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A society that believes wealth to be determined by random “luck” rather than by merit, demands more redistribution. The theoretical literature shows that any increase in the volatility of income caused by unpredictable adverse shocks implies a higher support for redistribution. We present evidence of this behavior by exploiting a natural experiment provided by the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009, which hit a large area of Central Italy through a series of destructive shakes over eight days. Matching detailed information on the ground acceleration registered during each shock with survey data about individual opinions on redistribution we show that the average intensity of the shakes is associated with subsequent stronger beliefs that, for a society to be fair, income inequalities should be levelled by redistribution. The shocks, however, are not all alike. We find that only the last three shakes - occurred on the fourth and the eighth day of the earthquake - have a statistically significant impact. Overall, we find that the timing and repetition of the shock play a role in shaping redistributive preferences., Revision posted January 24, 2019. A previous version of this paper circulated under the title “Natural disasters and demand for redistribution: lessons from an earthquake”.

The literature shows that when a society believes that wealth is determined by random “luck” rather than by merit, it demands more redistribution. Adverse shocks, like earthquakes, strengthen the belief that random “bad luck” can frustrate the outcomes achieved with merit. We theoretically illustrate that individuals react to such shocks by raising support for redistribution. We then present evidence of this behavior by exploiting a natural experiment provided by one of the strongest seismic events that occurred in Italy in the last three decades, the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009. We assemble a novel dataset by matching information on the ground acceleration registered throughout the National Strong Motion Network during the earthquake with survey data about individual opinions on redistribution collected a few months later. The empirical analysis illustrates that the intensity of the shakes is associated with subsequent stronger beliefs that, for a society to be fair, income inequalities should be levelled by redistribution.

We estimate dynamic conditional correlations between 10 commodities futures returns in energy, metals and agriculture markets over the period 1998-2014 with a DCC-GARCH model. We look at the factors influencing those correlations, adopting a pooled mean group (PMG) estimator. Macroeconomic variables are significantly correlated with agriculture-energy and metals-energy dynamic conditional correlations; while financial variables are relevant in the agriculture-energy correlations and poorly significant in the metals-energy ones. Speculative activity is generally not statistically significant. Correlations started increasing in the years before the financial crisis and decreased at the end of our period of analysis.

This paper measures price-cost margins (PCM) at firm level by using balance sheet data. These measures, once aggregated at industry level, provide values close to the ones obtained through the estimation method proposed by Roeger (1995). The advantage of a firm-level measure is that it allows to decompose aggregate PCM dynamics into five components: a within effect (which is the change attributable to the pricing behavior of the incumbents given their market share), a reallocation effect (which accounts for the redistribution of market shares among incumbents, keeping the PCM constant), the interaction effect (which gives information about the underlying market dynamics) and entry and exit effects. Using data for Italy for the period 2000-2007 in 30 sectors (defined at NACE 3-digit level) we find some contrasting evidence for PCMs in manufacturing industries, while we observe a clear upward trend for PCMs in services.

Services are the most relevant sector in developed economies, with respect to both absolute dimension and growth rates. Moreover, as suppliers to other sectors, their efficiency affects the competitiveness of the whole economy. Increasing efficiency and quality of services has become a key issue in policy makers' agenda and the debate on the channels to pursue this objective is still open. Specifically, foreign direct investment (FDI) in service sectors is held to be one of the main drivers for increasing competition, and due to recent privatization and deregulation policies new opportunities for foreign investors are growing in relevance. While the literature has mainly focused on horizontal or vertical spillovers between manufacturing firms, the role of vertical spillovers stemming from the presence of foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) in service sectors to domestic manufacturing firms has been so far mainly neglected. The aim of the present paper is to contribute to fill this gap, focusing on Italy. The empirical analysis investigates the impact of the entrance of foreign MNEs in four sectors: Transportation, Telecommunications, Utilities and Consultancy over the period 1999-2005. We find evidence of positive vertical technological (knowledge spillovers) and pecuniary externalities. Moreover, we observe that these externalities, given the nature of the sectors considered, are localized.

This paper evaluates how different types of speculation affect the volatility of commodities’ futures prices. We adopt four indexes of speculation: Working’s T, the market share of non-commercial traders, the percentage of net long speculators over total open interest in future markets, which proxy for long term speculation, and scalping, which proxies for short term speculation. We consider four energy commodities (light sweet crude oil, heating oil, gasoline and natural gas) and seven non-energy commodities (cocoa, coffee, corn, oats, soybean oil, soybeans and wheat) over the period 1986-2010 analyzed at weekly frequency. Using GARCH models we find that speculation significantly affects volatility of returns: short term speculation has a positive and significant impact on volatility, while long term speculation generally has a negative effect. The robustness exercise shows that: i) scalping is positive and significant also at higher and lower data frequencies; ii) results remain unchanged through different model specifications (GARCH-in-mean, EGARCH, and TARCH); iii) results are robust to different specifications of the mean equation.

