises spectral tests of the martingale (difference) hypothesis are investigated by Monte Carlo methods. The results highlight a marked superiority of the Cramer-von Mises with respect to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. The paper also shows that the Cramer-von Mises test is simple to compute, more general and more powerful than other converntionally used tests.

Ecobalances are widely used tools to optimize processes and products ecologically. In the study “Ökobilanz zweier Restaurants” the emissions resulting from packaging, transport, dishes, energy and water consumption of a McDonald's and a similar restaurant have been assessed and compared. The investigation shows that the use of one-way dishes in the McDonald's pollutes the environment about twice as much as the reusable dishes in the other restaurant if the whole life cycle (production, use and disposal) of the two types of dishes is considered. The change from one-way dishes to reusable dishes reduces the total pollution by about 10 per cent, but the main part of the pollution – about 60 per cent – results from the energy consumption in the restaurants. Another study on the same subject made by Elektrowatt Ingenieuruntemehmung AG (EWI) comes to the conclusion that a McDonald's restaurant with one-way dishes is less pollutive than a conventional restaurant. One principal reason for the differences between this study and the “Ökobilanz zweier Restaurants” is the neglection of production and disposal of the one-way dishes in the EWI study. Moreover, the estimated number of guests used in the EWI study is much higher than the one counted directly in the restaurant. This leads to a much smaller pollution per guest in the EWI study. These differences show the crucial importance of the determination of the system boundaries and the selection of the parameters. Until now, no generally accepted methods how to create an ecobalance are available.

A theoretical two-stage bargaining model for wage drift and minimum contractual wage is discussed and its implication in terms of Granger-causality between the two variables is tested by using Italian aggregate time series. Empirical evidence suggests rejecting the independence of the two series. This result has, in turn, implications for policy analysis. Our findings seem to indicate the appropriateness of a policy oriented towards decentralized wage setting.

The number and the distribution of non-working days during the year has recently entered the policy debate related to the slow pace of the European economy.The fact that the number of non-working days can affect the quarter to quarter performance of GDP is well known and hardly disputable. It has recently been argued that not only domestic holidays can in principle be important in each single economy, but also foreign ones, as far as there exist strict connections among the national economies. Given the existing evidence at the national level relative to the influence of calendar effects on GDP, the first step of the econometric analysis in the present research is a check on the existence (and significance) of international spillover effects. Our investigation uses both structural time series models and the ARIMA model-based approach. These two different approaches are used jointly and their specific features are exploited to represent and estimate the time series components of our interest. The empirical evidence does not support the spillover hypothesis.

The Italian labour market is characterized by large and persistent regional unemployment differentials. This study uses recent panel unit root and cointegration tests to derive the long-run properties of the Italian regional unemployment disparities. The empirical evidence suggests that the stochastic convergence hypothesis can be rejected. However, the existence of a long-run equilibrium relationship among regional unemployment rates cannot be excluded. Some possible implications of this finding are sketched.

Individual wage expectations of Italian unemployed are studied. The analysis is carried out separately for the North‐Central and southern Italian regions using semiparametric additive models. Results show a marked difference in expectations formation across regions. We argue that as far as the labour market information in the South is less diffuse and more ambiguous than in the North, the divergence between the econometric model based on a utility‐maximisation mainstream theory and the actual wage expectation mechanism may be large. A tentative explanation based on psychological and social factors is offered.

This paper is motivated by a very practical question: are there significant geographical differences in the accessibility to the credit market on the part of Italian households? The investigation is carried using robust probit model. Estimation is carried out in a Bayesian framework. The results are somewhat surprising, showing that the area where households are more likely to be credit constrained is not the South, as could be easily imagined, but rather the highly developed and industrialized North-West.

This paper studies some features of unemployment in Italy using cross section individual micro data. Since unemployment is particularly harsh with respect to youths, interest is focused on 15-29-year-old youngsters. The analysis is carried out using standard logit models and the results show that personal and family characteristics play an essential role in shaping youth activity and unemployment rates of short and long duration, together with product market conditions and labour market features. In particular, the income effect seems relevant for participation decisions, while the family wealth helps in reducing youth unemployment. Various policy instruments might be able to reduce youth unemployment, especially if these instruments are targeted through means-testing on family income and wealth and through a proper distinction between the first job seekers and the strictly unemployed.

