L’interpretazione della storia economica italiana recente che qui viene proposta, collega diveri elementi all’interno di una struttura concettuale che pone al centro la crescita della produttività del lavoro. L’intento è di mostrare che... more
L’interpretazione della storia economica italiana recente che qui viene proposta, collega diveri elementi all’interno di una struttura concettuale che pone al centro la crescita della produttività del lavoro. L’intento è di mostrare che quest’interpretazione consente di identificare le radici del declino economico italiano e, al tempo stesso, ciò che impedisce all’economia un rapido e persistente ritorno a tassi di crescita elevati. L’Italia deve ripensare con celerità riforme mal formulate per prevenire un ulteriore indebolimento della sua struttura produttiva. Deve inoltre rimuovere gli ostacoli che impediscono di incentivare i cambiamenti necessari a rinnovarla
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Stock market bubbles arise as a joint monetary and financial phenomenon. We assess the potential of monetary policy in mitigating the onset of bubbles by means of a Markov-switching Bayesian Vector Autoregression model estimated on US... more
Stock market bubbles arise as a joint monetary and financial phenomenon. We assess the potential of monetary policy in mitigating the onset of bubbles by means of a Markov-switching Bayesian Vector Autoregression model estimated on US 1960–2019 data. Bubbles are detected and dated from the regime-specific interplay among asset prices, fundamental values, and monetary policy shocks. We rationalize the empirical evidence with an Overlapping Generations model, able to generate a bubbly scenario with shifts in monetary policy, and where agents form beliefs over transition dynamics. By matching the VAR impulse responses, we find that procyclicality and financial instability align with high equity premia and the presence of asset price bubbles. Monetary policy tightening, by increasing real rates, is ineffective in deflating bubble episodes.
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We study the e¤ects of COVID-19, and the ensuing lockdown and ...scal policies, on the welfare of di¤erent age-groups within a life-cycle macroeconomic scheme, adapted from Gertler (1999), where the pandemic is represented as a shock to... more
We study the e¤ects of COVID-19, and the ensuing lockdown and ...scal policies, on the welfare of di¤erent age-groups within a life-cycle macroeconomic scheme, adapted from Gertler (1999), where the pandemic is represented as a shock to the mortality rate. We obtain two main results. First, we show that lockdown policies have a negative impact on the dynamics of economic welfare of younger agents relative to that of older agents, thus providing analytical support to the idea that the management of the COVID-19 pandemic through lockdown policies has mainly hit the young generations. Second, we show that expansionary ...scal policies aimed at supporting income after the lockdown a¤ect the relative welfare index of age-groups mainly through the repayment scheme of the consequent public debt; the more such repayment scheme entails a postponement of the debt repayment, the more older agents are favored (in relative terms). JEL Classi...cation: E130, I180, H510
Si individuano i principali problemi economici dell'Italia, con particolare attenzione alle questioni di efficienza e q quelle di equità, e si propongono politiche economiche in grado di superarli
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In this paper we aim to disentangle the effects on in-group favoritism driven by beliefs from those stemming from group identity, with the final goal of testing the relative power of three potential explanations of this bias: The Beliefs... more
In this paper we aim to disentangle the effects on in-group favoritism driven by beliefs from those stemming from group identity, with the final goal of testing the relative power of three potential explanations of this bias: The Beliefs Driven Explanation (BDE), the Group Identity Explanation (GIE) and the Belief-mediated Group Identity Explanation (BGE). The BDE suggests that in-group favoritism is only driven by the desire not to let others’ expectations down. The GIE claims that people have a preference, per se, for members of their group. According to the BGE, people also have a preference for members of their group, but this is mediated by their second-order beliefs. To this aim, we built an experimental design able to produce exogenous variations in both group membership and expectations, hence providing a genuine test for the rationale of in-group bias. The results of our experiment suggest that beliefs per se are not a significant explanation of in-group favoritism and he...
