The History of Rome in Painting

There are many paths to reach Rome, immense field open to the eye through the centuries and days, where the presence of the story is haunting. All the artists came to Rome: Italians of various Italian and also French, Dutch, Flemish, Spanish, English and Americans. These painters whose works tell its long history for having lived in the glare of light forever are the Roman pantheon of arts: what are all the anonymous authors of the frescoes of ancient Rome and medieval, but Fabriano, Cimabue , Giotto, Botticelli, Raphael, Giulio Romano, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Guido Reni, Guercino, Titian, Vasari, Velasquez, Le Nain, Poussin, Zuccari, Van Wittel, Eckersberg, Giraudet, David, Panini, Hubert Robert, Reynolds, Fuseli, Ingres, Sargent, Caffi, Vernet, Turner, Corot, Caffi, De Chirico, etc..

A General model of bilateral migration agreements

Unilateral migration policies impose externalities on other countries. In order to try to internalize these externalities, countries sign bilateral migration agreements. One element of these agreements is the emphasis on enforcing migration policies: immigrant-receiving countries agree to allow more immigrants from their emigrant-sending partner if they cooperate in enforcing their migration policy at the border. I present a simple theoretical model that justifies this behavior in a two-country setting with welfare maximizing governments. These governments establish migration quotas that need to be enforced at a cost. I prove that uncoordinated migration policies are inefficient. Both countries can improve welfare by exchanging a more "generous" migration quota for expenditure on enforcement policy. Contrary to what could be expected, this result does not depend on the enforcement technology that both countries employ.

La voix-over du Roman d'un tricheur et sa postérité dans Providence. A propos de la résurgence de pratiques "bonimentorielles".

Partant de la réception internationale du film Le Roman d'un tricheur de Sacha Guitry dans laquelle la voix du cinéaste est fréquemment rapprochée de celle du "bonimenteur" de l'époque muette, cette étude examine les particularités de ce film en termes de positionnement du narrateur over par rapport aux images et par rapport au spectateur. Une filiation est posée entre ce film et Providence de Resnais au niveau des manifestations de l'oralité: là aussi, le narrateur occupe la place d'instigateur du monde filmique et de spectateur des images qu'il commente.

Influència de la música italiana en la composició en llengua romanç a la catedral de Tortosa (Tarragona), en la primera m. del segle XVIII

Estudi realitzat a partir d’una estada a la Società Italiana di Musicologia entre abril i maig del 2006. S’ha estudiat la influència de la música italiana durant les primeres dècades del segle XVIII, en les composicions en llengua romanç d’aquesta època conservades a l’arxiu musical de la catedral de Tortosa -Tarragona -. Sha a consultat de bibliografia específica així com la consulta directa de fonts italianes de l’època i l’estudi de les seves característiques (tipus d’escriptura, compasos més freqüents, estructura formal, veus/instruments utilitzats, ...). La consulta s’ha fet a diferents arxius i biblioteques romanes (arxiu històric i biblioteca de la Accademia Nazionale di S. Cecilia, biblioteca del Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra, arxiu de la Chiesa del Gesú, arxiu de la Chiesa Nazionale Spagnola, biblioteca del Conservatorio di musica Santa Cecilia i Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II), així com de la Biblioteca Apostolica i el Archivio Segreto del Vaticano. La recerca ha confirmat que, durant les primeres dècades del segle XVIII, hi ha una influència considerable de la música italiana “de moda” en les composicions de la catedral de Tortosa escrites en llengua vernacla i, després d’un estudi comparatiu i de l’anàlisi d’una mostra de les obres italianes i de la Seu, s’ha arribat a la conclusió de que, si bé hi ha elements italians en les composicions tortosines, no es perd en elles el llenguatge hispànic de la tradició, si no que més bé hi ha una convivència de tots dos, fins i tot en una mateixa obra.

China´s new labour contract law: no harm to employment?

In January 2008, China imposed a new labour contract law. This new law is the most significant reform to the law of employment relations in mainland China in more than a decade. The paper provides a theoretical framework on the inter-linkages between labour market regulation, option value and the choice and timing of employment. All in all, the paper demonstrates that the Labour Contract Law in it´s own right will have only small impacts upon employment in the fast-growing Chinese economy. On the contrary, induced increasing unit labour costs represent the real issue and may reduce employment.

