Miranda Cuffaro

The measurement of economic, social and environmental performance of countries: a novel approach

This paper presents a new analytical framework for assessing spatial disparities among countries. It takes for granted that the analysis of a country’s performance cannot be limited solely to either economic or social factors. The aim of the paper is to combine relevant economic and ‘non-economic’ (mainly social) aspects of a country’s performance in an integrated logical framework. Based on this idea, a structural simultaneous equation model will be presented and estimated in order to explore the direction of the causal relationship between economic and non-economic aspects of a country’s performance. Furthermore, an exploration of the trajectory that each country has registered over time along a virtuous path will be offered. By means of a matrix persistency/transition analysis, the countries will be classified in clusters of good/bad performance. One of the most interesting conclusions concerns the inability of most countries to turn the higher educational skills of the population into greater economic performance over time. In addition, our analysis also shows that making an accurate picture record and formulating related policy aiming at environmental care is highly desirable. It is surprising that only a few countries have reached a favourable economic and environmental performance simultaneously.

Geographical Distribution of Unemployment: An Analysis of Provincial Differences in Italy

Unemployment rates appear to vary widely at the subregional (e.g. local or provincial) level. Using spatial econometric models for spatial autocorrelation, this paper focuses attention on the spatial structure of regional unemployment disparities of Italian provinces. On the basis of findings from the economic literature and of the available socio-economic data, various model specifications including different explanatory variables are tested to investigate the geographical distribution of unemployment in the 103 provinces of Italy for the year 2003. The results suggest that there is a significant degree of spatial dependence among labour markets at the provincial level in Italy. Provinces marked by high unemployment, as well as those characterized by low unemployment, tend to be spatially clustered, demonstrating the presence of spatial persistency.

A spatial analysis on Italian unemployment differences

Using spatial econometric models, this paper focuses attention on the spatial structure of provincial unemployment disparities of Italian provinces for the year 2003. On the basis of findings from the economic literature and of the available socio-economic data, various model specifications including supply- and demand-side variables are tested. Further we use ESDA analysis as equivalent to integration analysis on time series; therefore it is applied on each variable, dependent and independent, involved in the statistical model. The suggestions of ESDA lead us to the most adequate statistical model, which estimates indicate that there is a significant degree of neighbouring effect (i.e. positive spatial correlation) among labour markets at the provincial level in Italy; this effect is present notwithstanding we controlled for local characteristics. The unemployment shows a polarized spatial pattern that is strongly connected to labour demand and to a much lesser extent to the share of young population and economic structural composition.

Efficiency and Productivity of Italian Tourist Destinations: A Quantitative Estimation Based on Data Envelopment Analysis and the Malmquist Method

This paper aims to provide a statistical analysis of the relative economic performance of Italian tourist areas. It uses two modelling approaches to estimate the competitiveness of these regions, viz. data envelopment analysis (DEA) and the Malmquist method. Our results show that the competitiveness position of several Italian regions has not improved over the years under consideration.

Measuring the Performance of Italian Regions on Social and Economic Dimensions

Measuring the Performance of Italian Regions on Social and Economic Dimensions (by Miranda Cuffaro, Maria Francesca Cracolici, Peter Nijkamp) - ABSTRACT: This paper presents a new analytical framework for assessing spatial disparities among regions. On the premise that the analysis of a region’s performance cannot be limited solely to either economic or social aspects, the paper attempts to combine the material (i.e. economic) and immaterial (i.e. social) aspects of welfare and wellbeing in an integrated logical scheme. In this scheme the economic aspects of living standards are represented by various categories of consumption expenditure, whilst the social aspects are represented by appropriate indicators of health, education, labour market conditions, etc. The framework proposed is also appealing for convergence analyses over time. From a time perspective, introducing this joint socio-economic concept into the analysis of differences among countries allows one to disentangle the notion of convergence into its economic and social dimensions. An empirical analysis is conducted on the Italian regions for the period from 1980 to 2005. The empirical results obtained by Principal Component Analysis show that, on average, a high level of economic welfare may contrast with a high level of social well-being. Keywords: Socio-economic well-being, living standards, consumption

What can we learn from Long Time Series? Italian Living Standards after Unification and Dualism North-South

Using Italian time series since 1861, we explore the evolution of living standards afterpolitical unification both at the national and at the territorial level. Firstly, we use univariate statistical analysis on homogeneous national time series. Secondly, we employ available homogeneous series at a disaggregated level to measure territorial disparities across regions and four macro-areas. Notwithstanding that time convergence occurred quite rapidly at the national level after WWII, territorial differences became more marked in the period 1936-1951, both in terms of material and social well-being.However, in the final decades of the 20th century disparities among the macro-areas declined, especially in social well-being.