The evolution of health-policy making in Italy

An analysis of the dynamics of health care policy in Italy suggests that in recent years the pace of change in the health care system has accelerated. Although the basic features of universalism, comprehensiveness, and funding from general taxation have remained remarkably constant, the capacity to innovate policy tools and their settings and to take account of domestic and international experience seems to have increased. The political will and capacity to combat entrenched interests may also have increased, although implementation is still weak. The imperative to contain public expenditure has heavily conditioned health policy and will continue to do so. This has occurred mainly at the national level, but as the principal locus of health-policy making progressively shifts to the regions, so too will the constraining effect of this imperative move downward. If the decentralization process continues, problems could arise due to interregional differences in capacities to formulate and implement appropriate policies and to tackle special interest groups.     

Rents, dissipation and lost treasures: Rethinking Tullock's paradox

In this paper we revisit Tullock's paradox (Tullock, 1980) and consider a rent-seeking game in which parties face increasing returns to effort. We allow parties to randomize their strategies and give them an exit option. Given the mixed participation strategies of the parties, valuable rents may occasionally remain unexploited. We consider such a lost-treasure effect as an additional cost of rent seeking and examine how the expected value of such a lost rent varies with changes in the parameters of the problem.     

Allele sharing in first-degree and unrelated pairs of individuals in the Ge F I AmpFlSTR Profiler Plus database

Eleven Italian forensic laboratories participated in a population study based on the AB Profiler Plus loci with proficiency testing. The validated database, including 1340 individuals, is available on-line. Tests for Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, gametic unbalance, and heterogeneity of gene frequency were generally not significant. Gene frequencies at each locus were consistent with those of two previously published Italian studies, but different from a third. Individuals of each subsample were paired, and the total number of alleles shared across the nine loci was determined in each pair. The analysis was replicated over the total sample. In addition, two samples of mother-child pairs (N=315) and full-sib pairs (N=91) were subjected to allele sharing analysis. The resulting distributions were sufficiently distinct from the sample of unrelated pairs as to be of practical usefulness.     

Does Policy Stability Increase the Constitutional Court's Independence? The Case of Italy During the First Republic (1956–1992)

In this paper, we consider thesentences of constitutional illegitimacy bythe Italian Constitutional Court in theFirst Republic (1956–1992) as a measure ofits independence from politicians. We focuson the Court's incidental review and testwhether the Court's independence increaseswhen there is more policy stability, namelywhen politicians are less able to changethe policy status quo by legislation. Wefollow Tsebelis (2002) in assuming thatlegislative policy change is less likelywhen either the number and/or ideologicaldistance of veto players increases. As aproxy for the size of the veto players'Pareto set, we use either the number ofparties in government, or the number ofparties forming a constitutional majorityin Parliament, or the number of effectiveparties in Parliament, or measures ofideological distance based on Laver andHunt (1992). By controlling for the Court'sdegree of internal cohesion, cointegrationanalysis shows that there is a stable andpositive long-run relationship between theCourt's independence and proxy measures ofthe degree of policy stability.     

Explaining regulatory autonomy in EU network sectors: Varieties of utility regulation?

This article explains variation in the autonomy in the range of activities that European regulators perform. By focusing on 102 regulators of four network sectors (electricity, gas, telecom, and railways), we test for functional and institutional explanations. The findings indicate that the inclusion of institutional factors matters for our understanding of recent changes in the governance of European network sectors. Reforms toward the independent agency form of governance and the range of competencies granted to sector regulators seem to be shaped not only by international functional pressures but also by domestic institutional factors. Beyond the credibility hypothesis, we find that national governments grant less regulatory autonomy to utility regulators the more coordinated an economy is and the more veto players are present. On the contrary, common law countries are associated with higher levels of regulatory autonomy.     

Being Part of the Family: Social and Working Conditions of Female Migrant Care Workers in Italy

This paper will present a study examining the social and working conditions of immigrant women who work in the family and the field of elderly people's assistance in private houses in Italy. The research will focus on categories such as social class, “race”, and gender, variables that stratify and naturalize the inequalities inbred in the social relations between immigrant caregivers and the families they work for. I will seek to illustrate through these perspectives how an affective and family life of their own is denied to these care workers. I will further investigate how the relationship between the care worker's body and the elderly care receiver's body becomes structured and characterized each time differently on the basis of gender. Moreover, I will take a closer look at the relationship of the female worker with her own body and disease, and also at the relationship of the care worker with death and money.     

Seeking rents in the shadow of Coase

In this paper, we study a two-stage rent-seeking game. In the first stage, contestants compete à-la-Tullock; in the second stage, the winner can resell the rent à-la-Coase. We consider a complete information Tullock game in which the contestants have different valuations for the rent. The analysis focuses on the ex ante effects of a secondary market on efforts, payoffs, rent-dissipation and rent-misallocation. We show that the secondary market, while correcting possible misallocations, may exacerbate rent dissipation. In some situations, the increase in rent dissipation more than offsets the allocative advantage, so that a secondary market might reduce welfare. We further show how the effect of ex post tradeability on welfare depends on the parties’ bargaining power and valuations of the rent, also considering the case of endogenous bargaining power.     

Build your nation in 5′25″: social constructions of Italy in official and user-generated videos on YouTube

This article focuses on the differences between the official video clip of a song dedicated to the nation and the remakes uploaded on social media by anonymous users. It argues that social media act as the semiosphere boundary, on which, for Lotman [2005. “On the Semiosphere.” Sign Systems Studies 33 (1): 205–229] central dominant texts and peripheral structures meet to generate new meaning. The work draws on Lotman's semiosphere, on nation-building, and on the bottom-up construction of reality of social media. Methodologically, semiotic analysis is applied to the images of all the videos. Results show that the peripheral elements theorised by Lotman adapt to and renew the language of the centre. In fact, they adopt the same structure of the official video but expand, revitalise and deconstruct the sedimented versions of Italy that it offers. As in Lotman, the periphery challenges the dominant hierarchy. Finally, all the videos agree on relegating the woman to a secondary role.     

Business Experts on Public Sector Boards: What Do They Contribute?

Although public management reforms around the world have given business experts an enhanced role in the governance of public sector organizations, the impact of this change is poorly understood. Drawing from the literature on board human capital as a theoretical framework and focusing on the case of hospital boards in the English National Health Service, this concern is addressed by investigating whether increasing the presence of individuals with business expertise has any significant relationship with organizational performance. The findings show that while business expertise appears to have no influence on service quality, it does have a positive effect on financial performance. However, this only applies to governing boards that are less experienced in terms of their collective tenure. The findings lend partial support to board capital theory but also show that in certain conditions generic business expertise can be a valuable asset for public sector organizations.