Papers by Giuseppe Vittucci Marzetti
Social Science & Medicine, 2022
We rely on the randomized activation of the heuristic of attribute substitution to analyze the ef... more We rely on the randomized activation of the heuristic of attribute substitution to analyze the effect of blood donation on donors' happiness. We randomly delivered two versions of a questionnaire where the happiness question is alternatively placed immediately before or after a categorical question asking about the blood donor condition of the respondent (non-donor, previously donor, donor). By comparing the answers given to the happiness question in the two versions, we find a positive effect of donating blood on donors' happiness. We discuss the pros and cons of this method to investigate the determinants of subjective well-being.
Social Networks, 2022
A common claim is that mafia families arrange marriages strategically to seal alliances, cement p... more A common claim is that mafia families arrange marriages strategically to seal alliances, cement partnerships and enhance cohesion. However, this claim is mainly based on anecdotal evidence and limited case studies. In this paper, by relying on an original database of biographical and relational information on over 4,600 members, we carry out the first large-scale exploratory analysis of the network of interfamily marriages in ’Ndrangheta. Our analysis shows that this alliance network is polycentric, made up of cohesive subgroups centered around well-connected, powerful families, that occupy different positions in the network. The presence of patterns suggests that marriages in 'Ndrangheta are possibly the result of family strategies to explore and exploit their power and business. We discuss the implications of these findings for the study of marriages as an organizational instrument.
App-based persuasive technologies emerged as promising tools to promote sustainable travel behavi... more App-based persuasive technologies emerged as promising tools to promote sustainable travel behavior. However, the opt-in, self-selection framework characterizing their use in real-life conditions might actually lead to wrongly estimate their potential and actual impact in analyses that do not rely on strict randomized controlled trials. To investigate evidence of such biases, we analyze mobility data gathered from users of a persuasive app promoting public transport and active mobility launched in 2018 in Bellinzona (Switzerland). We consider the users' baseline mobility data: km per day (total and by car) traveled during the app validation period, when behavior change motivational features were not enabled. To estimate the possible self-selection bias, we compare these data with the reference population, using data from the Swiss Mobility and Transport Census; to study the possible attrition bias, we look at the relations between baseline mobility and the number of weeks of app's active use. We find evidence of neither self-selection nor critical attrition biases. This strengthens findings by earlier non RCT based analyses and confirms the relevance of app-based persuasive technologies for mobility behavior change.
Social Choice and Welfare, 2021
We analyze the problem of computing the Banzhaf and Shapley power indices for graph restricted vo... more We analyze the problem of computing the Banzhaf and Shapley power indices for graph restricted voting games, defined in a particular class of graphs, that we called line-clique. A line-clique graph is a model of a uni-dimensional political space in which voters with the same bliss point are the connected vertices of a clique and then other arcs connect nodes of consecutive cliques. The interest to this model comes from its correspondence to the spatial voting game: a model that has been proposed and used by political analysts to understand nations’ behavior and the political outcome of the bargaining process within the EU Council. Broadly speaking, the computation of a power index of a graph restricted game is strongly #P-complete, as it includes the enumeration of all winning coalitions. Nevertheless, we show that in this special class of graph coalitions can be enumerated by dynamic programming, resulting in a pseudo-polynomial algorithm and proving that the problem only weakly #P-complete. After implementing our new algorithms and finding that they are very fast in practice, we analyze the voting behavior in the EU Council, as for this application previous research compiled a large data set concerning nations' political positions and political outcomes. We will test whether voting power has an effect on the political outcome, more precisely, whether nations that are favored by their weight and position can influence the political outcome to their advantages. Using linear regressions, we will see that unrestricted power indices are not capable of any predictive property, but graph restricted indices are. The statistic evidence shows that the combination of voting weight and network position is a source of power that affects the political outcome to the advantage of a country.