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La doppia recessione del 2008-2013 ha lasciato al nostro Paese una eredità particolarmente onerosa e, pur in presenza di alcuni segnali interpretabili come l’inizio di un cambiamento ciclico, non è ancora possibile prevedere un rapido... more
La doppia recessione del 2008-2013 ha lasciato al nostro Paese una eredità particolarmente onerosa e, pur in presenza di alcuni segnali interpretabili come l’inizio di un cambiamento ciclico, non è ancora possibile prevedere un rapido ritorno dell’economia italiana alla crescita sostenuta. Già negli anni precedenti la crisi economica, un esiguo numero di economisti italiani ha cercato di mostrare che nella nostra economia fossero individuabili chiari segnali di declino economico e che “il” problema di questa tendenza strutturale andasse individuato nella insoddisfacente dinamica della produttività. Il dibattito sul rapporto esistente tra capitale umano e sviluppo economico, stimolato dalle iniziative realizzate in occasione del Centenario della nascita di Federico Caffè, rappresenta una occasione da non perdere per cercare di ricavare dai suoi scritti indicazioni utili alla costruzione di un rinnovato progetto di politica economica volto a favorire una rapida crescita della nostra e...
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Poverta e disuguaglianze negli anni della globalizzazione (di Luciano Marcello Milone, Felice Roberto Pizzuti) - ABSTRACT: Negli ultimi due-tre decenni, caratterizzati dall’accentuata riproposizione di processi d’integrazione economica e... more
Poverta e disuguaglianze negli anni della globalizzazione (di Luciano Marcello Milone, Felice Roberto Pizzuti) - ABSTRACT: Negli ultimi due-tre decenni, caratterizzati dall’accentuata riproposizione di processi d’integrazione economica e dall’affermarsi di politiche neoliberiste, poverta e disuguaglianza sono rimaste consistenti o sono aumentate. Le prospettive non sono incoraggianti; tra le cause di queste tendenze aumenta il ruolo dei fattori istituzionali. L’accresciuta integrazione dei mercati richiede un simmetrico rafforzamento e adeguamento delle istituzioni e, in particolare, dello stato sociale. Circa i nessi tra globalizzazione e crescita nei Paesi in via di sviluppo, occorre distinguere tra integrazione commerciale e integrazione finanziaria. In ambedue i casi, tuttavia, il processo di liberalizzazione dei paesi emergenti deve essere graduale e strettamente subordinato alla loro effettiva capacita di attivare politiche che contrastino efficacemente le distorsioni presenti nei mercati e limitino i costi sociali. La globalizzazione rafforza l’esigenza del potenziamento delle istituzioni internazionali. Tuttavia tale passo richiede preliminarmente riforme dei loro meccanismi decisionali che rendano queste istituzioni effettivamente rispondenti ai reali interessi della comunita internazionale.
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Abstract. By focusing on the contingent view of transparency, by introducing endogenous fiscal policy, and by treating information on the central bank's (CB) preferences as an endogenous variable, we show that an increase in... more
Abstract. By focusing on the contingent view of transparency, by introducing endogenous fiscal policy, and by treating information on the central bank's (CB) preferences as an endogenous variable, we show that an increase in transparency always reduces inflation and output ...
We study the effects of COVID-19, and the ensuing lockdown and fiscal policies, on the welfare of different age-groups within a life-cycle macroeconomic scheme, adapted from Gertler (1999), where the pandemic is represented as a shock to... more
We study the effects of COVID-19, and the ensuing lockdown and fiscal policies, on the welfare of different age-groups within a life-cycle macroeconomic scheme, adapted from Gertler (1999), where the pandemic is represented as a shock to the mortality rate. We obtain two main results. First, we show that lockdown policies have a negative impact on the dynamics of economic welfare of younger agents relative to that of older agents, thus providing analytical support to the idea that the management of the COVID-19 pandemic through lockdown policies has mainly hit the young generations. Second, we show that expansionary fiscal policies aimed at supporting income after the lockdown affect the relative welfare index of age-groups mainly through the repayment scheme of the consequent public debt; the more such repayment scheme entails a postponement of the debt repayment, the more older agents are favored (in relative terms).
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Eight years after the outbreak of the financial crisis, Italy has still to cope with and overcome a plethora of economic and social challenges. On top of this, it faces an unfavourable demographic structure and severe disparities between... more
Eight years after the outbreak of the financial crisis, Italy has still to cope with and overcome a plethora of economic and social challenges. On top of this, it faces an unfavourable demographic structure and severe disparities between its northern and southern regions. Some promising reforms have recently been enacted, specifically targeting poverty and social exclusion. However, much more remains to be done on the way towards greater economic stability and widely shared prosperity.
