L. Becchetti, Maurizio Fiaschetti, Francesco Salustri
{"title":"The Impact of Cash Mobs in the Vote with the Wallet Game: Experimental Results","authors":"L. Becchetti, Maurizio Fiaschetti, Francesco Salustri","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2954612","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2954612","url":null,"abstract":"We simulate in a randomised lab experiment the effect of Cash Mobs on consumers’ behaviour in an original variant of the multiplayer Prisoner’s dilemma called Vote-with-the-Wallet Game (VWG). The effect is modelled in a sequential game with/without an environmental frame in which a subset of players (cash-mobbers) is given the opportunity to reveal publicly (in aggregate without disclosing individual identities) their cooperation decision. We find that the treatment has a positive gross effect, that is, the share of cooperators is significantly higher in treated sessions and this is mainly due to the higher share of cooperators among cash-mobbers. Our results suggest that cash mobs-like mechanisms can help to solve social dilemmas with entirely private solutions (not based on punishment but on positive action) without costs for government budgets.","PeriodicalId":416571,"journal":{"name":"CEIS: Centre for Economic & International Studies Working Paper Series","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123959194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Eff ect of the Italian Uni fication on the Comparative Regional Development in Literacy, 1821-1911","authors":"Carlo Ciccarelli, J. Weisdorf","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2814201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2814201","url":null,"abstract":"This paper provides the first ever diachronic homogenous estimates of literacy rates in the Italian provinces during the period 1821-1911, by gender. The estimates exploit the age structure information reported in the population censuses of 1881 and 1911 to back cast literacy rates to the early 19th century. Territorial differences were already huge in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, with Southern regions registering extremely low levels and essentially no change before the unification of 1861. Furthermore, the early rise of literacy rates for Northern women suggests a dimension of the North-South gap that significantly the political unification of the country.","PeriodicalId":416571,"journal":{"name":"CEIS: Centre for Economic & International Studies Working Paper Series","volume":"1000 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133322789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“De (Corporate Responsibility) Gustibus Est Misurandum”: Heterogeneity and Consensus Around CR Indicators","authors":"L. Becchetti, Lorenzo Semplici, Michele Tridente","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2998126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2998126","url":null,"abstract":"We investigate with an ad hoc survey respondents’ tastes about the different corporate responsibility (CR) items typically used by CR rating agencies. The hypotheses of equal average value weights given to different CR items and equal variance (which we consider as a proxy of the inverse of consensus on the importance of an indicator) are strongly rejected by our data both in our overall suvey sample and in more homogeneous subsamples based on gender, age, education and religious beliefs. We as well frequently reject the hypothesis that value weights for the same CR item are the same across different subpopulations in gender subsamples since women attribute significantly higher weights than men to many CR items when we do not correct for young respondents’ oversampling.","PeriodicalId":416571,"journal":{"name":"CEIS: Centre for Economic & International Studies Working Paper Series","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129053032","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Corporate Legality Game. A Lab Experiment on the Impact of Policies, Frames and Information","authors":"L. Becchetti, Vittorio Pelligra, F. Rossetti","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2808004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2808004","url":null,"abstract":"A company that pursues illicit practices (e.g., money laundering, tax dodging, corruption of public officials in procurement races, etc.) may underprice and crowd out competitors that behave legally, thereby eroding the public good of legality and integrity. Recently born institutional legality ratings tackle this problem by signaling companies with excellent legality record to consumers. Redistributive policy actions aimed to tax “defectors” (i.e. buyers of unrated products) in favor of “co-operators” (i.e. buyers of “legality-rated” products) may further enforce legality, and fight corruption. We analyze the impact of the legality-rating frame by means of a randomized experiment. The experiment accounts for the effects of fiscal policies that redistribute income from defectors to co-operators either in presence or in absence of the legality frame. Our findings document that the redistribution mechanism, the legality frame and the conformity information design contribute to alleviate the prisoner’s dilemma and generate significant deviations from the Nash Equilibrium.","PeriodicalId":416571,"journal":{"name":"CEIS: Centre for Economic & International Studies Working Paper Series","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130414485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Barbara Annicchiarico, Alessandra Pelloni, F. Valenti
