The Impact of Natural Disasters on Remittances to Low- and Middle-Income Countries

In this paper, we offer novel empirical evidence on the impact of natural disasters on remittance flows towards low- and middle-income countries. We consider a panel of 98 countries over the period 1990–2010. Our findings show that remittances increase after a disaster, thus contributing ex post to the reconstruction process. At the same time, we find that remittances play a key role in terms of ex ante risk preparedness for those countries that experienced more disruptive events in the past. Finally, when taking into account the interaction with the level of development of the local financial sector, remittances seem to substitute for less efficient financial systems both in terms of ex post response to disasters and in terms of ex ante risk management strategy.     

Ethnography in Public Management Research: A Systematic Review and Future Directions

Ethnography is defined as a research methodology based on sustained, explicit, methodical observation and paraphrasing of social situations in relation to their naturally occurring events. The value of producing local observational data over extended periods of time lies in the ability to systematically explore the subjective construction of meanings and its consequences on organizational and institutional dynamics. Based on a systematic review of published ethnographic studies in the field of public management, this article investigates how ethnography has been conceptualized and employed by the scholarly community in the past 25 years (1990–2014); it highlights the methodological features of the ethnographic design; and it outlines a set of research directions for future applications of the ethnographic approach to the study of theoretically and empirically relevant phenomena. This study contributes to the growing debate of the role of methods in public management literature in informing evidence-based managerial and policy decisions.     

Public vs. Private in Hospital Efficiency: Exploring Determinants in a Competitive Environment

This study investigates the determinants of efficiency in an Italian regional health system and estimates the effect exerted by ownership on hospitals’ performance. To achieve this aim, the Veneto region was considered as a case study and a full dataset (2011–2012) containing nonpublicly available technical data and cost and income items was analyzed. Efficiencies are measured applying a three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA). Our results suggest that private hospitals perform better than public hospitals in productivity and cost saving, not considering the effect of other environmental and operational variables such as length of stay and beds per capita.