Suchergebnisse

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to provide an empirical examination of factors associated with over-education among PhD graduates in Italy.Design/methodology/approach– The investigation is based on recently released data collected by the Italian National Institute of Statistics by means of interviews with a large sample of PhD recipients, carried out a few years after they obtained their PhD degree. The author measured the mismatch between the current job and previous PhD studies using two direct subjective evaluations of over-education, which distinguish between the usefulness of the PhD title to get the current job position and to perform the current work activities. Even if the incidence of over-education varies according to the measurement applied, the author found that it is highly widespread among PhD recipients. The econometric analyses are aimed at identifying factors associated with over-education and are based on the standard probit model and the bivariate probit model with sample selection which allows to control for self selection into employment.Findings– The results show that over-education is significantly correlated with: first, a number of PhD-related variables, such as the scientific field of study, having attended courses or visiting periods abroad; second, some job-related characteristics, such as working in the academia or being mainly involved in research-related activities; third, the channel of access to the job; and fourth, residential location.Originality/value– This paper contributes to the literature focusing on job-education mismatch by providing, to the best of the author's knowledge, the first empirical analysis of over-education among PhD recipients in Italy; moreover, it provides some useful insights to evaluate the professional doctoral graduates in Italy.

During the XX century European administrative systems have undergone a profound process of managerial revolution during which private sector managerial tools and principles have spread across both central and local governments in many countries. As many scholars have associated this process of change with the raise and diffusion of a managerialist ideology, this paper empirically investigates the electoral propaganda that since 1950s has supported the diffusion of managerialist values across the national administrative systems of the European countries. On the basis of a longitudinal study of the electoral programs released by the European parties since 1950s, this research provides evidence-based knowledge about: i) the different patterns of diffusion of the public-sector managerialist propaganda in Eastern and Western Europe; ii) the controversial relationship that exists between the spread of the managerialist ideology and the actual adoption of managerialist reforms in the national structures of the public sector.

During the past 50 years, European public sectors have undergone a profound process of organizational change, where managerial tools and principles from the private sector have permeated through governments and administrations of many countries. A substantial amount of academic literature has now been devoted to public management reforms. Many scholars have associated them with the diffusion of a managerialist ideology. However, the relationship between public management reforms, political ideology, and public expressions of support for these reforms by political parties has been a relatively under-explored topic within the literature and is the gap we address in this article. Using a longitudinal framework of study, our analysis shows how issues surrounding managerialist reforms have evolved across the electoral manifestos of European parties during the past 50 years. Our findings reveal that these reforms have enjoyed a growing political profile over time in many countries within Western and Eastern Europe. Furthermore, we also examine and discuss the differences and similarities of these reforms across countries.

ABSTRACTFramed within the paradigm of New Public Management (NPM), structural reforms in the EU aimed at modernizing the public administrations of Member States (MSs) have long since been a priority area of the EU's economic policy. Since the 1990s, these reforms have been sharply intensified across European countries with the declared purpose of enhancing economy, efficiency and effectiveness in their national public sectors' organizations. In line with the European Commission's recent research initiatives in search for novel quantitative data on NPM in the EU, this paper studies European parties' NPM reform rhetoric. More specifically, it investigates the MSs' institutional, economic and political context within which parties have declared their intention of reforming national administrative systems. Thus, it sheds light on the MSs' domestic factors that are associated with the diffusion of the NPM values across the political discourse of EU's national parties.

Why do parties offer environmental policies in their political programs? While a number of papers examine the determinants of citizens' pro-environmental behaviour, we know little about the extent to which political parties adjust their platform towards environmentalism. We investigate this process through data provided by the Manifesto Project Dataset (CMP) for 20 European countries over the period 1970-2008. Following the literature on public concern towards environment, we examine economic, environmental and political determinants. Our findings provide evidence that political parties' environmental concern is strongly correlated with their political ideology and with country-level economic conditions.

In the aftermath of the worst financial and economic crisis in generations, the modernization of public administrations of the EU's Member States (MSs) is among the structural reforms recommended by the European Commission to relaunch growth in the European economy. This type of reforms has a longstanding tradition in the MSs as they sharply intensified during the 1990s following the paradigm of New Public Management (NPM). Indeed, by backing NPM-style reforms, the European Commission has fostered convergence between the administrative systems of the MSs based on a soft strategy of integration where, instead of establishing binding pan-European rules enforced directly in all the MSs, it has set a number of regulatory standards implemented in the MSs with the support of national legislators and political parties. This paper empirically addresses the above-mentioned process of soft integration by unveiling the domestic determinants that have led MSs' political parties to call for NPM-style reforms in their national contexts between 1997 and 2011. The hypothesis tested in this study is that MSs' political parties have called for NPM-style reforms in order to respond to specific challenges issuing from the macro-economic, institutional and political configuration of their domestic contexts. The contribution of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, it contributes to a better understanding of the process of European administrative integration by providing robust empirical evidence about the patterns of diffusion NPM-style reforms across the MSs of the EU. On the other hand, the empirical evidence provided by this paper for the comprehension of NPM-style reforms in the context of the EU also contributes to a better understanding of some traditional theories addressing the reasons of the worldwide striking international trend of the NPM paradigm.

Using micro data from the European Value Survey (EVS) over 2008-2010, the paper investigates the individual and country variables that might affect the WTP for the environment of the 27 European Union (EU) Member States and in particular on the correlation of individual preferences to the existence/inexistence of the Environmental Tax Reform (ETR). Analyses, carried out by means of ordered logit OLS, logit and partial generalized ordered logit, provide useful insights to policy makers in fostering the tool of ETR, strongly promoted by the EU. Among others, our results show that WTP for the environment is higher in countries where an ETR has not been implemented. Moreover, further analyses conducted on the role of information highlight that being presumably aware of the ETR has a null/negative impact on the WTP for the environment.

AbstractEconomic literature suggests that economic factors and the availability of amenities act as determinants of migration choices together with socio‐demographic factors. Migration has also been found to be the consequence of political instability. This article argues that specific political events, i.e., democratic elections, may be linked to migration flows. By using European data over the 1999‐2012 time period, our system GMM estimations reveal that there is an emigration political cycle across European democracies and across the young democracies of Central and Eastern European countries. We observe that regular elections tend to diminish emigration ratios, whereas endogenous elections have the opposite effect. These results suggest special challenges for governments and oppositions, which are also discussed.

AbstractBy using data extracted from the political manifestos released by national political parties from 27 European Union countries over the 1990–2012 period, we estimate non‐linear econometric models whose aim is to understand the determinants of cross‐country political concern for the 'stability culture'. This expression describes an economic policy perspective based on the aims of providing price stability, fiscally disciplined budgets and rules and procedures that favour public expenditure ceilings. Our findings reveal that parties' commitment to the 'stability culture' is determined by their ideological background and by the national macroeconomic situation in the pre‐electoral year.