In this paper, we critically review how alternative theories treat the time profile of production... more In this paper, we critically review how alternative theories treat the time profile of production processes. We discuss how production and time are modelled in the Classical economics, in the von Neumann-Sraffa representation of production, and in mainstream production theories. Next, we focus on two time-specific analyses of production, developed by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and Gordon Winston. Georgescu-Roegen’s flow-fund model deals with the relationship between production organization, scale and efficiency. Winston’s analysis of production can be considered as a complement of the flow-fund model, because it combines the time-specific representation of the production process in the fund-flow model with the cost implications of time-specific and duration-specific prices of the productive services.
Review of International Economics, 2020
We empirically investigate the claim that Multinational Corporations (MNCs) suffer from a "home b... more We empirically investigate the claim that Multinational Corporations (MNCs) suffer from a "home bias" in divestment decisions: MNCs prefer to divest from foreign subsidiaries because the "emotional involvement" and the commitment in divesting from domestic subsidiaries is larger. This issue has not been yet empirically explored in the economic literature, although it is quite recurrent in the political debate on MNCs and FDI. By using detailed company-level data on EU corporate groups during the economic crisis (2008-2014), we show that, in spite of prima facie empirical evidence of a home bias, the bias disappears when firm-, country-and sector-specific factors are accounted for.
Scienze Regionali, 2019
The paper aims at evaluating the impact of export promotion policies at the regional level in Ita... more The paper aims at evaluating the impact of export promotion policies at the regional level in Italy. We estimate a difference-in-differences model with firm-level fixed-effects to analyze the effect of matching grants for export promotion activities-i.e. participation in international trade fairs-in Lombardy, the most important Italian region in economic terms. Results show that the matching grants exert a positive and significant impact on the export intensity, measured as export to total turnover, of micro-and small-sized firms. The effect is stronger for less internationalized firms and super-additive: the combined use of different measures increases more than proportionally the overall impact.
Ecological Economics, 2019
Recent analyses maintain that recycling in developed countries, being mostly the result of costly... more Recent analyses maintain that recycling in developed countries, being mostly the result of costly policies, may be already above its socially optimal level. These analyses in fact underestimate such level if increasing recycling not only reduces residual waste, but also total waste. We find that this is the case: a 10% increase in recycling rate is associated with a 1.5-2% decrease of total urban waste. This effect is largely attributable to curbside collection programs, whose adoption increases recycling rates by 8-14% and reduces waste generation by about 4%. This paper contributes to the literature on the relations between waste and recycling by providing estimates of the source reduction effect of recycling policies and pointing out the important role played in it by curbside collection programs.
Review of Economics and Institutions, 2018
The paper aims at assessing the impact of the extractiveness of institutions on the size of the i... more The paper aims at assessing the impact of the extractiveness of institutions on the size of the informal economy. After the identification of the variables suitable to proxy the distinct features of institutions, among which their extractiveness, the paper offers a battery of cross-section regressions over two large samples of developed and developing countries. The results suggest that the extractiveness of institutions is a significant determinant of the size of the informal economy and that greater informality is associated with a higher perceived distrust in formal institutions. The results are robust to the inclusion of standard controls, as well as proxies for culture, generalized trust and generalized morality.
Cluster Advantage and Firm Performance, 2018
We carry out a firm-level empirical analysis to evaluate the economic impact of the sequence of e... more We carry out a firm-level empirical analysis to evaluate the economic impact of the sequence of earthquakes occurred in 2012 in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, and to address the question of whether the localization of a firm within an industrial district mitigated or exacerbated this impact. We estimate the effect of the earthquake on firms' performance via two alternative methods: Difference-In-Differences and Propensity Score Matching in levels and first-differences. Our findings suggest that the earthquake reduced turnover, production, value added, and return on sales of the surviving firms, at least in the short-term. In addition, the debt over sales ratio grew significantly more in the firms located in the areas affected by the earthquake. The empirical evidence also suggests that the negative impact of the earthquake was slightly higher for the firms located in industrial districts, thereby suggesting that, at least in the short-term, the usually positive cumulative processes associated with localization within an agglomerated area could have reversed and magnified the negative impact of a disruptive exogenous supply shock.
