Cristina Bernini

Internal and locational factors affecting hotel industry efficiency: evidence from Italian business corporations.

This paper investigates whether and how the competitive delay of the Italian hotel industry is influenced by the level of business corporation efficiency. A stochastic frontier production approach is proposed in which technical inefficiency is specified as a function of the internal and locational factors in a firm. The model is estimated on a balanced panel of tourism business corporations observed during 1998–2005. Estimates show that the competitive gap in the Italian accommodation system is not a result of poor business corporation performance, and the importance of location, human and immaterial capital is assessed as (in)efficiency determinants. The authors then suggest policies to improve the Italian tourist industrys competitiveness.

Measuring underreporting in accommodation statistics: evidence from Italy.

The aim of this paper is to provide a new measure of the underreporting of accommodation statistics in Italian domestic tourism. The analysis employs information from different official surveys. Following the Eurostat recommendations, we compare the Italian trips and holidays surveys and the movements in accommodation establishments, the two major official sources on tourism in Italy and on the activities of persons travelling, respectively. The analysis shows that demand-side estimates exceed accommodation statistics by 16%, on average, over the period 2007–2009 and that the underreporting rate is variable over time. The results highlight the need to explicitly consider this measurement error when analysing the tourism business cycle, forecasting tourism flows and defining tourism policy.

Distance and Efficiency in the Italian Banking System

During recent decades, banks have progressively moved towards larger, centralized and hierarchical organizational structures. An increased investment in non-interest-generating activities has also implied performance vulnerability, whose effects have been particularly destabilizing during the recent financial crisis. In this economic and financial contest, several banks have become increasingly concerned with controlling and analysing their costs and revenues, as well as measuring the risks taken to produce acceptable returns.

Accommodation industry or accommodation industries? Evidence from the analysis of production processes.

Production processes heterogeneity is largely recognized in tourist accommodation industry, but few empirical evidences have been reported in the literature either on the extent of the heterogeneity or on its determinants. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of environmental features in affecting heterogeneity of accommodation production processes. Using a novel administrative data-set of hotels in Emilia Romagna (ER), we estimate stochastic frontier production functions for different hotel clusters, defined by simultaneously considering seasonality, quality (star rating), and size. Results show a relevant heterogeneity due to these environmental factors, that is different hotel industries exist in ER. From a policy perspective, the analysis evidences the need to develop targeted interventions to different clusters of productive structures.

Comparing Continuous Treatment Matching Methods in Policy Evaluation

The paper evaluates the statistical properties of two different matching estimators in the case of continuous treatment, using a Monte Carlo experiment. The traditional generalized propensity score matching estimator is compared with a new 2-steps matching estimator for the continuous treatment case, recently developed (Adorno et al.,, 2007). It compares treatment and control units similar in terms of their observable characteristics in both selection processes (the participation decision and the treatment level assignment), where the generalized propensity score matching estimator collapses the two processes into one single step matching. The results show that the 2-steps estimator has better finite sample properties if some institutional rules define the level of treatment with respect to the characteristics of treated units.