0000000000495391
AUTHOR
S. Auci
Local vs. National Environmental Spending: A Stochastic Frontier Analysis
This work studies the impact of public environmental spending in a fiscal federalist framework. The main question is studying when the centralization of this public economic function is welfare improving. Applying the Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA) on Italian, Portuguese and Slovakian data, the paper tries to test this issue. Our results highlight the superiority of centralized environmental spending with respect to the decentralization of this particular public good.
Measuring water-use in response to climate change: an analysis of the efficiency of Italian crop production system
Official meteo-climatic statistics show the variability of weather conditions. Their effects on socioeconomic and natural environments should be analyzed in multi-dimensional studies. Among sectors, agriculture is expected to be the most sensitive as well as water resources availability. The aim of our analysis is to measure the performance of Italian regions in crop production by estimating both production technology - including a measure of irrigation water used as input - output elasticities and returns to scale and productive efficiency or technical efficiency where rainfalls and temperatures are proxies of CC conditions in the period 2000-2010 at Italian regional level, using the stoch…
Stochastic Frontiers Approach: an Empirical Analysis of Italian Environmental Spending
Using the stochastic frontiers approach (SFA) on a panel of Italian regional data, this paper tries to analyse the optimal design of environmental spending. The main question is, so forth, studying centralization vs decentralization of a public economic function, such as the protection of the environment, in order to improve the welfare of a country. Empirical results on Italy are ambiguous: the changing from a centralized to a decentralized government, giving more autonomy to local units, does not highlight a clear improvement in regional economic performance.
Adopting sustainable irrigation technologies in Italy: a study on the determinants of inter- and intra-farm diffusion
This paper analyses the drivers for adopting irrigation systems with water conservation and saving technologies (WCSTs) by Italian farmers. The agricultural sector in Italy, like in other Mediterranean countries, suffers from water scarcity and water endowment variability. Water resources play a decisive role in agricultural production and in implementing large-scale WCSTs capable of improving the resilience of the whole agricultural sector. This study uses a microeconomic panel data approach to estimate farmers' decisions in adopting (inter-farm) sustainable irrigation technologies and assesses the intensity of (intra-farm) water-saving practices. Our analysis identifies the main determina…