Biancamaria Zavanella

Outsourcing Services in the Italian National Health Service: The Evaluation of Private and Public Operators

Abstract Outsourcing has shown itself worldwide to be a useful tool for improving partnership between private and public companies. The budgetary constraints imposed by the Italian government on health industry are enhancing the urgency to outsource to face costs. Our study deals with the relationship between ASLs (Aziende Sanitarie Locali, the Italian local health authority) and private operators outsourcing in Italy. We studied 44 pharmaceutical companies (with a yearly turnover of about €6 billion) and 34 ASLs (with about 12 million users) to find out the areas in which they used outsourcing, the amount and the frequency of such investment, their satisfaction and, therefore, their future intentions. We analysed the answers in search for possible relationships between size, frequency of use and other features to uncover a possible convergence between public and private interest in outsourcing. To better evaluate the convergence we analyse and compare satisfaction of both the operators involved in outsourcing (ASL and private operators). We aim to offer a representation of the current state of outsourcing in the Italian Healthcare System and a first indication of possible contrasts in the relationship between public and private partners. The results suggest that public and private operator have a different satisfaction level and in particular their expectations are in contrast whit their satisfaction: ASLs are generally more satisfied than pharmaceutical companies, but expect a considerable reduction of outsourced activities; private companies are less satisfied and provide an increase in these activities.

Updating CPI Weights Through Compositional VAR Forecasts: An Application to the Italian Index

Worldwide, monthly CPIs are mostly calculated as weighted averages of price relatives with fixed base weights. The main source of estimation of CPI weights are National Accounts, whose complexity in terms of data collection, estimation of aggregates and validation procedures leads to several months of delay in the release of the figures. This ends up in a non completely consistent Laspeyres formula since the weights do not refer to the same period as the base prices do, being older by one year and then corrected by the elapsed inflation. In this paper we propose to forecast CPI weights via a compositional VAR model, to obtain more updated weights and, consequently, a more updated measure of inflation through CPIs.

Measuring bipolarization in labour productivity in Italy: a new index and its decomposition by sectors and regional factors

This paper explores bipolarization in labour productivity among Italian regions. An index to measure bipolarization in labour productivity distribution is suggested. The index can be decomposed by sectors, explaining the contribution of each sector to bipolarization. From this sectoral decomposition, a further decomposition based on a reformulation of shift-share analysis is obtained. This shift-share decomposition captures the effects of regional factors on bipolarization since the roles played by the disparities in sectoral labour productivities, industry-mix and allocation of workers across sectors are explained. The index and its decompositions are used to measure the bipolarization in the aggregate labour productivity distribution across Italian regions over the 2000-2011 period. Our findings show that bipolarization is not particularly high and is mainly attributable to the disparities in sectoral labour productivities between regions. Keywords: bipolarization, decomposition, labour productivity, Shift-share analysis, Italian regions, sectors of activity

Servizi pubblici per l’impiego e imprese: un’analisi della relazione tra preselezione e job matching

In Italia la regolamentazione del mercato del lavoro ammette che nel settore dei servizi per l’impiego operino intermediari sia pubblici sia privati. I servizi pubblici per l’impiego (SPI) esercitano la funzione di incontro domanda-offerta di lavoro secondo logiche differenti dagli operatori privati, specialmente nei confronti delle imprese. Il presente lavoro indaga gli effetti della promozione dei servizi pubblici per l’impiego, rivolta alle imprese, rispetto alle aspettative dei datori di lavoro nei confronti di un efficace servizio di mediazione domanda-offerta di lavoro. Si impiega un modello di regressione logistica binaria per esaminare la relazione tra la tempestivita del servizio di preselezione, erogato nell’ambito delle attivita promozionali, e l’esito del processo di job matching . L’evidenza empirica suggerisce che, al crescere del lasso temporale necessario per l’erogazione del servizio, diminuiscono le chances che il processo di matching si concluda con successo. In secondo luogo, si stimano gli effetti che le modalita di risposta degli SPI alle esigenze occupazionali delle imprese presentano sulla probabilita che il processo di matching termini favorevolmente. In proposito emerge che la numerosita di profili disponibili, in linea con quelli richiesti dal datore di lavoro, non sembra incidere sull’esito del processo di matching . La tematica dell’analisi degli effetti di servizi pubblici per l’impiego, erogati a livello locale, riscuote interesse crescente per via del progressivo decentramento amministrativo che attribuisce ai governi locali competenze in materia di politiche attive per il lavoro. Questo contributo discute le opportunita legate all’erogazione di servizi per l’impiego avanzati alle imprese da parte degli operatori pubblici e degli effetti sul processo di job matching che possono derivare da un’attivita dei servizi pubblici per l’impiego condotta secondo criteri improntati al soddisfacimento dei requisiti generalmente attesi da parte di un’impresa nei confronti dell’operato di un generico intermediario privato.