1,720,982 research outputs found
Fertility Choice and Financial Development
Full text linkWe study the consequences of broader access to credit and to capital markets on household's decisions over the number of children. In a life-cycle model of choice with forward and backward caring between parents and children, we analyze the effects of relaxing adults' borrowing constrains and broadening the opportunities for financial investment, and show how the sign of these effects depends on the role of children as a normal or inferior good in parents' preferences. We estimate the quantitative implications of our theoretical model on data from 145 countries over the period 1980--2006. Empirical results indicate that improved access to credit reduces fertility in poor countries and increases fertility in high-income countries. The effect of the development of capital markets on the number of children is negative in low-income countries and positive in the rich. When the analysis includes public pensions the main results remain the same. We also estimate the effect of the real interest rate, which proves significant and negative
Much ado about extremes: An experimental test of the shaping effect of prices on preferences
No full textThere is evidence of a shaping effect of market prices on subjects’ evaluations in repeated private value auctions. This evidence has been traditionally interpreted as a pure behavioural phenomenon in contexts where the only available information is the market price. In this paper, we enrich the subjects’ information set by providing in treatment groups additional information on extreme asks. Our main results show a shaping effect both in the control and in the treatments and a stronger effect of the extreme information that more than halves the effect of the market price on subjects’ asks. Differently from the existing literature, we find that the provision of additional information inactivates the well-documented tendency of the market price to fall at each auction round as a consequence of over-asking correction. We discuss different possible mechanisms underlying this key finding
Rationality, uncertainty and ecological adaptation
No full textThe debate on the concept of rationality is key to the epistemological status of economics: starting from classical economics, scholars have always assumed some rational model of man, at least as a minimum requirement of consistency in choices; nonetheless, only with explicit neoclassical and Austrian modeling, the discussion entered an advanced stage. New fuel has been provided by experimental economics’ results helping scholars think about the real-world applicability of the neoclassical paradigm. In recent years, fresh perspectives and empirical evidence on computability have enriched the economist’s toolkit with frugal and efficient heuristics allowing real humans to tackle computationally hard problems. In this essay, we selectively discuss and expand some crucial nodes of the debate as reported in Panico (2012)’s contribution to the history of rationality in economics. We find that many early critical insights have remarkably enriched and strengthened our comprehension of how humans make economic choices
Presentation of "The Quality of Governance in Europe: A Guide for the Perplexed"
No full textWe paper investigates the quality of governance in the European geographical area for the period 1995–2019 employing the six World Governance Indicators (The World Bank, 2020): control of corruption, government effectiveness, political stability and absence of violence/terrorism, rule of law, regulatory quality, voice and accountability. With regard to EU membership, we partition countries into three blocks: Historical Members, Entrants, and Outsiders. We check systematic differences, static and dynamic, between the three blocks to verify whether EU membership makes a difference. Results highlight a complex scenario: while statically Historical Members outperform Entrants and Entrants outperform Outsiders on all six dimensions, dynamically we find club convergence in growth rates for all variables across the three blocks. Historical Members stand in a high equilibrium club, except for Greece. In a single case, we even observe absolute convergence for a low club of voice and accountability. Several Outsiders stand consistently either in the high or the low club, while Entrants vary widely in their performances. The remote determinants of governance’s quality are very difficult to identify because cultures, institutions and economies interact in complex and unexpected ways; moreover, natural experiments of EU memberships do not exist, so we cannot establish causal effects in the strictest sense. Nonetheless, for the first time, we establish a clear picture of all main dimensions of government’s quality for the European area, achieving at least a number of robust empirical facts which can be used by scholars, policymakers, and European administrators
Capital Theory: Neoclassical and Austrian Perspectives
No full textWhat can be learned from the Austrian theory of capital? Why an objective evaluation of capital's value at the aggregate level? Mises and Kirzner's insights can shed light on the issue and provide novel perspectives and applications
Intuito e calcolo: Si può decidere meglio?
Full text linkIl convegno ha analizzato l'opera di Daniel Kahneman e i suoi sviluppi nel campo dell'economia cognitiva, del diritto, della psicologia della decisione e della razionalità
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
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