Maria Laura Di Tommaso

Home Grown or Imported? Initial Conditions, External Anchors and the Determinants of Institutional Reform in the Transition Economies*

In this article we examine the determinants of institutional change using a panel dataset comprising 25 transition economies. A defining characteristic of our approach is that we treat institutional change as a multidimensional unobserved variable, accounting for the fact that each of our indicators represents a noisy signal. Our results suggest that institutional change is significantly path dependent. However, policy can to some extent break this dependence through economic and political liberalisation at the start of the transition and with the help of an external anchor such as EU accession.

What Money Buys: Clients of Street Sex Workers in the US

The article presents a review of current theoretical and empirical approaches to sex work, followed by the presentation of an original theoretical framework (Della Giusta et al., 2006), which is tested with an econometric model of the characteristics of demand for sex services by a sample of clients of street sex workers in the US. We present findings in relation to stigma and the relationship between paid and unpaid sex that corroborate our models hypotheses and are in line with findings from other empirical studies. Furthermore, we identify in our sample two diametrically opposite profiles: one for clients whom we label ‘experimenters’, and one for more experienced ones that we name ‘regulars’, we also estimate attitudes toward risk, and draw implications in terms of both policy and future theoretical and empirical research.

Do medical doctors respond to economic incentives

A longitudinal analysis of married physicians labor supply is carried out on Norwegian data from 1997 to 1999. The model utilized for estimation implies that physicians can choose among 10 different job packages which are a combination of part time/full time, hospital/primary care, private/public sector, and not working. Their current choice is influenced by past available options due to a habit persistence parameter in the utility function. In the estimation we take into account the budget constraint, including all features of the tax system. Our results imply that an overall wage increase or less progressive taxation moves married physicians toward full time job packages, in particular to full time jobs in the private sector. But the overall and aggregate labor supply elasticities in the population of employed doctors are rather low compared to previous estimates.

Gender Differences in Italian Children's Capabilities

This paper analyzes childrens well-being using the capability approach, with a special focus on gender differences. The two areas analyzed are the capability of senses, imagination, and thought; and the capability of play. Using data from the 2008 Multipurpose Survey on Daily Life released by the Italian National Institute of Statistics, a structural equation model is estimated in which the capabilities are defined as latent variables that are intrinsically interrelated. For each capability, a set of indicators of functionings is utilized and the effects of individual and social conversion factors – including parents’ unpaid work, their level of education, and employment status – are analyzed. The model is applied to Italian girls and boys ages 6–10 in 2008. The analysis confirms that the two capabilities are interrelated. Policies aimed at improving childrens achievements in education also improve the capability of play and vice versa. Differences by gender occur in the factors’ effects.

Children’s Capabilities and Family Characteristics in Italy: Measuring Imagination and Play

In the capability literature, there has been increasing concern about how to choose and define capabilities (Nussbaum, 1999; Robeyns, 2003) and specifically children’s capabilities (Phipps, 2002; Saito, 2003; see also Chapters 3, 4 and 9, this book). Phipps (2002), for instance, compares the wellbeing of children in the USA, Canada and Norway by measuring ten specific functionings (low birth-weighting, asthma, accidents, activity limitation, trouble concentrating, disobedience at school, bullying, anxiety, lying, hyperactivity). She utilizes some descriptive statistics and shows that Norwegian children have better outcomes than US and Canadian children. The paper of Saito (2003) explores the possible relation between capabilities and education; she mentions Sen’s interview on the application of the CA to children. If a child does not want to be inoculated, and you nevertheless think it is a good idea for him/her to be inoculated, then the argument may be connected with the freedom that this person will have in the future by having the measles shot now. The child when it grows up must have more freedom. So when you are considering a child, you have to consider not only the child’s freedom now, but also the child’s freedom in the future1.

The Impact of Gender Quotas on Votes for Women Candidates: Evidence from Italy

To explore the impact of quotas on womens political representation, this study estimates a conditional multinomial logit for the probability of voting for men and women, utilizing data that includes all regional candidates in four Italian regions in 1995 and 2000. This regional electoral system allows voters to choose both the party and the specific candidate (open-list proportional system). The results show that the introduction of a 50 percent gender quota in candidate lists leads to a substantial increase in the probability that voters will choose women candidates, from 12 to 36 percent. Nevertheless, the probability of voting for women (36 percent) is lower than the probability for men (64 percent). Voters have a male bias in Italy. Both the district size and the political party have an effect on the probability of voting for women versus men. The more liberal the party is, the higher the probability that women receive votes.

Sex Work and Trafficking: Moving beyond Dichotomies

ABSTRACT This contribution examines how feminist economists have conceptualized sex work and trafficking through the lens of agency and stigma. The ongoing debate about legalization has focused on sex workers’ agency and choice, and on the role of stigma in shaping the supply of and demand for sex work. Building on the analysis advanced by contributions to this special issue, this study contends that theoretical and policy debates about sex work are dominated by false dichotomies of agency and stigma. It argues that the relationship between stigma and agency operates along a continuum of contractual arrangements that underpins a high degree of segmentation in the industry. The higher the stigma, the lower tends to be the agency. Current policies toward sex work therefore need reconsideration – especially mounting support for criminalization of clients, which, by increasing stigma, is likely to detract from the agency and the well-being of sex workers, however unintentionally.

Men buying sex. Differences between urban and rural areas in the UK

We build on both our theoretical and empirical work on modelling the demand for paid sex (Della Giusta et al., 2009a, 2009b) and examine the demand for paid sex, considering the effects of risky behaviours and attitudes to relationships and to women on demand. We find that those who declare to have purchased sex have both different socio-demographics (older, with fewer children, more educated but with lower professional status), and different sexual and risky behaviours as well as attitudes to relationships. As expected in the light of findings in the literature (well summarised in a 2004 Urban Studies special issue and in more recent literature) a clear city effect in the sample, mostly driven by London, which goes beyond the attitudes captured in the survey and thus combines a mixture of factors related to the supply of paid sex and unobserved characteristics of city-dwelling respondents.

Stigma and Risky Behaviors among Male Clients of Sex Workers in the UK

ABSTRACT Building on existing theoretical work on sex markets, this study uses data from the 2001 British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal) to replicate the analysis of the demand for paid sex. It formally tests the effects of attitudes, risky behaviors, and personal characteristics of a sample of men on the demand for paid sex. Previous theoretical work argues that stigma plays a fundamental role in determining both demand and risk, and in particular due to the presence of stigma, the demands for unpaid sex and for paid sex are not perfect substitutes. This study finds a positive effect of education (proxy for income), negative effects of professional status (proxies for stigma associated with buying sex), positive and significant effects of all risky behavior variables, and no significant effects of variables that measure the relative degree of conservatism in morals.

Review of Gender and Green Governance: The Political Economy of Women's Presence Within and Beyond Community Forestry , by Bina Agarwal. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. 496 pp. ISBN-13: 9780199569687 (hbk.). US

Gender and Green Governance: The Political Economy of Womens Presence Within and Beyond Community Forestry, by Bina Agarwal. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 496 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0-1995-6968...