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In this paper we present a novel channel through which the volatility of the monetary/financial sector affects the instability of the real macroeconomic variables originated by self-fulfilling market sentiments. To this aim, we insert... more
In this paper we present a novel channel through which the volatility of the monetary/financial sector affects the instability of the real macroeconomic variables originated by self-fulfilling market sentiments. To this aim, we insert some elements of Prospect Theory in the preferences of agents living in an overlapping generations economy where consumers’ heterogeneity and firms’ imperfect information on the level of aggregate demand allow market sentiments to affect the equilibrium path of the economy. In this environment, greater heterogeneity in the household’s narrow framing parameter favour the emergence of self-fulfilling equilibria by exacerbating the coordination problem generated by a pair-wise matching process in the labor market. Furthermore, higher volatility of the money market, by increasing the effect of Prospect Theory on households’ choices, makes the signal upon which firms form their demand schedules noisier; this, in its turn, generates greater variability in ma...
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L'articolo esamina il sostegno fornito da Modigliani alle politiche economiche realizzate in Italia attraverso lo smantellamento della scala mobile al 100% dei salari e il progetto di inflazione programmata, moderazione salariale e... more
L'articolo esamina il sostegno fornito da Modigliani alle politiche economiche realizzate in Italia attraverso lo smantellamento della scala mobile al 100% dei salari e il progetto di inflazione programmata, moderazione salariale e scambio politico, portato avanti anche e soprattutto da Tarantelli. Dopo aver ricordato l'intensita della relazione umana e scientifica intercorsa tra i due economisti, l'articolo sintetizza la "Proposta Tarantelli" e ne mette in luce le fondamenta teoriche, incentrando l'attenzione sui salari nominali e sulla riformulazione della curva di Phillips operata da Modigliani e Tarantelli. Viene quindi analizzato il contributo scientifico di Modigliani alla proposta, che si sostanzia soprattutto nella teoria della formazione dei prezzi e nel ruolo svolto dalle aspettative nell'influenzare l'inflazione effettiva, e si mette in luce la solidita analitica che quel contributo assicura alla necessita di garantire moderazione salaria...
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Relazioni triangolari nell’economia dei servizi pubblici (di Daniele Archibugi, Giuseppe Ciccarone, Mauro Mare, Bernardo Pizzetti e Flaminia Violati) - ABSTRACT: The restructuring of public services is critically re-examined in this... more
Relazioni triangolari nell’economia dei servizi pubblici (di Daniele Archibugi, Giuseppe Ciccarone, Mauro Mare, Bernardo Pizzetti e Flaminia Violati) - ABSTRACT: The restructuring of public services is critically re-examined in this paper. It is argued that the issue of public versus private ownership has been overemphasised, while an effective increase in efficiency can be obtained by introducing appropriate incentives for both public and business actors. Four main decision-making phases are identified: the protection to be guaranteed to socially-sensitive economic activities; the ways to finance them; the economic organisation of the industry and the actual production. The debate on the market structure in public service industries is then reinterpreted on the basis of the interactions among three main players: the users/citizens, the public operator and the supplier of the service. Rather than using a single policy instrument, namely privatisation, it is argued that public action...
