1,721,009 research outputs found
Processi di riorganizzazione della rete ospedaliera : ragioni teoriche, evidenze empiriche e fattori di successo : il caso della riconversione dei piccoli ospedali in Emilia-Romagna
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Learning from interactions: tax evasion in an evolutionary perspective
Full text linkThe work studies the effect of interactions between fiscal authorities and taxpayers on income tax evasion decision, both in a theoretical and empirical perspective. Particularly, from a theoretical point of view, an evolutionary game (Friedman, 1998, Sandholm, 2010) is used to investigate the role of repeated interactions on the taxpayers’ decision to be honest, cheating or ghost, formalizing both the individual and population perspective. It will therefore be assumed a large population, divided into two sub-populations, taxpayers and fiscal agencies, were individuals are characterized by heterogeneous intrinsic characteristics (the propensity to declare their income to fiscal authorities varies from one individual to another) but by homogeneous decision making processes. For the purpose of studying the role of learning from interacting with other individuals, the replicator dynamic equation (Taylor and Yonker, 1978) will be introduced and used, and because all individuals behave the same way (they share the same decision making and learning process), the replicator equation represents both the individual and population perspective.
Within this setting, we will present two models, the first one (in Chapter 2), which includes in the formalization different features on fiscal agencies’ side, such as effort in inspecting activities and the cost of inspections. The second one (presented in Chapter 3) captures instead fiscal agencies’ opportunity costs, as well as taxpayers’ costs related to the circumstance of being inspected.
We will therefore investigate the effects of interactions between taxpayers and fiscal agencies in light of two different behaviours of fiscal authorities. In the model presented in Chapter 2, fiscal authorities’ actions are not related to costs associated with the circumstance of missing the right target in inspections, whereas in the second one, in Chapter 3, fiscal authorities are subject to an opportunity cost associated with the circumstance of missing the right target in inspections, when non inspecting the cheating and ghost taxpayers. Results show that in the long run equilibrium, the proportion of characters chosen by the members of each subpopulation does not change over time. Particularly - in equilibrium – the proportion of honest individuals is positive as long as the costs of inspections are less than the amount of taxes and fines recovered from audits, and the effort put by fiscal agencies is higher than the ratio between the costs and the amount recovered from inspections. In case the cost is equal to the amount recovered with inspections, the subpopulation of taxpayers is formed only by cheating individuals, which include also cases of ghost individuals.
Moreover, higher tax rates are associated with a distribution of characters oriented to a higher proportion of cheating individuals (which in turn, can hide a certain proportion or their entire income), but also a higher proportion of inspecting tax agencies with respect to non inspecting ones. Higher penalty rates are instead associated with a higher proportion of honest individuals with respect to cheating taxpayers, and with a lower proportion of inspecting fiscal agencies. As lower costs of controls induce a higher proportion of honest with respect to cheating, it seems the effect of penalty and the perception of penalty leads to an adjustment in taxpayers’ behaviour towards honesty.
Then, Chapter 4 presents an experiment conducted among students at the Faculty of Economics of the University “La Sapienza” in Rome, which aims at verifying whether learning affects individuals’ propensity towards honesty, as well as some of the results of the models presented in Chapters 2 and 3, such as the effect of tax rate and penalty rate on individuals’ choice of being honest or cheating. To estimate the effects of learning on individuals’ propensity to be honest, we use both a fixed effects and random effects models, controlling and non controlling for scenarios, as well as a modified version of the Directional Learning model, as in Selten and Stocker (1986). Results show that the effects of tax and penalty rate on individuals’ propensity towards honesty are statistically significant and share the same direction as shown in the models presented in Chapters 2 and 3 of this work. Moreover, learning affects significantly individuals’ propensity to be honest, and the results appear to be consistent with directional learning
“Are Genetically Modified Foods Bad for my Health?”Consumer Evaluation and Preferred Information Source
No full textWe investigate the impact of competing information on the consumer’s evaluation of
food products containing genetically modified organisms (GMos). We provide three main results.