{"title":"Volatility and Growth with Recursive Preferences","authors":"Barbara Annicchiarico, Alessandra Pelloni, F. Valenti","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2800147","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2800147","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies the relationship between volatility and long-run growth in a complete market economy with human capital accumulation and Epstein-Zin preferences. There is both cross-country and time-series evidence that volatility is associated with lower growth. Matching this evidence has proved a challenge for growth models with no market failures as they tend to predict the opposite for values of risk aversion higher than unity. However in our model, risk aversion and intertemporal elasticity of substitution are allowed to move independently of each other, and when both are relatively high or relatively low, the relationship between volatility and growth is negative. Indeed this is the case for parametrizations of preferences in line with the literature.","PeriodicalId":416571,"journal":{"name":"CEIS: Centre for Economic & International Studies Working Paper Series","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127235991","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A. Marcellusi, R. Viti, F. Damele, C. Cammà, G. Taliani, F. Mennini
{"title":"Early Treatment in HCV: Is it a Cost-Effective Option from the Italian Perspective?","authors":"A. Marcellusi, R. Viti, F. Damele, C. Cammà, G. Taliani, F. Mennini","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2753692","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2753692","url":null,"abstract":"Background: The aim of this study is to perform an economic analysis to estimate the cost-utility of the early innovative therapy in Italy for managing HCV-infected patients. Methods: The incremental cost-utility analysis was carried out to quantify the benefits of the early treatment approach in HCV subjects. A Markov simulation model including direct and indirect costs and health outcomes was developed from Italian National Healthcare Service and societal perspective. 5,000 Monte Carlo simulations were performed on two distinct scenarios: Standard of Care (SoC) which includes 14.000 Genotype 1 patients in Italy treated with innovative interferon-free in the Fibrosis stage 3 and 4 (F3-F4) vs Early-treatment Scenario (ETS) where 2.000 patients were additionally treated with simeprevir plus peginterferon and ribavirin in the Fibrosis stage 2 (F2) (based on AIFA reimbursement criteria). A systematic literature review was carried out to identify epidemiological and economic data, which were subsequently used to inform the model. Furthermore, a one-way probabilistic sensitivity was performed in order to measure the relationship between the main parameters of the model and the cost-utility results. Results: The model shows that, in terms of Incremental Cost Effectiveness Ratio (ICER) per QALY gained, ETS appeared to be the most cost-effective option compared from both perspective Societal (ICER = €11.396) and NHS (ICER = €14.733) over a time horizon of 10 years. The cost-effectiveness of ETS is more sustainable as it extends the time horizon analysis (ICER = € 6.778 per QALY to 20 years and € 4,474 per QALY to 30 years). From the societal perspective the ETS represents the dominant option at a time horizon of 30 years. If we consider the sub-group population of treated patients (16.000 patients of which 2.000 not treated in the SoC), the ETS scenario was dominant after only 5 years horizon and cost-effective at 2 years of simulation. The one-way sensitivity analysis on the main variables confirmed the robustness of the model for the early-treatment approach. Conclusion: In conclusion, our model represents a tool for policy makers and health care professionals provide information on the cost-effectiveness of early-treatment approach in patients HCV-infected in Italy. Starting innovative treatment earlier regimens keeps HCV-infected patients in better health and reduces the incidence of HCV related events; this generating a gain both in terms of health of the patients and correct resource allocation.","PeriodicalId":416571,"journal":{"name":"CEIS: Centre for Economic & International Studies Working Paper Series","volume":"220 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-03-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129307526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
L. Becchetti, G. Corrado, Vittorio Pelligra, F. Rossetti