Papers in Regional Science, 2017
This paper aims at assessing the contribution of ethnic minorities to the (total and sectoral) pr... more This paper aims at assessing the contribution of ethnic minorities to the (total and sectoral) productivity of Italian provinces. We consider the first ten nationalities by numbers of legal immigrants at the provincial level (NUTS 3) 2003–2011. We estimate a spatial panel model to capture both direct and indirect effects of foreign communities on local productivity at the province level, accounting for spatial spillovers. Our findings show that two communities out of the ten considered have a direct positive impact on aggregate labour productivity. Other foreign groups have significant indirect effects: these groups do not affect productivity of provinces where they live, but mainly of the neighbouring provinces, likely because of commuting.
After addressing definitional issues on the concepts of concentration and specialization, the pap... more After addressing definitional issues on the concepts of concentration and specialization, the paper reviews the justifications for and the interpretation of some indicators of localization economies used in the empirical literature on agglomeration economies: specialization indexes and location quotients. A simulation exercise shows under what conditions certain specifications lead to biased estimations of dynamic localization (MAR) externalities. The results suggest that applied researchers can choose among the size of the local industry, the specialization index and the location quotient to proxy for these externalities as far as they also encompass a correct proxy for the size of the local economy.
Journal of International Economics, 96(1), 138-149, May 15, 2015
Departing from the usual tenets of proportionality between cross-border trade flows and knowledge... more Departing from the usual tenets of proportionality between cross-border trade flows and knowledge spillovers, we investigate whether relatively intense trade relationships are associated with particularly large international R&D spillovers. A nonlinear specification nesting the hypothesis of global and trade-unrelated R&D spillovers is estimated on a sample of 24 advanced countries over 1971-2004. We find evidence that trade patterns positively affect the international
transmission of knowledge, in particular when we consider bilateral trade flows that, thanks to the estimation of an auxiliary gravity model, are normalized for the size and the distance of the trading partners. Finally, we discuss the patterns of the bilateral relationships characterized by both relatively intense trade and large R&D spillovers.
This work investigates the systemic factors behind cross-country variability in the transnational... more This work investigates the systemic factors behind cross-country variability in the transnational media coverage of foreign news in the EU in 2010. Using a large dataset on the transnational coverage of news by 148 EU national media, the paper maps the network of EU transnational citations and performs a quantitative assessment of their systemic determinants via the estimation of a gravity model of news. Nine empirical hypotheses are tested. Size and economic development of the target (source) country are positively (negatively) associated with the probability of coverage. Historical, linguistic and economic ties increase this probability. The evidence on the effect of the countries’ participation in the currency union is weak: once the historical levels of trade integration and the effects of the sovereign debt crisis are accounted for, there is no robust evidence of a higher integration of the media spheres within the euro area.
The paper analyzes the nonlinearities in the impact of localization, diversity, urbanization and ... more The paper analyzes the nonlinearities in the impact of localization, diversity, urbanization and competition on firm-level TFP, using a large sample of Italian firms from 1999 to 2007. We adopt a Panel Smooth Transition Regression model, so that the TFP elasticities are free to vary smoothly across two or more extreme values. Results show that localization economies and Jacobian externalities materialize only for values of, respectively, intra-industry agglomeration and extra-sectoral diversity above a certain threshold. Local competition exerts a positive effect on productivity, even though the marginal impact shrinks at high levels of competition. We find instead no evidence of diseconomies of agglomeration.
The paper investigates the effect of spatial agglomeration on firm exit in a dynamic framework. U... more The paper investigates the effect of spatial agglomeration on firm exit in a dynamic framework. Using a large dataset at the industry-province level for Italy (1998-2007), we estimate a spatial dynamic panel model via a GMM estimator and analyze the short-run impact of specialization and variety on firm exit. Specialization negatively affects firm exit rates in the short-run. The effect is particularly significant for low-tech firms. The impact of variety on firm mortality rates at the industry level is instead less clear, although still negative and significant for low-tech firms.
