Anna Maria Pinna

Border effects in the enlarged EU area: evidence from imports to accession countries

By looking at imports of Eastern European countries, we provide novel insights on the importance and magnitude of border effects and on how they are linked with technical barriers to trade. All Central Eastern European Countries (CEECs) traded with themselves more than with other countries. We grouped products into three categories; depending on the importance of applicaple technical barriers. Our results show border effects are the largest for products, where we expect to have the most important technical barriers. We assess if border effects changed over the transition period and we find that for products where technical barriers are less important the magnitude of border effects was declining at the end of the 90s.

Movements of People for Movements of Goods

Whilst it is well established to think of international tourism as a type of exports, namely ‘home’ exports, the potential of tourism flows as an engine for fostering trade among countries is a poorly studied topic. In this paper, we show that this relationship can be studied at a very detailed level by exploiting the disaggregation of existing information on international trade and inbound tourism. We consider a sample of 25 countries belonging to the European Union, a region that has been interested by common shocks such as the establishment of the euro as the new currency for many countries and the liberalisation in the air transport market. We carry out a panel data analysis by means of which we assess whether international tourist arrivals by a given country activate additional exports towards the same country. We find not only that tourism can promote exports, but also that this effect displays important differences depending on whether or not consumption goods are considered. This finding is consistent with the idea that the experience of tourists in a given destination reduces the fixed costs of trade, thus facilitating access to the advantages of international trade for more peripheral economies.

Public vs private demand for covering long term care expenditures

This article studies the determinants of the Willingness to Pay (WTP) for Long-Term Care (LTC) insurance coverage. Two alternatives are considered: one compulsory, financed through taxes, the other purchased on a voluntary basis and paid through a premium. WTP was elicited through open-ended contingent valuation within a survey conducted in the Italian region Emilia-Romagna about LTC population needs. We model information on individual WTP as a two-stage process, where respondents first establish their interest for LTC cover, then state their WTP. Results show that interest and WTP are influenced by different variables, and that differences arise also between the WTP for public and private coverage.

La disponibilità a pagare per la copertura del rischio di non autosufficienza: analisi econometrica e valutazioni di "policy"

In response to the increasing demand for elderly care, Italy has experienced an intense debate on what should be the most appropriate way to extend coverage for long-term care (LTC). This paper bridges a gap into existing literature by analysing household preferences for LTC coverage in light of an ad hoc survey. We present evidence on household stated willingness to pay (WTP) both for tax financed and private LTC insurance schemes. The distribution of WTP across different socio-economic groups provides insights on the political sustainability of the different institutional solutions. Moreover, estimates of the determinants of demand highlights the importance of income levels and opinion indicators in turning consumer preferences either to public or private schemes. We interpret the different patterns of WTP as evidence of the influence of the redistributive effects inherent to public insurance.

Broadening or jumping? An analysis of the first export market of European Union firms

This paper explores the export activities of international firms from seven European countries with a special focus on the neighbourhoods of Europe, where 16 countries have been included in the neighbouring policy. Using a detailed dataset of the internationalisation activities of nearly 15,000 companies, we focus on the best export destinations of European Union firms. In 2008, only 6% of exporters had at least one neighbouring country in their top three export destinations. We subsequently model the export/no-export activity of each firm and the location of the first export destination by means of a nested logit model and find that this process is driven primarily by geography. No reduction (or even an increase) of the strength of the distance effect can be detected for a firm when exporting outside Europe to nearby countries, meaning that European Union firms do not have any particular advantage in exporting their goods in countries near their borders with respect to all the other possible destinations in the world. The ‘repulsive force’ of distance is alleviated only when moving outside of neighbourhoods where the size of the destination market becomes stronger.

Economic Integration and Vulnerability in the EU Neighbourhood

In 2004, the EU launched the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), a unified policy framework towards its neighbours in the external EU periphery, aiming at strengthening prosperity, stability and security around its geopolitical borders. However, in-depth empirical analysis provides clear-cut evidence that, while the size and composition of trade flows between the EU and the ENCs may be growing, they are not favourable for the ENCs from the perspective of export diversification, in terms of either products or number of destinations. This condition increases their exposure to volatility in international markets. These results provide valuable insight into economic integration theory and for policymaking.