1,721,011 research outputs found
Efficiency and quality: an empirical analysis of Italian fine dining restaurants
No full textIn this paper, we conducted an efficiency analysis of fine dining restaurants as a strategic group operating at the intersection of food services and tourism. We collected and used data from 46 Michelin-starred restaurants located in Italy, using the Stochastic Frontier Analysis approach. Specifically, we focused on the balance sheet information of each restaurant in our sample over the period 2010–2019. The findings of our study revealed a positive correlation between efficiency and quality in fine dining restaurants. This suggests that restaurants that perform more efficiently tend to deliver higher-quality experiences. We also observed that the performance of fine dining restaurants is significantly influenced by the number of staff members they have only in some specifications. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the dynamics of the fine dining restaurant industry, highlighting the importance of efficiency in delivering quality experiences to customers and tourists
Price and information disclosure in the private art market: a signalling game
Full text linkIn this paper, we model private art market agents’ strategic interactions in presence of two types of asymmetric information, about artwork quality and buyer’s knowledge, assuming the seller does not know how informed is the buyer while the buyer does not know the quality of the artwork before purchase. If the seller can choose either a high or a low price and the buyer can signal his type to the seller, we identify the conditions for both equilibria with pooling buyer signalling strategy and with separating strategy, as well as conditions for equilibria where the seller fixes the price according to the actual quality and where he posts prices trying to take advantage of buyer’s limited information. Finally, we identify the condition for the emergence of a “counter-lemon” result, where low-quality artworks and uninformed collectors exit the market, suggesting that seller uncertainty does not directly benefit the buyers, but it can impact the quality traded in the market
Cultural and economic value: a critical review
No full textIn this paper we present the state of the art concerning the distinction between economic and cultural value and the way the two values interact with each other. Our review espouses Klamer’s idea of creating a value-based approach in economics, systematizing the literature on the economic and cultural value of cultural goods. In order to analyze the relationship between the artist’s characteristics and the cultural goods’ value values, we also propose a model of how fame and talent affect the economic and cultural value of cultural goods. In particular, the artist’s fame and talent and the cultural good’s price are included in the dynamic formation process of economic and cultural values
Households production in State and stateless societies: three tales and one letter
Full text linkInterpreting three tales based on the words of Hume, Hobbes, and Nozick, and a letter by Vilfredo Pareto, we present a comparative analysis of household production in several societies with and without State. The community we analyse is formed by two households, which may either follow a selfish or an altruistic logic. Furthermore, unless the stateless community has a common defence against external marauders or implements protection in cases of bad weather, the household production can be stolen or damaged. The society with State is ruled by a Government that can be either partisan or bipartisan. The economic analysis of the private and public choice of this community allows us to compare the efficiency and inequality of several configurations of society, as depicted by classical political economy
Governance efficiency with and without government
Full text linkThis paper explores the social interactions between public and private agents through a comparative institutional approach to consider the roles of community and government in societies with and without State. Using a theoretical framework where the private agents have different political power and they are, or are not, able to efficiently coordinate their actions, we study how public, private, and self-governance affect the level of welfare and capacity in each society. In particular, assuming two alternative private agent motivations (self-interested or other-regarding preferences) and community behaviors (collectivistic and individualistic societies), and a public agent as a bureaucracy with coercive power, that could either be partisan or bipartisan if it can, or cannot, be captured by private agents, we find that governance efficiency and capacity in the societies with State are lower when the government is partisan rather than when it is bipartisan. Moreover, society rankings for welfare and governance capacity are the same; thus, the welfare of a society is higher when the governance capacity is higher
Cumulative information on quality and willingness to pay: a study on wine evaluation
Full text linkAvailability of information about a good with uncertain quality can influence the way consumers perceive its quality, hence, their willingness to pay (WTP) for it. We present a study to investigate whether and to what extent WTP is impacted by the degree of information available to consumers who are exposed first to extrinsic and then intrinsic information regarding a variety of Italian wines. We implement linear mixed models in a Bayesian framework, which provides a flexible tool to account for different sources of heterogeneity, e.g. correlation within groups of observations and spatial correlation between participants sitting nearby. Based on data collected in Italy, results show that the availability of extrinsic and intrinsic information yields relevant changes in WTP, but this effect also depends on age, gender, drinking habits, wine quality, and connoisseurship of the agents. According to the findings, the analyzed wines cannot be considered search goods, although this might not hold for more experienced consumers
Evaluating Chef's Creativity and Restaurant Quality: An Empirical Analysis of the Role of Gastronomic Guides in the Italian Fine‐Dining Market
Full text linkThe quality of fine-dining restaurant food is complex and presents information issues in customers' quality evaluation, configuring this good as a luxury and cultural good. We investigate the role of experts in influencing customers' evaluation and other stakeholders' characteristics in such a sector by analyzing a dataset of top Italian chefs and restaurants from 2011 to 2019. To complement these data, we directly surveyed starred chefs to get their self-assessment. We use a structural equation model to measure cooking knowledge, culinary creativity, chefs' and restaurants' names, and experts' and customers' evaluations. We analyze the relationships between these constructs and variables like meal prices, seating capacity, tourist and resident numbers, and chef's age. Guides play a significant role in shaping customers' evaluations and influencing prices. Furthermore, fine dining experts focus more on evaluating the businesses themselves, the supply side, rather than the chefs' creation process, the “creative side”
Restaurant sector efficiency frontiers: a meta-analysis
Full text linkIn recent years, there has been a growing interest in assessing the level of performance and efficiency of the foodservice industry. As a result, an increasing number of studies applied efficiency frontiers methods to quantify firm (in)efficiency. Starting from the benchmarking studies on restaurant efficiency, this paper aims to develop a meta-analysis based on 77 observations from 25 studies published in scientific journals from 1998 to 2020. The estimated effect size in our meta-analysis is equal to 0.842 and is statistically different from zero, while the Cochran’s Q test for the heterogeneity in our sample hints at the absence of heterogeneity in the previous studies on restaurant efficiency. A meta-regression analysis partially supports this result but also highlights the importance of assuming an appropriate return to scale, given the peculiarity of the sector
Il mark-up delle gallerie d’arte moderna e contemporanea in Italia
No full textTaking advantage of the normative incoherence between the Italian VAT (IVA) regime that allows the galleries not to declare the VAT and the ARR regime that requires the galleries to calculate the ARR (DDS) on the price net of VAT, our work obtains private information on the mark-up of Italian art galleries. The determinants of mark-up, divided into gallery and artist specific determinants, reveal the main market strategies used by Italian galleries in the period considered
You can’t export that! Export ban for modern and contemporary Italian art
Full text linkSince 1939, an artwork in Italy can be subject to an “export veto” if it was created more than 50 years before the date of sale by an artist who is no longer living at the time of the sale. When the Italian bureau decides to exercise its right to veto exportation, these artworks cannot circulate outside the territory of Italy. Using original data from a hand-collected dataset covering all artworks made by non-living modern and contemporary Italian artists, auctioned at Christie’s and Sotheby’s in London and Milan between 2012 and 2016, we estimate a threshold model to consider the effect of the export veto law on price while controlling for the potential presence of a sample selection bias. We found that, while artwork prices are increasing in the time span between the year of creation and the date of sale, this effect reverses for artworks sold in Italy and created more than 50 years before the sale date. A similar pattern is also found in pre-sale estimates fixed by the auction houses, suggesting they exhibit rational behaviour in anticipating the export veto effect
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