Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Domenicantonio Fausto Title: Presentazione Abstract: Classification-JEL: Keywords: Note: Pages:7-8 Volume: LXV Year: 2010 Issue:100 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=40382&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/STE2010-100001 Number: 1 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Nicola Acocella Title: Rational Expectations and Economic Policy Abstract: The introduction of rational expectations in the 1970s undermined the classical theory of economic policy laid down by Tinbergen, Theil and others. Since then rational expectations are often used as a strong argument against policy activism. However, rational expectations do not always imply policy invariance, although sometimes it happens. In fact, in certain circumstances rational expectations can enhance the policymaker?s power to control an economy over time. The new theory of economic policy in a strategic context not only overcomes the Lucas critique, but states the conditions under which policymakers can be fooled by a private sector having rational expectations or, on the contrary, can manage such expectations to enhance their power to control the system. Classification-JEL: C61, C62, E52, E61, E62 Keywords: Note: Pages:9-18 Volume: LXV Year: 2010 Issue:100 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=40383&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/STE2010-100002 Number: 2 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Elettra Agliardi Title: Reviewing Bank Regulatory Objectives Under Uncertail Information Abstract: A bank liquidation policy problem is analysed within a Merton framework where an appropriate notion of capital adequacy is introduced. The value of the deposit insurance liabilities and bank equity are derived. The effects of capital requirements on risk-shifting and bank reorganization are discussed, with a comparison of different regulatory regimes (in keeping with the Basel I and II Accords) and their impact on banks? behaviour. Classification-JEL: G2, G21, G33 Keywords: Note: Pages:19-39 Volume: LXV Year: 2010 Issue:100 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=40384&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/STE2010-100003 Number: 3 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Giacomo Costa Title: La Rerum Novarum dalla fine del XIX all'inizio del XXI secolo Abstract: To the contemporary historian, Rerum Novarum is a socio-political event. I will take it at its word and study it for its content rather than its impact. If the Church failed to return to the centre of European affairs, this must be due to its failure to suggest a constructive approach to socialism and industrialisation. The anthropology espoused by RN is a caricature version of Thomism: man is moved by impulses that are self-justfying - inasmuch as they are natural - and provide the foundations for individual rights, especially, property rights. Together with the fact of men?s inequality, deemed both ineluctable and socially providential, this would make for a harmonious hierarchical society, which is indeed the ideal RN extols. But it cannot explain the industrial revolution, nor the creation of wealth, nor the much feared unfolding of social conflict. This is why the RN policy proposals are so weak and anachronistic. Classification-JEL: B19, N13, P16, Z12 Keywords: Note: Pages:41-63 Volume: LXV Year: 2010 Issue:100 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=40385&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/STE2010-100004 Number: 4 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Massimo A. De Francesco Author-Name: Neri Salvadori Title: Oligopoli simmetrici e oligoli asimmetrici Abstract: In this work we are concerned with static price games played by a given number of capacity- constrained firms producing a homogeneous commodity. The focus is mainly on capacity configurations in which either all firms are equal or all are so except a larger one and such that no pure strategy equilibrium exists. We show that in the former case the symmetrical solution is the unique equilibrium whereas in the latter a number of asymmetrical equilibria may also exist. Classification-JEL: C72, D43, L13 Keywords: Note: Pages:65-89 Volume: LXV Year: 2010 Issue:100 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=40386&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/STE2010-100005 Number: 5 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Riccardo Faucci Title: Croce and Gramsci as "Economists" Abstract: Both Croce and Gramsci showed a remarkable interest in economics, although their conclusions were very different. The paper, which is based on a perusal of their main texts on the matter, aims at reconstructing the process of Croce?s and Gramsci?s approach to economics (its method, its scope, and its links with philosophy and politics), also showing some "modern" and neglected outcomes of their reflection. Classification-JEL: A12, B1, B3 Keywords: Note: Pages:91-115 Volume: LXV Year: 2010 Issue:100 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=40387&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/STE2010-100006 Number: 6 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Tullio Jappelli Author-Name: Christian