Based on two strands of theoretical research, this paper provides new evidence on how fares are jointly affected by in-flight seat availability and purchasing date. As capacity-driven theories predict, it emerges that fares monotonically and substantially increase with the flights occupancy rate. Moreover, as suggested in the literature on intertemporal price discrimination, the adoption of advance purchase discounts is widespread as the departure date nears, but it may be part of a U-shaped temporal profile, where discounts are preceded by periods of relatively higher fares. Finally, the intervention of yield management analysts appears to play a substantial role.

This paper describes the energy sector in the Mediterranean and MENA (Middle East and North Africa) countries. It first analyses the production of energy by fossil and renewable sources and discusses the increasing demand in the area and its consequences. It describes the policy frameworks to promote renewable energy as well as fossil-fuel subsidies, which are still abundant in the MENA area. It presents some avenues for integration across the Mediterranean and finally it discusses the implications of the Arab spring on energy production in the next future.

This paper analyses futures prices for four energy commodities (light sweet crude oil, heating oil, gasoline and natural gas) and five agricultural commodities (corn, oats, soybean oil, soybeans and wheat), over the period 1986-2010. Using CCC and DCC multivariate GARCH models, we find that financial speculation is poorly significant in modelling returns in commodities futures while macroeconomic factors help explaining returns in commodities futures. Moreover, spillovers between commodities are present and the conditional correlations among commodities are high and time-varying.

The paper analyses productivity spillovers from foreign MNEs on domestic manufacturing firms. Using a database on foreign MNEs in Italy, our results reveal that local firms do benefit from the presence of foreign MNEs, and the effect is higher when local and foreign firms in manufacturing sectors are co-located. However, spillovers benefiting domestic firms are likely to be less influenced by co-location when foreign MNEs are in services sectors as the latter are different from manufacturing industries under a number of aspects that overcome the effect of distance. Indeed, in these sectors, proximity and interaction are often obtained through professional mobility and temporary inter-organizational routines.

The relationship between trade and institutions has been extensively debated by trade economists and political scientists. The aim of the present paper is to provide some empirical evidence on the causal relationship between institutions and trade flows in a panel framework. We present a Granger causality test (1969) as well as a Hurlin and Venet (2001) test for panel data using a bilateral trade flows panel that covers 29 years. The issue of zero flows of trade is handled by using a panel Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood estimator.

Il principio di precauzione presuppone l'adozione di misure precauzionali per far fronte al pericolo di danni per la salute dei consumatori nell'ipotesi di incertezza scientifica come si evince dall'art. 7 del Regolamento n. 178/2002 e dalla relazione della Commissione CE del febbraio 2000. Infatti anche gli alimenti possono essere pericolosi per la salute umana a causa di contaminazione chimica, microbica e fisica, talora di incerta previsione scientifica. Il principio di precauzione destinato ad operare in siffatto contesta immuta le condizioni tradizionalmente ritenute necessarie per definire la responsabilità civile e penale dell'operatore alimentare tracciate conformemente alle linee guida della Commissione nella summenzionata relazione. The precaucionaly principle consist in adoption precautional measures against the dangerous at the customer's health when there are incertain scientific dates like you can read on article 7 Reg. n.178/2002 and you can read on article 7 Reg. n. 178/2002 and Commssion European 's relation on febbruarj 2000. In efct the alimentary food can be dangerous too, for human health because there is microbic chimical phisical, that is incertain in the previsional science sometime. The precautionaly principle has destinaded to operate, in this contest , doesn't operate change the conditions tradicionally consideraded necessary for giving the definicion of civil and criminaly alimentry operator's responsability like on the Commission CE Line Guide and on the just said relation.

This paper investigates how the ownership and the procedure for the selection of firms operating in the local public transport sector affect their productivity. In order to compare different institutional regimes, we carry out a comparative analysis of 72 companies operating in large European cities. This allows us to consider firms selected either through competitive tendering or negotiated procedures. The analysis of the data on 77 European firms over the period 1997-2006 indicates that firms operate under constant returns to scale. Retrieving the residuals we obtain a measure of total factor productivity, which we regress on firm and city characteristics. We find that when firms are totally or partially in public hands their productivity is lower. Moreover, firms selected through competitive tendering display higher total factor productivity.