Search results for "Macroeconomic"
showing 10 items of 503 documents
Opportunity costs and efficiency of investments in mega sport events
2009
Economic analyses of mega sport events usually focus on the positive effects and legacies while ignoring opportunity costs and the efficiency of using scarce resources. Event opponents argue that decisions to invest public resources should also consider alternative uses of the money. This paper aims to clarify some of the issues surrounding the opportunity costs of mega sport events. By using the measure ‘efficiency’ (output/input) of alternative investments it will become clear that the decision to stage a mega sport event cannot be taken in isolation and that there are many factors that need to be considered. The argument put forward is based on a stakeholder’s perspective and a spatial d…
Feasibility studies for water reuse projects: an economical approach
2006
Usually the methodologies used to analyse the feasibility of water reuse projects are focused on the internal costs. The aim of this paper is to show a methodology to assess the feasibility of a water reuse project taking into account not just the internal impact, but also the external impact (environmental and social, for example) and the opportunity cost derived from the project. Internal benefit is obtained from the difference between internal income and internal costs. Internal income is obtained by multiplying the selling price of reclaimed water and the volume obtained. Internal costs are made up of the sum of investment costs, operating costs, financial costs and taxes. While some of…
Block bootstrap methods and the choice of stocks for the long run
2013
Financial advisors commonly recommend that the investment horizon should be rather long in order to benefit from the ‘time diversification’. In this case, in order to choose the optimal portfolio, it is necessary to estimate the risk and reward of several alternative portfolios over a long-run given a sample of observations over a short-run. Two interrelated obstacles in these estimations are lack of sufficient data and the uncertainty in the nature of the return generating process. To overcome these obstacles researchers rely heavily on block bootstrap methods. In this paper we demonstrate that the estimates provided by a block bootstrap method are generally biased and we propose two metho…
Hold up and intergenerational transmission of preferences
2004
This paper focuses on the formation, evolution and stability of the distribution of preferences in the population and its relationship with the investment and bargaining strategies in a simplified hold up problem. More precisely, in our model a population of infinitely-lived players (say, for example, firms) with homogeneous selfish or self-regarding preferences is pair-wise matched at each period with a population of an equal size of short-lived players (say, for example, workers) with heterogeneous preferences. Both types of player play a two-stage game. In the first stage, they decide separately but simultaneously whether to make a general or a relation-specific investment. The latter ty…
Public sector wage premium and output volatility in the European Union
2018
This study seeks to uncover the role played by the public sector wage premium in explaining the output volatility. Furthermore, the study also explores the factors that might substantiate the cross-country differences in the volatility of the public sector wage premium. Using cross-sectional regression analysis for the European Union countries, the findings indicate that more volatile public sector wage premium is associated with higher fluctuations in the private sector employment and less stable growth. Findings also suggest that volatility of the public sector wage premium tends to be larger in countries with smaller governments and in countries where collective bargaining is the predomi…
Drivers affecting the adoption and effectiveness of social media investments: The Italian wine industry case
2019
Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to identify distinct organisational models in a sample of firms operating in the wine industry; and second, to identify the main internal resources that characterise those firms most motivated towards the adoption of social media (SM) tools and those that perceive SM investment as more effective. Design/methodology/approach The empirical investigation was carried out by administering an online questionnaire to a sample of 82 Sicilian wineries. The principal component analysis was used to identify latent factors that drive managers to invest in SM technologies and to measure the impact perceived by managers. Subsequently, a cluster analys…
Financial Sustainability and Morphogenesis of Urban Transformation Project
2015
The urban transformation projects are very complex and have to be examined from several points of view (socio-cultural, environmental, infrastructural, administrative, and economic-financial) to determine their sustainability. This study aims to test the financial analysis as a tool for outlining the morphogenesis of the project’s characteristics and exploring the frontiers of the financial feasibility especially when the urban projects, according to Italian laws, involve Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). A financial model is applied to a case study (the transformation of an abandoned railway area) in which the absence of an adequate returns on investment, because of the crisis of the rea…
La dimensión participativa en el diseño de políticas urbanas. El caso valenciano
2018
La aparición y proliferación de iniciativas ciudadanas que tienen como objetivo gestionar de forma distinta los recursos públicos en muchas de las grandes capitales de Europa, hace plantearse en qué estado se encuentran las políticas públicas y sobre todo su gestión. Estamos hablando de una serie de iniciativas surgidas de abajo-arriba que han cambiado la forma tradicional de gestionar la ciudad basada en el tradicional enfoque administrativista de arriba-abajo. Recientemente muchos gobiernos, como consecuencia de estas iniciativas, y de la carencia de recursos y capacidades con los que poder afrontar viejos y nuevos retos, están diseñando nuevas políticas de desarrollo urbano que impliquen…
Tax Incentives as a Part of Governments’ Applied Mechanisms for the Third Pension Pillar in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania
2020
The main objective of the improvements to public pension systems is to create a balanced three-pillar pension structure and increase public accountability for pension capital formation. Most pension systems are based on the first two pension system pillars – mandatory contributions in the state compulsory unfunded pension scheme and the state-funded or accumulated pension scheme in pension funds. However, the pension level adequacy has been reached by adding the third pension system pillar - voluntary investments in private pension funds. Governments are private pension system policymakers by defining a legal framework and providing tax incentives for voluntary investments for retirement. I…
Physical Load and Preventive Measures in Metal Manufacturing Industry
2020
In today’s advanced work environment, workers are still exposed to ergonomic risks in the work environment and employees are exposed physically hard work that includes moving loads and frequent repetitive movements at fast pace. For the ergonomic risk analysis and workload assessment, three work operations with the high physical activity were selected: the welder’s workplace, the ironing board sorting line and the ironing board’s packing station. Subjective and objective ergonomics research methods were used. Research results show that employees in selected work operations are exposed to a fast work speed and often, monotonous movements at the sorting line and lifting heavy loads at the iro…