Giacomo Becattini and the Marshall's method. A Schumpeterian approach

The studies of Giacomo Becattini concerning the notion of the "Marshallian industrial district" have led a revolution in the field of economic development around the world. The paper offers an interpretation of the methodology adopted by Becattini. The roots are clearly Marshallian. Becattini proposes a return to the economy as a complex social science that operates in historical time. We adopt a Schumpeterian approach to the method in economic analysis in order to highlight the similarities between the Marshall and Becattini's approach. Finally the paper uses the distinction between logical time, real time and historical time which enable us to study the "localized" economic process in a Becattinian way.

Autobiografía de un conflicto ambiental

El presente trabajo como autobiografía de un conflicto propone un posible método para representar las cualidades relevantes sobre la experiencia vivida como activista en una coordinadora contra la privatización del sistema hídrico integrado en Nápoles, Caserta y sus provincias. Esta contribución, alberga la esperanza de poner en práctica un proceso organizado de reflexión a través del cual es posible producir información útil para compartir experiencias. El conflicto sobre la gestión pública del agua surge de la oposición de un grupo de sujetos sociales al esquema político de privatización del sistema de agua potable en la región Campania en el sur de Italia. La movilización social se enmarca en el movimiento más amplio llamado ecologismo popular. Su reclamación, la de un reconocimiento del agua como bien común, está unida a aquel ecologismo mundial que nace de las necesidades materiales de la vida. En esta clase de conflictos ambientales los acontecimientos son inciertos, los valores están en disputa, los intereses son elevados, y las decisiones son urgentes. Lo anterior es el objeto de estudio de la ciencia posnormal. El enfoque sistémico del presente trabajo se desarrolla a través de una identificación de las diferentes escalas de gobierno y de las decisiones asumidas por los diferentes actores mediante la descripción de la dinámica interna y externa del actor principal del conflicto: la Coordinadora de los Comités para el Agua Pública en Nápoles, Caserta y sus provincias. La autobiografía concluye subrayando el carácter problemático de la reproducción de la comunidad estética dentro de las movilizaciones e identificando lo que entiendo como la demanda política más interesante de la Coordinadora: la necesidad de construir un “experto comité”, más que un “comité de expertos”.

Italy's urban waste metabolism

The problem of waste management is causing growing concern due to increasing generation rates, the emissions into soil, water and air, the social conflicts derived from the election of disposal sites and the loss of resources and energy among others. In this work, an innovative methodology is used to enable a better understanding of the waste generation and management system in Italy. Two new waste indicators are built to complement the conventional indicators used by official statistics. Then a multi-scale analysis of the Density of Waste Disposed (DWD) is carried out to highlight the territorial diversity of waste performances and test its contribution to detect plausible risky areas. Starting from Italian regions, the scale down goes on to the provincial level and, only for the region of Campania, the municipal one. First, the analysis shows that the DWD is able to complement the information provided by the conventional waste indicators. Second, the analysis shows the limitations of using a unique institutional solution to waste management problems. In this sense the multi-scale analysis provides with a more realistic picture of Italian waste system than using a single scale.

Consumption heterogenity over the business cycle

We study consumption heterogeneity over the business cycle. Using household panel data from 1984 to 2010 in the US we find that the welfare cost of the business cycle is non-negligible, once agents heterogeneity is taken into account, and sums to about 1% of yearly consumption. This is due to the structure of comovements between the different parts of the consumption distribution, in particular the tails are highly volatile and negatively related to each other. We also find that business cycle fluctuations originating from exogenous financial shocks only hit the top end of the consumption distribution and therefore reduce consumption inequality.

The Effects of government spending on the distribution of consumption

We study the effects of government spending on the distribution of consumption. We find a substantial degree of heterogeneity: consumption increases at the bottom and falls at the top of the distribution, implying a significant temporary reduction of consumption inequality. The effects of the shock display correlations of around -0.7/-0.9 with the percentage of stockholders within the decile. We interpret the results as in line and yielding support to models of limited participation where, while the Ricardian equivalence holds for rich households, for poor household, with no access to capital markets, the Keynesian multiplier is at work.

Computing infinite plans for LTL goals using a classical planner

Classical planning has been notably successful in synthesizing finite plans to achieve states where propositional goals hold. In the last few years, classical planning has also been extended to incorporate temporally extended goals, expressed in temporal logics such as LTL, to impose restrictions on the state sequences generated by finite plans. In this work, we take the next step and consider the computation of infinite plans for achieving arbitrary LTL goals. We show that infinite plans can also be obtained efficiently by calling a classical planner once over a classical planning encoding that represents and extends the composition of the planningdomain and the B¨uchi automaton representingthe goal. This compilation scheme has been implemented and a number of experiments are reported.

The varieties of regional change

Many metropolitan areas have experienced extreme boom-bust cycles over the past century. Some places, like Detroit, grew enormously as industrial powerhouses and then declined, while other older cities, like Boston, seem quite resilient. Education does a reasonable job of explaining urban resilience. In this paper, we present a simple model where education increases the level of entrepreneurship. In this model, human capital spillovers occur at the city level because skilled workers produce more product varieties and thereby increase labor demand. We decompose empirically the causes of the connection between skills and urban success and find that skills are associated with growth in productivity or entrepreneurship, not with growth in quality of life, at least outside of the West. We also find that skills seem to have depressed housing supply growth in the West, but not in other regions, which supports the view that educated residents in that region have fought for tougher land-use controls. We also present evidence that skills have had a disproportionately large impact on unemployment during the current recession.

