Elena Siletti

On the Gini coefficient normalization when attributes with negative values are considered

Typically, inequality indices appear both as basic concepts in the analysis of welfare economics and as technical tools applied to income or other transferable attributes. Several findings in such research fields are provided by the standard Gini coefficient, traditionally introduced for incomes taking non-negative values. Even if negative income can appear as an unfamiliar concept, it can arise in real surveys, especially when assessing families’ financial assets. The main troubles associated with the treatment of negative income regards the violation of the normalization principle. The inclusion of income taking negative values can yield for the standard Gini coefficient achieving values

Effects of interpersonal trust, corporate sustainability and propensity to trust on impersonal trust

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Organizational ethical climates and employee's trust in colleagues, the supervisor, and the organization

>1. The Gini coefficient then has to be adjusted in order to ensure that its range is bounded between 0 and 1. In this paper, a reformulation of the Gini coefficient with respect to that proposed in the literature is presented and discussed in light of the negative income issue. In particular, a new definition of the Gini coefficient normalization term, revealing more coherence with the classical situation of maximum inequality, is provided. Finally, an empirical application based on the Survey of Household Income and Wealth data of the Bank of Italy (2012) further validates the actual attitude of the new Gini coefficient in catching inequality in the distribution of the attribute.

Estimating the Cost of Children Through Engel Curves by Different Good Aggregates

Several studies provide evidence of the role of written communication in influencing public perception towards genetically modified organisms, whereas visual communication has been sparsely investigated. This article aims to evaluate the exposure of the Italian population to scary genetically modified organism–related images. A set of 517 images collected through Google are classified considering fearful attributes, and an index that accounts for the scary impact of these images is built. Then, through an ordinary least-squares regression, we estimate the relationship between the Scary Impact Index and a set of variables that describes the context in which the images appear. The results reveal that the first (and most viewed) Google result images contain the most frightful contents. In addition, the agri-food sector in Italy is strongly oriented towards offering a negative representation of genetically modified organisms. Exposure to scary images could be a factor that affects the negative perception of genetically modified organisms in Italy.

Employability and mental health in dismissed workers: the contribution of lay-off justice and participation in outplacement services

Past research acknowledges that impersonal trust emanates from employees’ perception that they have been treated fairly by their organization. The present study seeks to advance this knowledge by demonstrating the role of further factors, i.e. (i) perception that they have been treated fairly by organizational intermediaries – supervisors and colleagues; (ii) perception that any stakeholder is treated fairly by the organization; and (iii) a dispositional propensity to trust others, regardless of information on organizational fairness. The results, obtained through a questionnaire administered to a probabilistic sample of 6,000 employees in six European countries, show that (i) the variables hypothesized are all significant antecedents of impersonal trust, and (ii) the forms of interpersonal trust towards supervisors and colleagues are both relevant, but present specificities that suggest to consider them separately. The implications of the findings are discussed, as well as limitations of the study and av...