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Il presente contributo intende approfondire due approcci analitici alle dinamiche occupazionali che, a nostra opinione, devono essere considerati complementari, piuttosto che strettamente alternativi: le indagini “Excelsior” basate su... more
Il presente contributo intende approfondire due approcci analitici alle dinamiche occupazionali che, a nostra opinione, devono essere considerati complementari, piuttosto che strettamente alternativi: le indagini “Excelsior” basate su interviste, da un lato; i modelli econometrici di previsione, dall’altro. Per mostrare con immediatezza l’importanza dei modelli econometrici per effettuare valutazioni approfondite delle politiche e, dunque, possibilmente svolte in termini disaggregati, verrà brevemente presentata e discussa una simulazione dei diversi effetti che possono essere prodotti dalla politica “Garanzia Giovani” (Youth Guarantee), a seconda di come essa venga concretamente declinata. Una comparazione tra i risultati ottenuti da queste diverse metodologie conclude l’intervento e offre alcuni spunti di riflessione sulla possibile ripresa dell’occupazione nel nostro Paese
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vEight years after the outbreak of the financial crisis, Italy has still to cope with and overcome a plethora of economic and social challenges. On top of this, it faces an unfavourable demographic structure and severe disparities between... more
vEight years after the outbreak of the financial crisis, Italy has still to cope with and overcome a plethora of economic and social challenges. On top of this, it faces an unfavourable demographic structure and severe disparities between its northern and southern regions. Some promising reforms have recently been enacted, specifically targeting poverty and social exclusion. However, much more remains to be done on the way towards greater economic stability and widely shared prosperity
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This paper critically re-examines the restructuring of public services. Four main decision-making phases are identified: the public oversight to be guaranteed to socially sensitive economic activities; the ways of financing them; the... more
This paper critically re-examines the restructuring of public services. Four main decision-making phases are identified: the public oversight to be guaranteed to socially sensitive economic activities; the ways of financing them; the economic organisation of the industry; and the production decisions. By focusing on organisation, the paper reinterprets the market structure in public service industries on the basis of the interactions among three main players: users/citizens, the government and the service supplier. It argues that the issue of public versus private ownership has been overemphasised, and that an effective increase in efficiency can be obtained by introducing appropriate incentives for both public and business players. Instead of using a single policy instrument, namely privatisation, public action ought to be informed by an array of organisational solutions. 1.
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We add some elements of prospect theory to an analytically tractable version of Lucas's (1972) "islands" model.Macroeconomic genrela equilibrium models with imperfect information and signal extraction; micorfounded... more
We add some elements of prospect theory to an analytically tractable version of Lucas's (1972) "islands" model.Macroeconomic genrela equilibrium models with imperfect information and signal extraction; micorfounded behavioral economics. (simplified) Prospect theory (Kahneman and Tversky 1992).We show that the inclusion of reference dependence, declining sensitivity and loss aversion into the agents' utility function leads to three main results. First, the equilibrium labor supply and the natural level of output are negatively affected by the presence of behavioral elements, whereas the cyclical response of output to a monetary shock remains unaltered. Second, the expected utility of a representative agent is generally lower than that obtained when loss aversion is absent. Third, the presence of loss aversion eliminates the paradoxical increase in expected utility that may be generated, in the standard model, by an increase in monetary policy uncertainty.
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The interplay of imperfections in several markets is the new frontier of New Keynesian DSGE model research. Following a suggestion put forward by Wasmer and Weil (2004) in a partial equilibrium environment, we introduce search and... more
The interplay of imperfections in several markets is the new frontier of New Keynesian DSGE model research. Following a suggestion put forward by Wasmer and Weil (2004) in a partial equilibrium environment, we introduce search and matching frictions in both the labour and the financial markets into a cash in advance New Keynesian DSGE theoretical model. We compare the offspring of our model with some of the empirical findings documented by the recent literature on gross credit flows dynamics over the business cycle. We show that our results are in line with several of such findings.
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This paper focuses on the “contingent†view of transparency. By introducing endogenous fiscal policy and labour market distortions, it studies the effects the uncertainty in central bank’s (CB) preferences on the behaviour of wage... more
This paper focuses on the “contingent†view of transparency. By introducing endogenous fiscal policy and labour market distortions, it studies the effects the uncertainty in central bank’s (CB) preferences on the behaviour of wage and fiscal authorities and thus on output and inflation. We consider the problem on both positive and normative perspectives. First, we investigate the effects of a given degree of uncertainty in CB’s preferences on inflation and real output. Second, in line with recent literature, by assuming the possibility that information on CB’s preferences may be an endogenous variable, we study the optimal degree of transparency from the CB’s viewpoint. Although a general analysis is presented, we focus on the case of a small-bounded variance of CB’s preference, i.e. we assume that the CB’s power of affecting information disclosure and influencing private beliefs is limited.
