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The objective of this paper is to gain insights into the relationship between deficit-reducing policies and the evolution of the debt/GDP ratio. We consider past events of fiscal consolidation in a selected group of EU countries, by using the new data set recently made available by Devries et al. (2011), and check what is the associated change of the debt/GDP ratio both from a short and medium-term perspective. Our results show that a favourable short-term response emerges in the majority of the countries considered, while the medium-term one is adverse for all. The analysis provides information to assess the convenience of deficit-reducing policies to contain or invert the evolution of the debt/GDP ratio.

ABSTRACTThis paper shows that the standard result according to which labour‐managed (LM) firms produce a lower amount of output, as compared with profit‐maximizing firms, is reversed if production per se gives utility and the workers' membership of LM firms is set before market decisions. Under the same hypotheses, the LM firms set a higher product quality than the profit‐oriented ones,ceteris paribus. The considered hypotheses are appropriate in several sectors, but they are particularly relevant in the case of the performing arts.

ABSTRACTThis paper shows that the standard result according to which labour-managed (LM) firms produce a lower amount of output, as compared with profit-maximizing firms, is reversed if production per se gives utility and the workers' membership of LM firms is set before market decisions. Under the same hypotheses, the LM firms set a higher product quality than the profit-oriented ones, ceteris paribus. The considered hypotheses are appropriate in several sectors, but they are particularly relevant in the case of the performing arts.

We take a game theory approach to study the make-or-buy decisions of firms in a mixed duopoly. We assume that a managerial firm and a profit-oriented firm compete in a duopoly market for a final good, and they can choose whether making an intermediate input or buying it from a monopolistic upstream firm. We find that different equilibria may arise, depending on parameter constellations. In particular, if the technology used for the production of the intermediate input is too costly, then the internal organization of firms at equilibrium is mixed, creating a conflict with social preferences that would always privilege vertical integration to outsourcing.

In this paper we present the results of a contingent rating study carried out on a sample of tourisits visiting Scicli, a Sicilian town known for its baroque heritage. In particular, we focus on different attributes of tourism products –namely, season, accommodation and cultural heritage– to study how much each of these attributes weights in tourists' preferences. We also study how the socio-demographic characteristics of people affect their evaluation of the different attributes of tourism products. The heritage endowment appears to be far from being the most important factor; this result is consistent across different socio-demographic sub-groups of interviewed persons.

We illustrate two differential oligopoly games with capital accumulation where, alternatively, the accumulation dynamics of productive capacity is modelled either `a la Solow—Swan or `a la Ramsey. We show that in the first case the open-loop Nash equilibrium is only weakly time consistent, while in the second it is strongly so, although the Ramsey game is not state linear.

This paper revisits a well-known case of optimal fiscal policy in a Ramsey model where consumer utility is defined over consumption and public goods. We show that normalising the size of the population to one eliminates the scope for active policy-making since the decentralised equilibrium coincides with social planning. Then, we modify the model to allow for a population of N > 1 agents, whereby restoring the role of the government as a policymaker. Both in the Stackelberg case and in the decentralised game, we prove that optimal fiscal policy and consumption are not only time consistent but also subgame perfect.

We take a differential game approach to study the dynamic behaviour of labour managed (LM) firms, in the presence of price stickiness. We find that the oligopoly market populated by LM firms reaches the same steady state equilibrium allocation as the oligopoly populated by profit-maximising (PM) firms, provided that the LM membership and the PM labour force are set before the market game starts. The conclusion holds under both the openloop solution and the closed-loop solution. The result confirms the point made by Sertel (1987) in a static framework.

We investigate dynamic R&D for process innovation in an oligopoly where firms invest in cost-reducing activities. We focus on the relationship between R&D intensity and market structure, proving that the industry R&D investment monotonically increases in the number of firms. This Arrowian result contradicts the established wisdom acquired from static games on the same topic.