Marco Savioli

Why is Italy Doing so Badly

We analyse the current Italian economic crisis as a phase of a major systemic decline. We argue that ‘Italys system’ has forced the country to abandon a dynamic view of comparative advantage, crucial for sustained economic growth, in favour of a static view of specialisation. Creative destruction has been hampered and sectoral restructuring has not occurred, resulting in stagnation. The roots of this decline lie in collective action issues and an implicit contract between elites and civil society. We suggest that these issues must be resolved if the Italian economy and society are to revive.

Safety at the workplace: accidents and illnesses

The topic of work safety is a very relevant and multifaceted problem for workers, firms and policy makers. Differing from other narrow-scope studies, this article aims to enrich the understanding of workplace safety as a whole by applying econometric techniques on data from the Italian Labour Force Survey. Findings show poor working conditions are the most significant determinants of accidents and illnesses occurring at work, while having a fixed-term (temporary) contract is not significant. Other significant determinants of work safety are: not being new to the workforce; dissatisfaction with the current job; gender; and a latent proneness observed with occurrence of accident on the way to work. This article also highlights that work related accidents and illnesses are two deeply correlated phenomena and that there is a structural break after three years on the job.

Add-On Pricing: Theory and Evidence from the Cruise Industry

In many industries, firms give consumers the opportunity to add (at a price) optional goods and services to a baseline product. The aim of our paper is to provide a theoretical model of add-on pricing in competitive environments with two new distinctive features. First, we discuss the choice of offering the add-on, assuming that this entails a fixed cost. Second, we allow firms to have a varying degree of market power over the add-on, associated with the ability to capture the value that consumers obtain from such an additional good/service. Our model shows that the conventional wisdom, according to which offering the add-on should unambiguously lower the price of the baseline product, is not always supported. In asymmetric equilibria, in which only one firm offers the add-on, baseline prices are higher if the firm’s market power over the add-on is limited. The predictions of the model are confirmed by a hedonic price model on a dataset of cruises offered worldwide.

Social capital, institutions and policymaking

Economic processes, consisting of interactions between human beings, exploit the social capital of persons endowed with specific cultures, identities and education. By taking into account this complexity, we focus on the role of institutions and policymaking in the building of social capital and its relevance to the fulfilment of their objectives. Social capital, however, is elusive and has several dimensions with which to interpret its multifaceted functions in economics and society. We cannot forget that social capital is sometimes even undesirable for society, for instance when unethically used. Even so, it is widely accepted that social capital has stable and positive effects.

Cognitive Biases and Entrepreneurial Under-Diversification

Cognitive biases lead entrepreneurs to overinvest in their own companies, over exposing themselves to idiosyncratic risk. Our novel theoretical model explains entrepreneurial under-diversification by measuring the amount of potential bias in entrepreneurs’ portfolio allocations brought about by overconfidence and over optimism. Simulation analyses based on our model allow us calculating the implicit levels of overconfidence and over optimism from observable portfolio choices. Finally, using a unique dataset including cross-regional data on Italian entrepreneurs and a structural equation modeling approach, we test the effect of overconfidence and over optimism on entrepreneurs’ portfolio allocations. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, we find a positive relationship between overconfidence and entrepreneur investments in their own companies. On the other hand, the role of over optimism seems to be negligible.

The Secret to Job Satisfaction is Low Expectations: How Perceived Working Conditions Differ from Actual Ones

Working conditions exert a major influence on accidents and illnesses at work as well as on job satisfaction and health, yet very little research has examined the determinants of working conditions. By exploiting the Italian Labour Force Survey, this paper provides evidence on the underlying factors affecting working conditions. It provides a behavioural interpretation of the results, which stems from the discrepancy between actual and expected working conditions. In light of this interpretation, workers would declare their perceived working conditions influenced by the difference between the actual and the expected working conditions. Variables concerning personal characteristics, such as gender, education and being employed in the first job, shift expectations about working conditions and accordingly perceived working conditions. On the contrary, variables related to work characteristics, such as working full time, with shifts and in a large place, affect actual and thus perceived working conditions (negatively).

Sicurezza sul lavoro e rapporti di lavoro in Italia

La sicurezza sul lavoro dipende da molteplici fattori. Con l’obiettivo di indagare sulle cause degli infortuni sul lavoro e delle malattie professionali, si sono analizzati i dati provenienti dall’Indagine sulle forze di lavoro del 2007. Il tipo di rapporto di lavoro, in particolare il tipo di contratto (a tempo determinato o indeterminato),non sembra avere un effetto preciso sulla sicurezza sul lavoro.Maggiori probabilita di infortuni e malattie si hanno a causa di: cattive condizioni nelle quali di fatto si presta l’attivita lavorativa, non essere al primo lavoro, insoddisfazione verso l’attuale lavoro, essere maschi (per gli infortuni) o femmine (per le malattie) e una propensione latente osservata attraverso il verificarsi di incidenti nel tragitto casa-lavoro. L’analisi evidenzia, inoltre, che gli infortuni e le malattie professionali sono due fenomeni fortemente correlati.