In the last few years, the increasingly problematic issues of water scarcity and pollution have
led to a rise in the application of tradable permits to the water sector. However, a critical evaluation
of their application is still missing from the literature. To overcome this problem, the present work
aims at providing a critical survey of the main schemes of tradable water abstraction rights and pollution
rights in operation in various countries. The advantages and disadvantages that emerge in each
case are emphasised, in order to explain fully to what extent this market instrument can be employed
in the water sector, and thus derive useful indications for future applications. Despite the potential
benefits of tradable permits and the success reported in some contexts, from the present casestudy
analysis it turns out that several factors, including lack of sufficient market competition, may
sometimes hinder their functioning in practice.
In a standard search and matching model the labor market presents frictions while in the competitive
product market the demand is infinitely elastic. To have a more realistic framework, some
macroeconomic models abandon the assumption of infinite elasticity and consider a two-tier productive
scheme in the goods market. In this paper, it is shown that, under some reasonable assumptions
about the final goods production function (for instance Cobb-Douglas technology) the unique equilibrium
of this kind of model features no production and full unemployment, making them useless for
any policy analysis. A comparison between the two frameworks shows that a standard matching
model overestimates the impact in terms of employment of any policy intervention in the sector
where such a policy has been promoted, while at the same time it ignores the effects that emerge in
other sectors of the economy.
Important institutional reform has taken place in Italy in recent years. The role of local authorities
has been increased, and micro level statistical information has become a very important tool supporting
decision-taking processes undertaken by policy makers. Economic aggregates are relevant
for carrying out analysis at a geographical level. The aim of this paper is to define and test a new
method of calculating value added at the municipality level, using a source integration system and a
bottom-up approach
This paper examines the relationship between human capital and productivity growth with reference
to Italian regions, testing the neoclassical and the Schumpeterian hypotheses by means of sectoral
data. The former stresses the accumulation of human capital as a determinant of growth, while
the latter emphasizes the role of its stock. We expect the Schumpeterian approach to be more relevant
in the industrial sector where the most important growth determinant is innovation. The results
do not confirm our expectations: in the industrial sector the neoclassical hypothesis is clearly rejected
by the data. Separating out the technical component of human capital provides some support
for the Schumpeterian hypothesis, although results are not robust to changes in model specification.
In the service sector a positive effect of human capital accumulation is found for the whole sector
but its explanatory power decreases considerably in the marketable services branch.
This paper studies the evolution of the full-time/part-time wage differential among Italian women
for the period 1993-2004. A generalized Heckman selection model is applied to estimate the wage
equations, controlling for endogeneity in the second step. An observed part-time wage penalty is
found. However, using the Oaxaca decomposition technique we actually find a (decreasing) wage
premium for part-timers. This can be explained either in terms of over-payment of given characteristics
or in terms of the values of the discrimination and the selection components. The individuals’
choice concerning their own type of contract appears to be important in determining the sign and
the extent of the wage gap.
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