Chiara Gigliarano

Going regional: An index of sustainable economic welfare for Italy

Abstract The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) is a monetary measure of sustainability and economic welfare aimed at overcoming some of the limitations of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In particular it accounts for the value of externalities, for the distribution of income and for the natural resources depletion. Since its formulation in 1989 by Daly and Cobb, the ISEW has been calculated for a number of nations. More recently, there has been an increasing interest in assessing sustainable welfare also at sub-national levels. Following this trend, the aim of this paper is to provide an empirical application of the ISEW for Italy and for all its regions and macro-areas over the years 1999–2009. In particular, we compare the ranking of the Italian macro-areas and regions based on ISEW with the corresponding rankings based on GDP. This is the first empirical analysis in the literature that provides estimates and comparisons of the ISEW for all the Italian regions and macro-areas over a long period of time. Another important novelty of this paper concerns the introduction of a weighting scheme to adjust private consumptions based not only on inequality but also on poverty. Empirical results show substantial differences between the regional ranking based on ISEW and the traditional classification based on GDP, revealing, moreover, that the Italian regions are characterized by a high variability in terms of their sustainable and economic welfare.

The Gini concentration test for survival data

We apply the well known Gini index to the measurement of concentration in survival times within groups of patients, and as a way to compare the distribution of survival times across groups of patients in clinical studies. In particular, we propose an estimator of a restricted version of the index from right censored data. We derive the asymptotic distribution of the resulting Gini statistic, and construct an estimator for its asymptotic variance. We use these results to propose a novel test for differences in the heterogeneity of survival distributions, which may suggest the presence of a differential treatment effect for some groups of patients. We focus in particular on traditional and generalized cure rate models, i.e., mixture models with a distribution of the lifetimes of the cured patients that is either degenerate at infinity or has a density. Results from a simulation study suggest that the Gini index is useful in some situations, and that it should be considered together with existing tests (in particular, the Log-rank, Wilcoxon, and Gray–Tsiatis tests). Use of the test is illustrated on the classic data arising from the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group melanoma clinical trial E1690.

Making classifier performance comparisons when ROC curves intersect

The ROC curve is one of the most common statistical tools useful to assess classifier performance. The selection of the best classifier when ROC curves intersect is quite challenging. A novel approach for model comparisons when ROC curves show intersections is proposed. In particular, the relationship between ROC orderings and stochastic dominance is investigated in a theoretical framework and a general class of indicators is proposed which is coherent with dominance criteria also when ROC curves cross. Furthermore, a simulation study and a real application to credit risk data are proposed to illustrate the use of the new methodological approach.

The Gini Test for Survival Data in Presence of Small and Unbalanced Groups

The aim of this note is to study the performance of the Gini concentration test for survival data in presence of unbalanced and small samples. We compared the performance of the asymptotic test with an alternative permutation distribution test, illustrating by simulation that if groups are very small the latter test should be used. Also, we show how the definition of the length of time considered in the construction of the test statistic can be chosen to improve the performance of the test.

Region of Residence and Equality of Opportunity in Health: A Note on the Italian Case

The Italian health care system is managed mainly at the regional level. For this reasonhealth care may differ depending on region of residence. The aim of this note is to take a rigorous ex ante approach and test for equality of health opportunities as opposed to health outcomes, which are the ex post results. We perform non-parametric tests to evaluate if the probability of reaching the same health status differs by region of residence, after controlling for other influential factors such as age, gender and income. The results underline that the geographical distribution of opportunities in health is unequal, and therefore, that regional differences in outcomes are more likely to be expected.

Public Health Transfers in Kind: Measuring the Distributional Effects in Italy

The aim of the paper is to translate into a monetary amount the benefits received by the provision of health related public services in Italy, analyze their incidence and relevance and study their implications on the distribution of income amoung individuals. Beyond the traditional insurance-based approach, we propose an alternative method, which assigns health related transfers according also to the individual income and self-assessed health status. We apply the two approaches to Italy in 2003. In addition, we test for equality of health opportunities among citizens.

Income and social polarization: empirical findings

The idea that high levels of polarization in society can lead to social instability and conflict has motivated an increasing interest in the analysis of income and social polarization. This chapter aims at providing a review of the main empirical findings resulting from the application of income and social polarization indices. The two main approaches to the study of income polarization are introduced. The first focuses on the rise of separated income groups, while the second addresses the decline of the middle class. Both approaches have been applied to the study of social conflict. Alternative methods for monitoring income polarization based on nonparametric density estimation techniques are also illustrated. Empirical applications of social polarization indices are then discussed. Finally, other applications are presented, such as health polarization, effects of taxation on income polarization and the link between wage polarization and labour market mobility.

Assessing the Equitable and Sustainable Well-Being of the Italian Provinces

In recent years there has been an increasing interest in the measurement of well-being of individuals and societies. Influenced by the “beyond GDP” initiative, in 2012 the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) and the National Council for Economics and Labour launched the Equitable and Sustainable Well-being (BES, from the Italian acronym of “Benessere Equo e Sostenibile”) project, a set of 134 indicators aimed at capturing the Italian well-being. Lately, the debate on how to measure the well-being moved from the national level to the local one. Following this new trend, ISTAT introduced a set of 88 indicators for the local well-being (at NUTS3 level), the so called “Provinces’ BES”. Based on this project, aim of the paper is to provide an exploratory analysis for detecting groups of Italian provinces that share similar well-being profiles. In particular, we first apply a factor analysis with the aim to reduce the high number of indicators and, grounded on these results, we then create groups of the Italian provinces, applying the cluster analysis, in order to find similarity among them. Finally, based on the result of the factor analysis, for each domain and for each Italian province, we construct a composite indicator that is a linear combination of the estimated factor scores, with weights based on the Gini index of concentration.