Asymmetric information and trade policy

Economists understand protectionism as a costly mechanism to redistribute from the average citizen to special-interest groups; yet political platforms that deviate from free trade have surprising popular appeal. I present an explanation based on heterogeneous information across citizens whose voting decision has an intensive margin. For each politician and each sector, the optimal trade-policy choice caters to the preferences of those voters who are more likely to be informed of that proposal. An overall protectionist bias emerges because in every industry producers are better informed than consumers. This asymmetry emerges in equilibrium because co-workers share industry-specific knwoledge, and because producers have greater incentives to engage in costly learning about their sector. My model implies that more widespread information about trade policy for an industry is associated with lower protection. Cross-sectoral evidence on U.S. non-tariff barriers and newspaper coverage is consistent with this prediction.

Chopin & Leopardi : dues sensibilitats bessones

Aquest treball vol estudiar les relacions que s'estableixen entre dos artistes d'un mateix període estètic: Frédéric Chopin i Giacomo Leopardi. Ho fa analitzant 7 parelles de música i poesia, analitzades per descobrir què és allò que les uneix. Després d'una reflexió al voltant de l'art, el treball reflexiona sobre què aporta a l'estudi d'un període artístic, d'unes determinades obres o a l'escolta d'un concert, la combinació de dues o més disciplines artístiques. Chopin & Leopardi: dues sensibilitats bessones, doncs, que acaben connectant també amb nosaltres, descobrint en l'art l'expressió de quelcom universal que uneix artista, intèrpret i públic.

Intellectual property rights and efficient firm organization

I show that intellectual property rights yield static efficiency gains, irrespective oftheir dynamic role in fostering innovation. I develop a property-rights model of firmorganization with two dimensions of non-contractible investment. In equilibrium, thefirst best is attained if and only if ownership of tangible and intangible assets is equallyprotected. If IP rights are weaker, firm structure is distorted and efficiency declines:the entrepreneur must either integrate her suppliers, which prompts a decline in theirinvestment; or else risk their defection, which entails a waste of her human capital. Mymodel predicts greater prevalence of vertical integration where IP rights are weaker,and a switch from integration to outsourcing over the product cycle. Both empiricalpredictions are consistent with evidence on multinational companies. As a normativeimplication, I find that IP rights should be strong but narrowly defined, to protect abusiness without holding up its potential spin-offs.

Social capital, government expenditures, and growth

Countries with greater social capital have higher economic growth. We show that socialcapital is also highly positively correlated across countries with government expenditureon education. We develop an infinite-horizon model of public spending and endogenousstochastic growth that explains both facts through frictions in political agency whenvoters have imperfect information. In our model, the government provides servicesthat yield immediate utility, and investment that raises future productivity. Voters aremore likely to observe public services, so politicians have electoral incentives to underprovidepublic investment. Social capital increases voters' awareness of all governmentactivity. As a consequence, both politicians' incentives and their selection improve.In the dynamic equilibrium, both the amount and the efficiency of public investmentincrease, permanently raising the growth rate.

Heterogeneous information and trade policy

Protectionism enjoys surprising popular support, in spite of deadweight losses. At thesame time, trade barriers appear to decline with public information about protection.This paper develops an electoral model with heterogeneously informed voters whichexplains both facts and predicts the pattern of trade policy across industries. In themodel, each agent endogenously acquires more information about his sector of employment. As a result, voters support protectionism, because they learn more about thetrade barriers that help them as producers than those that hurt them as consumers.In equilibrium, asymmetric information induces a universal protectionist bias. Thestructure of protection is Pareto inefficient, in contrast to existing models. The modelpredicts a Dracula effect: trade policy for a sector is less protectionist when there ismore public information about it. Using a measure of newspaper coverage across industries, I find that cross-sector evidence from the United States bears out my theoreticalpredictions.

Stare decisis: Rhetoric and substance

Stare decisis allows common law to develop gradually and incrementally. We show howjudge-made law can steadily evolve and tend to increase efficiency even in the absence ofnew information. Judges' opinions must argue that their decisions are consistent withprecedent: this is the more costly, the greater the innovation they are introducing. As aresult, each judge effects a cautious marginal change in the law. Alternative models inwhich precedents are either strictly obeyed or totally discarded would instead predictabrupt large swings in legal rules. Thus we find that the evolution of case law isgrounded not in binary logic fixing judges' constraints, but in costly rhetoric shapingtheir incentives. We apply this finding to an assessment of the role of analogicalreasoning in shaping the joint development of different areas of law.

Clusters of entrepreneurship

Employment growth is strongly predicted by smaller average establishment size, both acrosscities and across industries within cities, but there is little consensus on why this relationshipexists. Traditional economic explanations emphasize factors that reduce entry costs or raiseentrepreneurial returns, thereby increasing net returns and attracting entrepreneurs. A secondclass of theories hypothesizes that some places are endowed with a greater supply of entrepreneurship. Evidence on sales per worker does not support the higher returns for entrepreneurshiprationale. Our evidence suggests that entrepreneurship is higher when fixed costs are lower andwhen there are more entrepreneurial people.