1,720,981 research outputs found
L'UNIONE EUROPEA DI FRONTE ALLA PANDEMIA
No full textDi fronte ad una crisi globale, qual è la pandemia da Covid-19, un ruolo importante di coordinamento delle
politiche economiche e sanitarie dovrebbe essere attribuito agli organismi internazionali, perché le risposte
dei singoli stati sono spesso insufficienti e talvolta in contrasto tra di loro. In Europa, nonostante non ne avesse
le competenze formali, questo ruolo fondamentale è stato svolto dall’Unione Europea (UE), oltre che sul piano
di sostegno economico ai paesi, anche in ambiti specifici quali l’approvvigionamento e la distribuzione di
materiale sanitario e la strategia di vaccinazione. Una disanima di questi ultimi interventi suggerisce che la
UE abbia fatto il possibile dato gli strumenti a disposizione e i vincoli a cui doveva sottostare, ma mette anche
in luce difficoltà e ritardi che avrebbero potuto essere superati se la UE avesse avuto maggiori competenze e
risorse. Per il futuro appare dunque opportuno rafforzarne i poteri in campo sanitario, centralizzando
maggiormente a livello europeo alcune politiche quali la prevenzione e preparazione alle pandemie, la ricerca
e l’innovazione in ambito sanitario, e le politiche di approvvigionamento di materiale sanitario. L’istituzione
di un’Autorità Europea per la Preparazione e Risposta alle Emergenze Sanitarie, come proposto dalla
Commissione, costituirebbe un passo importante in questa direzione
Bundling versus unbundling: asymmetric information on information externalities
Full text linkThis paper addresses the benefits of bundling two sequential activities in the context of public–private partnerships (PPPs). The paper introduces a source of asymmetric information in the form of an externality parameter that links the building stage with subsequent operational activity. Within this framework, bundling allows the government to extract private information about the magnitude of the externality parameter. The framework also implies a higher degree of asymmetric information related to the operational stage than unbundling does when the contract is written. Our results indicate that the use of bundled contracts allows PPPs to be commitment devices that force governments to define ex-ante more coherent and informed plans, thereby improving investments and reducing unexpected cost overruns. However, because of the presence of asymmetric information, bundling makes any cost-reducing effort suboptimal during the operational phase
Public-private partnerships as a policy response to climate change
No full textThe negative impacts of climate change on the environment and economic activities are increasingly obvious and relevant. Private response to this threat often proves to be inadequate. For example, empirical evidence reveals a sub-optimal investment by firms in energy efficiency projects capable of reducing energy costs and CO2 emissions, as well as adaptation projects able to reduce the vulnerability of the ecosystem. On the other hand, past public programs that provided financial subsidies to the above-mentioned projects have proven to be not particularly cost-effective or able to enhance final performances. In this paper, as an alternative to public subsidies, we propose and assess the opportunity to implement Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) where the public regulator plays a more active role in the investment choice. Precisely, we model the decision-making process through a Nash bargaining procedure between public and private actors. We end up with two main results: (i) compared to public subsidies, the use of PPPs leads to higher outcomes/performances and allows governments to overcome incompleteness in contracts; (ii) PPPs are optimally chosen only when there is a fair allocation of the bargaining power between the two sides and when bargaining procedures are not perceived as being too lengthy or costly
Tecniche di ragionamento spaziale e temporale nella ricostruzione assistita delle unità sedimentarie
No full textPublic-private partnerships from budget constraints: Looking for debt hiding?
No full textThe use of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) to realize and operate public infrastructures is often associated with fiscal-circumventing motivations. Using data at the municipal level, this paper investigates whether budget-constrained public authorities adopt PPPs in order to hide public debt. The results show that financial difficulties often lead to a preference for PPPs instead of traditional forms of public procurement, but this behavior is not explained by the possibility of debt-hiding. Explanations for these findings are discussed
The optimality of public-private partnerships under financial and fiscal constraints
Full text linkThe government may delegate two sequential tasks (e.g., building and operating an infrastructure) to the same or different agents (i.e., partnership vs. sequential contracts). Agents are risk-neutral but face financial constraints, whereas the government's contractual capacity may be limited by the renegotiation-proofness and fiscal constraints. By relying on history-dependent incentives, the partnership contract corrects moral hazard more effectively than sequential contracts. Thus, it is socially preferred unless bundling different tasks deteriorates the agent's financial conditions. Our results shed new light on the role of firms' financial and government's fiscal conditions in driving the cost-benefit analysis of public-private partnerships
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
ON THE NATURE OF THE UNCOUPLING EFFECT OF FATTY-ACIDS
No full textThe effect of palmitic acid on the electrical potential differences delta psi across the inner mitochondrial membrane appears to depend on the medium in which mitochondria are incubated. In medium A (cf. Luvisetto et al. (1987), Biochemistry, 26, 7332-7338) delta psi decreases much more than in medium B (cf. Rottenberg and Hashimoto (1986), Biochemistry, 25, 1747-1755) at concentrations of fatty acid which equally stimulate the rate of respiration in state 4. Valinomycin and NaCl were both present in medium B and absent in medium A. However, in both media the pattern of the P/O ratio as a function of antimycin in the presence of a constant amount of palmitic acid or of FCCP shows similar behaviour. We conclude that in both media palmitic acid increases the membrane conductance to protons, but for unclear reasons the delta psi assay fails to measure the decline of delta psi in medium B. However, the increase in membrane conductance induced by palmitic acid does not quantitatively account for the stimulation of the rate of respiration
- …