{"title":"Happiness and Preferences in a Legality Social Dilemma: Comparing the Direct and Indirect Approach","authors":"L. Becchetti, G. Corrado, Vittorio Pelligra, F. Rossetti","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2754686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2754686","url":null,"abstract":"We investigate players’ preferences in a multiplayer prisoner’s dilemma by comparing results from a direct (satisfaction based) and an indirect (choice based) approach. Both approaches provide strong evidence of preference heterogeneity, with players who cooperate above median being less affected in their choice by monetary payoffs vis-a-vis the public good component. The combination of a legality frame plus a conformity information design reduces further the relative preference (satisfaction) for the non-cooperative choice for such players. Our findings support the hypothesis that (part of the) players have, in addition to the standard self-interest component, an other-regarding preference argument that is further satisfied in the legality frame plus conformity design.","PeriodicalId":416571,"journal":{"name":"CEIS: Centre for Economic & International Studies Working Paper Series","volume":"310 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123675090","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dynamic Spatial Autoregressive Models with Autoregressive and Heteroskedastic Disturbances","authors":"Leopoldo Catania, A. Billé","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2756615","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2756615","url":null,"abstract":"We propose a new class of models specifically tailored for spatio-temporal data analysis. To this end, we generalize the spatial autoregressive model with autoregressive and heteroskedastic disturbances, i.e. SARAR(1,1), by exploiting the recent advancements in Score Driven (SD) models typically used in time series econometrics. In particular, we allow for time-varying spatial autoregressive coefficients as well as time-varying regressor coefficients and cross-sectional standard deviations. We report an extensive Monte Carlo simulation study in order to investigate the finite sample properties of the Maximum Likelihood estimator for the new class of models as well as its flexibility in explaining several dynamic spatial dependence processes. The new proposed class of models are found to be economically preferred by rational investors through an application in portfolio optimization.","PeriodicalId":416571,"journal":{"name":"CEIS: Centre for Economic & International Studies Working Paper Series","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121464508","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Effect of Survey Design on Extreme Response Style: Rating Job Satisfaction","authors":"L. Corrado, Majlinda Joxhe","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2729389","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2729389","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the relationship between survey rating scale and Extreme Response Style (ERS) using experimental data from Understanding Society (Innovation Panel 2008), where a self-assessment questionnaire measuring job satisfaction uses two alternative (7 and 11 points) rating options. Our results suggests that when shifting from a shorter to a longer scale, the survey design generates a tendency to choose response scales at the extreme of the distribution, thus creating a misleading quantification of the variable of interest. The experimental design of the data enables us to test our hypothesis using a non-linear estimation approach where age, gender and education level are shown to affect ERS.","PeriodicalId":416571,"journal":{"name":"CEIS: Centre for Economic & International Studies Working Paper Series","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123496124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Other Regarding Preferences and Reciprocity: Insights from Experimental Findings and Satisfaction Data","authors":"L. Becchetti, Vittorio Pelligra, S. Taurino","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2698132","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2698132","url":null,"abstract":"We measure satisfaction about experimental outcomes, personal and other participants' behaviour after a multiperiod 'hybrid contribution' multiplayer prisoner's dilemma (the Vote-with-the-Wallet game). Our work shows that participants who cooperated above median (which we define as strong cooperators) are significantly more satisfied with the game in proportion to their cooperative choice, irrespective of the material pay- off they obtain. On the contrary, their satisfaction for the other players' behavior is negatively correlated with the extent of their own cooperative behavior and the non-cooperative behavior of the latter. The satisfaction of strong cooperators for their behavior in the game depends in turn on the share of their own cooperative choices. We document that a broader utility function including heterogeneity in expectations on other players' behavior, other-regarding preferences, and a negative reciprocity argument may account for the combination of the behavioral and self-reported data.","PeriodicalId":416571,"journal":{"name":"CEIS: Centre for Economic & International Studies Working Paper Series","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-12-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124033510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}