Julliard Author-Name: Marco Pagano Title: Households' Portfolio Diversification Abstract: This paper performs an efficiency analysis of households portfolios based on the comparison of observed portfolios with the mean-variance frontier of assets returns. Data on household portfolios are drawn from a representative sample of the Italian population with at least a bank account. We find that most households? portfolios are extremely close to the efficient frontier once we explicitly take into account no short-selling constraints, while the null hypothesis of efficiency is rejected for all portfolios if we don?t consider these constraints. Classification-JEL: E2, D8 Keywords: Note: Pages:117-143 Volume: LXV Year: 2010 Issue:100 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=40388&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/STE2010-100007 Number: 7 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Jan Kregel Title: Trade, Technology and Financing for Development Abstract: The long-term trend decline in the terms of trade of primary commodities against developed country manufactured goods is usually cited as a major impediment to the growth in per capita incomes in developing countries and the inapplicability of the theory of comparative advantage in the design of development policy. However, as developing countries have expanded their production of industrial output they have been faced with two additional barriers to successful development. The first is the impact of opening their capital markets to foreign investments, creating a tendency for decline in the financial terms of trade with developed countries. The second is the impact of knowledge-based technological change that makes it difficult for developing countries to acquire the increased productivity associated with best-practice techniques, creating a tendency toward a decline in the technological terms of trade. The article thus generalizes the concept of the declining terms of trade to finance and technology. Classification-JEL: O11, O31, F21, F34 Keywords: Note: Pages:145-155 Volume: LXV Year: 2010 Issue:100 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=40389&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/STE2010-100008 Number: 8 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Salvatore Modica Title: Uninformed Traders in European Stock Markets Abstract: A fully informed agent bets with an uninformed over the capital gains of an asset. A divide-and-choose idea is adapted to induce both trade and revelation of information, but in equlibrium the uninformed buys high and sells low if he is downside risk averse. The result may be seen as an informed-price-maker counterpart of some findings of Glosten-Milgrom (1985) and Kyle (1985) on uninformed agents trading in financial markets. Classification-JEL: D82, G14 Keywords: Note: Pages:157-174 Volume: LXV Year: 2010 Issue:100 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=40390&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/STE2010-100009 Number: 9 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Ignazio Musu Title: Mercato, regolazione ed etica: una nota in ricordo di Lilli Basile Abstract: The financial and economic crisis has shown the unreality of the idea o market selfregulation and has reaffirmed the need of an appropriate regulation. The crisis has also shown that, in order for both the markets and the regulation to work properly, ethical values cannot be ignored. The relation between markets and ethics is not unidirectional. If the market behavior is moved by self-interest, there is a strong tendency of markets to neutralize the ethical values; this requires that the need for ethics is not only announced, but rooted in the economic agents. Three ethical values are analyzed: honesty, responsibility and solidarity. Classification-JEL: A11, D63, Z13 Keywords: Note: Pages:175-189 Volume: LXV Year: 2010 Issue:100 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=40391&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/STE2010-100010 Number: 10 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Carlo Panico Author-Name: Francesco Purificato Title: European Policy Reactions to the Financial Crisis Abstract: The paper examines how economic policy have been carried out in Europe during the recent financial crisis. It focuses on the changes introduced in the operational procedures of monetary policy in the euro area in 2007 and 2008, pointing out that the objective of the authorities has been to respond to the liquidity needs of the monetary financial institutions, avoiding to loose control over M3. The paper argues that the interventions of the Eurosystem have produced satisfactory results and underlines the problems generated by the fall in productive activity and the need to face them with fiscal policies instruments. The inefficient forms of coordination between monetary and fiscal policies and the management of the government debt in some euro area countries are seen as the main sources of preoccupation for the evolution of the crisis. Classification-JEL: A10, E52, E61 H10, H39, H61, H63 Keywords: Note: Pages:191-218 Volume: LXV Year: 2010 Issue:100 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=40392&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/STE2010-100011 