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Well-established results in the mainstream theory of economic policy show that under assessable risk and asymmetric information, selfish policymakers generate inefficiencies that are generally more harmful than market ones. Market... more
Well-established results in the mainstream theory of economic policy show that under assessable risk and asymmetric information, selfish policymakers generate inefficiencies that are generally more harmful than market ones. Market failures are hence an insufficient condition to justify government activism. This conclusion motivates the article’s attempt to understand whether the same conclusion applies under fundamental uncertainty, where selfish policymakers cannot be conceived as maximising inter-temporal expected utility (or any other objective function) calculated by the use of objective probability distributions. After summarising the traditional literature, I stress the difficulty of employing the notion of Pareto optimality in this environment. I then argue that group decision-making and mutual monitoring support Forte’s (1967) and Demsetz’s (1969) early claims that no superiority of one institution (market versus government) over the other can a priori be established. The co...
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In this paper we aim to present a novel channel through which the volatility of the monetary/financial sector affects the instability of the real macroeconomic variables originated by self-fulfilling market sentiments. To this aim, we... more
In this paper we aim to present a novel channel through which the volatility of the monetary/financial sector affects the instability of the real macroeconomic variables originated by self-fulfilling market sentiments. To this aim, we insert some elements of Prospect Theory in the preferences of agents living in an overlapping generations economy where consumers’ heterogeneity and firms’ imperfect information on the level of aggregate demand allow market sentiments to affect the equilibrium path of the economy under rational expectations. In this environment, greater heterogeneity in the household’s narrow framing parameter and in the degree of competition in goods markets favor the emergence of self-fulfilling equilibria by exacerbating the coordination problem generated by a pair-wise matching process taking place in the labor market. Furthermore, the more dispersed are agents’ deviations from standard rationality the higher is the volatility of the economy due to sentiment fluctu...
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In a unionized economy with endogenous fiscal policy central bank transparency has two contrasting effects on wages, the relative strength of which determines the macroeconomic performance. This finding allows us to demonstrate that (i)... more
In a unionized economy with endogenous fiscal policy central bank transparency has two contrasting effects on wages, the relative strength of which determines the macroeconomic performance. This finding allows us to demonstrate that (i) if the central bank is populist ...
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In a unionized economy with endogenous fiscal policy central bank transparency has two contrasting effects on wages, the relative strength of which determines the macroeconomic performance. This finding allows us to demonstrate that (i)... more
In a unionized economy with endogenous fiscal policy central bank transparency has two contrasting effects on wages, the relative strength of which determines the macroeconomic performance. This finding allows us to demonstrate that (i) if the central bank is populist ...
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ABSTRACT A profit-making financial system is introduced into the Pasinetti model of growth and distribution with the aim of showing that Pasinetti's formulation implicitly incorporated a well-defined theory of finance. In a golden... more
ABSTRACT A profit-making financial system is introduced into the Pasinetti model of growth and distribution with the aim of showing that Pasinetti's formulation implicitly incorporated a well-defined theory of finance. In a golden age, the financial sector must set the rates of interest below the rate of profit to compensate for the remuneration of risks of enterprise generated by expectations realized in the broad, but not at the level of individual firms. If there exists a relationship between investment and finance, intermediaries contribute to the determination of the rates of profit and growth. Their decisions may not allow a competitive economy to return to the golden age once pushed away from it.
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DESCRIPTION Alla crisi finanziaria globale potrebbe seguire una severa stretta creditizia da parte delle banche. Data l’attuale difficoltà del sistema finanziario nel valutare correttamente progetti di investimento e valore delle imprese,... more
DESCRIPTION Alla crisi finanziaria globale potrebbe seguire una severa stretta creditizia da parte delle banche. Data l’attuale difficoltà del sistema finanziario nel valutare correttamente progetti di investimento e valore delle imprese, la risposta di policy appropriata sembra essere un forte impegno della spesa pubblica nel sostegno della domanda. Ma in contesti come quello italiano – dove ciò appare possibile solo in modo molto limitato – è auspicabile un nuovo approccio alla oncertazione tra le parti sociali, in cui la presenza delle associazioni bancarie consenta di affiancare ai temi della produttività e della contrattazione la pressante questione creditizia.
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