We investigate how a country’s absorptive capacity and relative backwardness affect the impact of... more We investigate how a country’s absorptive capacity and relative backwardness affect the impact of international R&D spillovers on domestic Total Factor Productivity (TFP). To account for nonlinearities, we adopt a Panel Smooth Transition Regression approach, where a country’s TFP elasticity to the foreign R&D stock is allowed to change smoothly across various identified extreme values, and the change is related to observable transition variables: human capital (capturing the country’s absorptive capacity) and relative backwardness. The results suggest that absorptive capacity is positively associated with international R&D spillovers. In contrast with previous results, relative backwardness is instead found to have a negative and significant impact on international knowledge spillovers.
We present a generalization of spatial power indexes able to overcome their main limitations, nam... more We present a generalization of spatial power indexes able to overcome their main limitations, namely: i) the excessive concentration of power measures; ii) the too high sensitivity to players' location in the ideological space. Voters' propensity to support an issue is modeled via a random utility function with two additive terms: the deterministic term accounts for voters' preference-driven/predictable behavior; the random one is a catch-all term that accounts for all the idiosyncratic/unpredictable factors. The relative strength of the two terms gives rise to a continuum of cases ranging from the Shapley value, where all aggregation patterns are equally probable, to a standard spatial value, like the Owen-Shapley index, where instead the conditional order is fully deterministic. As an illustrative application, we analyze the distribution of power in the Council of Ministers under three different scenarios: i) EU15 Pre-Nice; ii) EU27 Nice Treaty; iii) EU27 Lisbon Treaty.
Whether international R&D spillovers are global and trade-related is still a debated issue. By ad... more Whether international R&D spillovers are global and trade-related is still a debated issue. By adopting two specifications that nest models previously estimated in the literature, we test the hypothesis that international R&D spillovers are global and trade-unrelated for a sample of OECD countries over the period 1971-2004. In particular, via a randomization exercise, we reject the null hypothesis of a “global pool of technology” and show that there are partitions of countries associated with relatively strong/weak knowledge spillovers. Then, we estimate a nonlinear specification that includes simultaneously geographical distance and international trade among the determinants of domestic TFP. We find robust evidence that both factors affect how foreign knowledge impacts on the domestic productivity of each recipient country.
The paper analyzes how (production and financial) inter-firm networks can affect firms’ default p... more The paper analyzes how (production and financial) inter-firm networks can affect firms’ default probabilities and observed default rates: an issue the recent crisis has brought to the front of the debate. A simple theoretical model of shock transfer is built up to investigate some stylized facts on how firm-idiosyncratic shocks tend to be allocated in the network, and how this allocation changes firms’ default probability. The model shows that the network works as a perfect “risk-pooling” mechanism, when it is both strongly connected and symmetric. But the resort to “risk-sharing” does not necessarily reduce default rates in the network, unless the shock they face is lower on average than their financial capacity. Conceived as cases of symmetric inter-firm networks, industrial districts might have a comparative disadvantage in front of “heavy” financial crises such as the current one.
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Papers by Giuseppe Vittucci Marzetti
transmission of knowledge, in particular when we consider bilateral trade flows that, thanks to the estimation of an auxiliary gravity model, are normalized for the size and the distance of the trading partners. Finally, we discuss the patterns of the bilateral relationships characterized by both relatively intense trade and large R&D spillovers.
transmission of knowledge, in particular when we consider bilateral trade flows that, thanks to the estimation of an auxiliary gravity model, are normalized for the size and the distance of the trading partners. Finally, we discuss the patterns of the bilateral relationships characterized by both relatively intense trade and large R&D spillovers.
with an application to a project of water infrastructure improvement in Georgetown (Guyana)
Contabilità gestionale nel processo decisionale aziendale: margini e analisi Costo-Volume-Profitto; stima delle funzioni di costo; individuazione dei ricavi e costi rilevanti nelle decisioni aziendali.
Valutazione dei progetti e misurazione delle performance: capital budgeting; metodo DCF; misure di performance.