Number: 11 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Giorgio Rampa Title: Crescere, innovare, convincere, approvare: stimoli intellettuali da Adam Smith Abstract: In Smith?s opinion any social order (languages, theories, social norms) stems from a co- evolution process. Evolution is fostered by "surprise and imagination", i.e. dissatisfaction with some existing order; however imagination can be successful if approved by the community; approval depends on uses, customs, moods. Hence, there is no guarantee that evolution is progressive. Self-reference and the mechanisms of imagination imply that evolution entails non-linear relations: hence there does not exist a unique path of development, nor one which depends uniquely on "fundamentals". These Smith?s key notions - coming from the History of Astronomy, the Formation of Languages and the Theory of Moral Sentiments - allow not only a better appreciation of Smith contribution to the economics of exchange, innovation and evolution, beyond the first pages of the Wealth of Nations, but also an interpretation which differs deeply from that usually adopted by modern economics. Classification-JEL: O10, O31, D83, B31 Keywords: Note: Pages:219-234 Volume: LXV Year: 2010 Issue:100 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=40393&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/STE2010-100012 Number: 12 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Lorenzo Rampa Title: L'economia dei primitivi Abstract: This article aims to interpret the debate on the behaviour of the first human communities, in particular their big game and food sharing practices, through a simple model where the big preys are characterised as public goods. Anthropologists and economists alike have discussed the issue from two opposite points of view. The first assumes essentially self-interested preferences and interpret cooperation for hunting big preys as a consequence of choices under the uncertainty veil. The second one considers non self-interested attitudes such as inequality aversion or strong reciprocity. Using the former interpretation, it can be shown that the mutual cooperation is unanimously preferred, under restrictive assumptions on the payoffs. Using the latter, two Nash equilibria can exist. Moreover, if strong reciprocity is assumed, the equilibrium can be evolutionarily stable. This possibility is strenghtened if strong reciprocity is characterised by the transfer to the cooperators of the sanction assigned to the free riders. Classification-JEL: B52, H14, Z13 Keywords: Note: Pages:235-260 Volume: LXV Year: 2010 Issue:100 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=40394&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/STE2010-100013 Number: 13 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Alessandro Roncaglia Title: Prezzi e distribuzione del reddito: una nota Abstract: After a brief critical evaluation of the main non-mainstream lines of analysis of income distribution (Kaldor?s and related models connecting income distribution to growth, Sraffa?s "Keynesian" suggestion of a link between the interest rate and the rate of profits, the "Kaleckian" degree of monopoly), the paper suggests to deal with income distribution not by looking for the determination of an equilibrium point on the wage-profit frontier, but as a dynamic-evolutionary process. Sylos Labini?s contribution is illustrated as an example of this approach, and a scheme for co-ordinating an interrelated group of analyses joining theoretical and applied investigation is suggested. Classification-JEL: B50, D33 Keywords: Note: Pages:261-273 Volume: LXV Year: 2010 Issue:100 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=40395&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/STE2010-100014 Number: 14 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Alessandro Vercelli Title: Dopo la crisi: le responsabilit? dell'economista come ricercatore, docente e cittadino Abstract: The Great Recession triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis raised serious questions on the responsibility of the economists as intellectuals, advisors and decision makers. This essay focuses on the responsibility of the academic economist in his role of researcher, teacher, divulgator, inspirer and supporter of a specific ideology (sometimes malgr? lui). In the light of this analysis, the author briefly discusses the limits of the institutionalized and centralized evaluation systems of research quality recently adopted in many countries, and suggests an alternative approach to the evaluation of the merit of academic economists centred on the zeal shown in complying with all their duties. Classification-JEL: A11, A13, A20 Keywords: Note: Pages:275-290 Volume: LXV Year: 2010 Issue:100 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=40396&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/STE2010-100015 Number: 15 Template-type: ReDIF-Article 1.0 Author-Name: Raffaele Trani Title: Liliana Basile. Curriculum vitae Abstract: Classification-JEL: Keywords: Note: Pages:291-297 Volume: LXV Year: 2010 Issue:100 File-URL:http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?IDArticolo=40397&Tipo=Articolo PDF File-Format: text/HTML Handle: RePEc:fan:steste:v:html10.3280/STE2010-100016 Number: 16