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The paper summarizes from an economic point of view the consequences of the introduction and of the discovery of counterfeited artworks. We develop an innovative approach based on econometric method that identifiy the development of the market in absence of the fakes discovery shock. We compare the predicted dynamics of the market in absence of shock with the actual perfomance, evaluating empirically the differences. We apply this methodology to the case of the Italian pop artist Franco Angeli.

Using a sample based on 268 questionnaires submitted to people attending the Acquatico Bellucci circus, Italy, this paper analyzes the circusgoers's preferences for circus animals. Results show that higher preferences for circus animals are related to frequency of consumption. However, differently from what commonly expected, more educated and younger people seem to be less sensitive to the claims of animal welfare organizations.

This paper analyzes the welfare losses deriving from centralized, uniform levels of public provision of good and services deriving from standards set up by a given level of government. The aim of the paper is to contribute to the growing literature on the e?ective outcomes of decentralization by looking at the other side of the coin, namely at the impact of centralized provision. It develops a simple theoretical model and tests it with reference to public health care provision in Italy. The evidence shows that, while levels of satisfaction increase with income, which is a standard result of the theory, they are lower in the poorer regions where, due to the standards, the share of income absorbed by health care is substantially higher than in the richer regions.

There are many types of wines. Wine may be classified as traditional such as Barbaresco or Barolo (among the others), or international, such as the case of Merlot, Sauvignon, etc. Do objective and sensory characteristics impact di?erently on prices according to the wine variety? Using a sample of 3,660 observations, an hedonic technique is applied to investigate this question.

Despite its importance, circus has been completely neglected by cultural economics. There are two main reasons for this: first, circus has been considered as a minor performing arts; secondly, quantitative information on circus are di?cult to collect. This paper represents an attempt to fill this gap by analysing the answers based on 268 questionnaires submitted to people attending Acquatico Bellucci circus. Clustering results suggest the existence of a distinct and interpretable two-cluster solution: traditional and enthusiastic circus attendances and contemporary circus attendances.

Although the cultural importance of circus, the economics of culture has neglected to address this topic. Two main reasons for this: first, cultural economics has (wrongly) considered circus as a minor performing arts; secondly, the difficulty to collect quantitative information on circus. This paper represents an attempt to fill this lack by analysing the characteristics of circus attendance. In particular, we submit 268 questionnaires to people attending Acquatico Bellucci. Descriptive statistics are discussed in the paper.

The repeat-sales model controls quality by utilizing the transacted prices of the same items in di.erent time periods. However, this methodology suffers from non-randomness of the data, implying that a sample based only on repeat-sales items may not represent the population of properties. To address this potential problem, the Heckman two-stage procedure has been applied to a sample of Picasso prints over the period 1988-1995 as registered in the 1995 edition of the Mayer International Auction Records on CD-ROM. Empirical evidence shows that the selection corrected repeat-sales model yields substantially better goodness of fit than the estimated standard repeat-sales specification.

The uniqueness of art objects need to be taken into account in the construction of any art market price index. Yet the most widely used methods typically rely on biased samples, discarding a very large proportion of the information available (the repeated sales approach) and/or require strong assumptions regarding the structure and time stability of the market (the hedonic regression approach). In this paper a refined hedonic index is developed that explicitly addresses these problems. An empirical illustration comparing these methods is presented using a dataset of symbolist paintings appearing at auction over the period 1990-2001.

Colombia is neither waging war against external enemies, nor has a dictatorial government engaged in a large scale repression of insurrection. However, it is possibly the most violent country of the world. Despite a number of papers focusing on the effects of violence on democracy in Colombia, the existing literature fails to sufficiently address the opposite perspective, that is, the impact of democratic government on violence. Recourse to violence appears so widespread and permanent in Colombia and extols such a high cost on the country, that it suggests that large sectors of the Colombian population may have become addicted to violence. The aim of this paper to assess whether violence in Colombia may be defined as a rational behaviour by using a pooled cross-section and time-series sample of 27 Colombian departments over the period 1990-1999. Findings do not support the addictive rational hypothesis; rather, violence appears to be a cyclical phenomenon in Colombia.

A number of papers have empirically investigated the rational addiction model proposed by Becker and Murphy (1988) by using data on different harmful drugs; but also activities independent of a biological or pharmaceutical dependency have been analysed, such as cinema. The purpose of this paper is to extend previous works on cinema demand by including two addictive consumption goods, cinema and television. To this aim a panel-data GMM methodology is used to estimate a dynamic model of double rational addiction as proposed by Bask and Melkersonn (2004) using a sample of monthly time- and cross-sectional series covering the 20 Italian regions over the period 2000-2002.

A number of papers have empirically investigated the rational addiction model proposed by Becker and Murphy (1988) by using data on different harmful drugs, like cigarettes, alcohol, caffeine, opium, cocaine; but also activities independent of a biological or pharmaceutical dependency have been analysed, such as gambling, calorie consumption, news, arts, and cinema. The purpose of this paper is to extend previous works on cinema demand by using pooled cross-section and time-series data on thirteen European countries over the period 1989-2002. The estimation results provide a strong evidence that cinema consumption conforms to a rational addiction hypothesis.

Two basic approaches have been used by the literature focusing on the return to holding artistic works: the hedonic price model and the repeat-sales model. This paper provides a procedure for jointly estimating the two models in a way that take advantages of the unique information contained in each. A semiannual price index for Picasso prints is estimated by using a model derived from the basic framework of the hybrid models. The empirical results suggest that the hybrid model provides the most precisely estimated price index by reducing the level of price volatility.

This paper analyses the performance of an investment in sculptures during the period 1987-1995 by applying the hedonic price technique with time dummy variables to a sample of over 27,000 sales occured at auctions. The main finding is that the trend of the rate of return on an investment in sculptures is more stable than those associated to alternative forms of investment during the analysed period.

The two-type model of non-linear income taxation with asymmetric information on individual ability levels is extended to discuss welfare effects of two policy instruments: a pure public good and a publicly provided private good. This latter is interpreted as health care. Three different cases are analysed:\ when each policy instrument is used in turn and when they are jointly used. The publicly provided private good is proved to be welfare enhancing when it is used as the only policy instrument. By contrast, in the mixed case, the publicly provided private good acts as a lump-sum transfer to all individuals.

Public expenditure reduction in Italy is achieved through a revision of social security and health care programmes. In particular, public health expenditure control has been implemented through a reform that imposes more stringent budget rules at local level and a considerable reduction in the grants-in-aid from central government. The response to a decrease in categorical lump-sum grants from the central to local governments might result in an asymmetrical response to intergovernmental grants: local spending is highly responsive to increases in grants, but it is relatively insensitive to grants reduction [Stine, 1994; Gramkhar and Oates, 1996]. In our paper we have estimated this hypothesis using a sample of cross-sectional and time- observations covering the 20 Italian regions over the period 1989-1993. Two different models have been estimated based on different budget balance rules. The empirical results of our model show the existence of a standard and a super flypaper effect in both models. The introduction of the soft-budget constraint hypothesis results in a stronger effect of grants and a lower response of own resources which shows that before reducing expenditure regional governments prefer to incur some deficit.