This paper investigates the effect of individual unemployment experiences on re-employment wages. The empirical analysis is carried out on a panel of Italian individuals. The main result is that while in the northern regions the effect is similar to the one estimated for the UK, in the southern area of the country the impact is not significant. We link this result to the particular socio-economic environment in which the unemployment spells are experienced. We argue that this might be due to the fact that in a high unemployment environment individual unemployment experiences are perceived as "normal" and do not necessarily signal poor quality of the worker. This might have effects in inducing the hysteresis of unemployment, and reducing the downward pressure of unemployment on wages at the macro level.

In this paper we propose a simple model to forecast industrial production in Italy. We show that the forecasts produced using the model outperform some popular forecasts as well as those stemming from a trading days- and outlierrobust ARIMA model used as a benchmark. We show that the use of appropriately selected leading variables allows to produce up to twelve-step ahead reliable forecasts. We show how and why the use of these forecasts can improve the estimation of a cyclical indicator and the early detection of turning points for the manufacturing sector. This is of paramount importance for shortterm economic analysis.

Regional unemployment differentials among Italian regions have widened since the mid 1980s, especially between the leading Northern and Central areas and the less developed South. We suggest that the following elements are important to explain the observed phenomenon: (a) employment performance in the South has worsened considerably in the presence of sustained labor force growth; (b) labor mobility from the South to the North–Central areas has sensibly declined with the reduction in earnings differentials and with the increase in social transfers per head; (c) real wages in the South are not affected by local unemployment conditions but depend on the unemployment rate prevailing in the leading areas; (d) the labor share increased particularly fast in the South during the 1970s, mainly as a consequence of the elimination of institutions that allowed the presence of significant wage differentials; (e) a parsimonious description of the increase in regional unemployment differentials is that the Northern and the Southern areas responded in an asymmetric way both to the increase in real social transfers per head and to the reduction in the real price of energy.

By focusing on the Italian experience, we ask whether the relationship between labour taxes and unemployment varies across regions. In spite of similar national labour market institutions, we show that this relationship is significantly stronger in the highly industrialised North than in the underdeveloped South, where unemployment is much higher. An important source of variation in the regional responsiveness of unemployment originates from the fact that regional gross wages in the North increase more than in the South in response to a hike in labour taxes. Regional wage setting affects regional employment (and unemployment) both directly and indirectly, via its impact on regional profits and the capital stock.

By focusing on the Italian experience, we ask whether the relationship between labor taxes and unemployment varies across regions. In spite of similar national labor market institutions, we show that this relationship is significantly stronger in the highly industrialized North than in the under-developed South, where unemployment is much higher. An important source of variation in the regional responsiveness of unemployment originates from the fact that regional gross wages in the North increase more than in the South in response to a hike in labor taxes. Regional wage setting affects regional employment (and unemployment) both directly and indirectly, via its impact on regional profits and the capital stock.

Regional unemployment differentials among Italian regions have widened since the mid 1980s, especially between the leading Northern and Central areas and the underdeveloped South. We suggest that the following elements are important to explain the observed phenomenon: a) employment performance in the South has worsened considerably in the presence of sustained labour force growth; b) labour mobility from the South to the NC areas has sensibly declined with the reduction in earnings differentials and with the increase in social transfers per head; c) real wages in the South are not affected by local unemployment conditions but depend on the unemployment rate prevailing in the leading areas; d) the labour share increase particularly fast in the South during the 1970s, mainly as a consequence of the elimination of institutions that allowed the presence of significant wage differentials; e) a parsimonious description of the increase in regional unemployment differentials is that the Northern and Southern areas responded in an asymmetric way both to the increase in real social transfers per head and to the reduction in the real price of energy.

The aim of this paper is to test the stochastic convergence in real per capita GDP for 15 European countries using non-stationary panel data approaches over the period 1950-2003. Cross-sectional dependence is assumed due to the existence of strong linkages among European economies. However, tests derived under the assumption of cross-sectional independence are also carried out for completeness and comparison. We also split the whole sample into two sub-periods (1950-1976, 1977-2003) in order to take into account the effects of the first oil crisis (1973-1974) and to evaluate the robustness of the statistical analysis. Our results offer little support to the stochastic convergence hypothesis for the whole period, while suggest the presence of convergence in the first sub-period.

In this paper we show that phase-scrambling bootstrap offers a natural framework for asymmetry testing in economic time series. A comparison with other bootstrap schemes is also sketched. A Monte Carlo analysis is carried out to evaluate the size and power properties of the phase-scrambling bootstrap-based test.