First, we show that introducing mandatory labels to identify whether or not a food product
contains GMos significantly reduces the consumer evaluation. Second, providing additional
information on GMos with respect to labels significantly affects evaluation. Third, no
matter what kind of information previously received, the consumer prefers to seek additional
information from the information source they trust the most, i.e., their general practitioner
(GP). overall, these results indicate that the crucial issue for regulating GMos is not the presence
of the label per se, but the availability of the necessary information to make good use of
the label content in order to assess potential health risks deriving from genetically modified
foods. In particular, our findings suggest that this can be achieved by properly informing (and
convincing) GPs and other health professionals that the risks for human health are minimal
Perceived quality of public services, liquidity constraints, and the demand of private specialist care
Full text linkIn this article we offer direct evidence on the role of perceived quality differences in publicly provided health care services, in determining the incentive to opt out for private services and, for poor individuals, short-run credit constraints in the access to these services. We concentrate on private specialist care, a category of services for which disparities in the access are highest.We use Bank of Italy—SHIW data to first study the determinants of demand for private and public specialist care,estimating probit and bivariate probit models, and ZIP models. We then apply the Carneiro–Heckman procedure to identify the share of people constrained and study how perceived quality of public services affects the percentage of people short runconstrained. Our estimates suggest the presence of large territorial differences, as for the role of income and the quality of public services
Human Health Care and Selection Effects. Understanding Labour Supply in the Market for Nursing
Full text linkThe aim of this paper is to study (adverse) selection in a labour supply model where potential applicants are characterised by different vocational levels and skills. We look at how the composition of the pool of active workers changes as the wage rate increases. Contrary to what would expect, average productivity does not necessarily increase monotonically in the wage rate. We identify conditions in which a wage increase reduces the average productivity and/or average vocation of active workers. Our results help understand the potential impact of wage increases as a policy designed to resolving shortages in the labour market for nurses
Il percorso di attuazione dell’autonomia differenziata: evoluzione storica e prospettive
No full textQuesto numero di Economia Italiana è dedicato ai temi della “autonomia differenziata”, o del federalismo asimmetrico, la possibilità, cioè, che alcune funzioni attualmente svolte dallo Stato nazionale siano decentrate e attribuite ad (alcune) regioni assieme alle risorse per poterle svolgerle. Il federalismo asimmetrico non rappresenta naturalmente una novità nel contesto italiano, vista la storica compresenza sul territorio nazionale di regioni a statuto ordinario (RSO) e a statuto speciale (RSS). Ma la specialità attuale è un’esperienza da cui è difficile trarre indicazioni significative, sia perché le RSS sono per competenze e risorse tutte diverse le une dalle altre, sia perché il loro sistema di finanziamento è particolarmente generoso e di conseguenza non estendibile alle altre regioni senza rimettere in discussione la sopravvivenza stessa del paese
Time discounting and attitude towards crime. Evidence from the Italian Regions.
No full textThis paper aims at studying the relationship between time discounting and crime
rates. We build upon the contribution by Davis (JPE, 1988) which suggests that differing
propensities to commit crime can be explained by the attitude of the agents toward the
future. The empirical analysis is based on a panel of Italian regions for the period 2001-
2006. As proxy for time preferences, we focus on consumer credit rate, defined as the ratio
between the amount of consumer credit and the total amount of loans to households. The
main result confirms the basic hypothesis by Davis (1988), namely the existence of a
positive association between violent crime and discount rate
Measuring the Underground Economy with the Currency Demand Approach. A Reinterpretation of the methodology
No full textWe contribute to the debate on how to assess the size of the underground (or shadow) economy by proposing a reinterpretation of the traditional Currency Demand Approach (CDA) à la Tanzi. In particular, we introduce three main innovations. First, we take a direct measure of the value of cash transactions—the flow of cash withdrawn from bank accounts relative to total non-cash payments—as the dependent variable in the money demand equation. This allows us to avoid unrealistic assumptions on the velocity of money and the absence of any irregular transaction in a given year, overcoming two severe critiques to the traditional CDA. Second, in place of the tax burden level, usually intended as the main motivation for non-compliance, we include among the covariates two direct indicators of detected tax evasion. Finally, we control also for the role of illegal production considering crimes like drug dealing and prostitution, which—jointly with the shadow economy—contributes to the larger aggregate of the non-observed economy and represents a significant component of total cash payments. We propose then an application of this “modified CDA” to a panel of 91 Italian provinces for the years 2005–08
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