Horizontal Agreements and R&D Complementarities: Merger versus RJV

We study the decision of two rms within an oligopoly concerning whether to enter into a horizontal agreement to exploit complementarities between their R&D activities and, if so, whether to merge or form a research joint venture (RJV). In contrast to horizontal merger, there is a probability that an RJV contract will fail to enforce R&D sharing. We nd that a horizontal agreement always arises. The insiders' merger/RJV choice involves a trade-o : While merger o ers certainty that R&D complementarities will be exploited, it leads to a pro t-reducing reaction by outsiders on the product market, where competition is Cournot. Greater brand similarity and contract enforceability (\quality") both favour RJV, while greater R&D complementarity favours merger. Interestingly, the insiders may choose to merge even when RJV contracts are always enforceable, and they may opt to form an RJV even when the likelihood of enforceability is negligible.

An Analysis of the Electoral Use of Policy on Law and Order by New Labour

There has been much debate regarding the electoral strategy adopted by New Labour in the lead-up to and then during their time in government. This paper addresses the issue from the perspective of left/right and libertarian/authoritarian considerations by examining data on individual attitudes from the British Social Attitudes survey between 1986 and 2009. The analysis indicates that New Labour’s move towards the right on economic and public policy was the main driver towards attracting new centrist voters and could thus be labelled ‘broadly’ populist. The move towards a tougher stance on law and order was more ‘narrowly’ populist in that it was used more to minimise the reduction in support from Labour’s traditional base on the left than to attract new votes.

Okun’s law – A meta analysis

This paper seeks to identify whether there is a representative empirical Okun’s Law coefficient (OLC) and to measure its size. We carry out a meta regression analysis on a sample of 269 estimates of the OLC to uncover reasons for differences in empirical results and to estimate the ‘true’ OLC. On statistical (and other) grounds, we find it appropriate to investigate two separate subsamples, using respectively (some measure of) unemployment or output as dependent variable. Our results can be summarized as follows. First, there is evidence of type II publication bias in both sub-samples, but a type I bias is present only among the papers using some measure of unemployment as the dependent variable. Second, after correction for publication bias, authentic and statistically significant OLC effects are present in both sub-samples. Third, bias-corrected estimated true OLCs are significantly lower (in absolute value) with models using some measure of unemployment as the dependent variable. Using a bivariate MRA approach, the estimated true effects are -0.25 for the unemployment sub-sample and -0.61 for the output-sub sample; with a multivariate MRA methodology, the estimated true effects are -0.40 and -1.02 for the unemployment and the output-sub samples respectively.

How do technical change and technological distance influence the size of the Okun’s Law coefficient?

How does technical change influence the size of the Okun’s Law coefficient? Using a nonlinear version of Okun’s Law augmented with technical change and technological distance, we show that the impact of output movements on unemployment variations is influenced by the imitation or innovation origins of technical change

Legal Uncertainty, Competition Law Enforcement Procedures and Optimal Penalties

In this paper we make three contributions to the literature on optimal Competition Law enforcement procedures. The first (which is of general interest beyond competition policy) is to clarify the concept of “legal uncertainty”, relating it to ideas in the literature on Law and Economics, but formalising the concept through various information structures which specify the probability that each firm attaches – at the time it takes an action – to the possibility of its being deemed anti-competitive were it to be investigated by a Competition Authority. We show that the existence of Type I and Type II decision errors by competition authorities is neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of legal uncertainty, and that information structures with legal uncertainty can generate higher welfare than information structures with legal certainty – a result echoing a similar finding obtained in a completely different context and under different assumptions in earlier Law and Economics literature (Kaplow and Shavell, 1992). Our second contribution is to revisit and significantly generalise the analysis in our previous paper, Katsoulacos and Ulph (2009), involving a welfare comparison of Per Se and Effects- Based legal standards. In that analysis we considered just a single information structure under an Effects-Based standard and also penalties were exogenously fixed. Here we allow for (a) different information structures under an Effects-Based standard and (b) endogenous penalties. We obtain two main results: (i) considering all information structures a Per Se standard is never better than an Effects-Based standard; (ii) optimal penalties may be higher when there is legal uncertainty than when there is no legal uncertainty.