计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

This paper reviews the literature on gender differences in economic experiments. In the three main sections, we identify robust differences in risk preferences, social (other-regarding) preferences, and competitive preferences. We also speculate on the source of these differences, as well as on their implications. Our hope is that this article will serve as a resource for those seeking to understand gender differences and to use as a starting point to illuminate the debate on gender-specific outcomes in the labor and goods markets.

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Gender Differences in Preferences

We develop a theory of prosocial behavior that combines heterogeneity in individual altruism and greed with concerns for social reputation or self-respect. Rewards or punishments (whether material or imagerelated) create doubt about the true motive for which good deeds are performed and this “overjustification effect” can induce a partial or even net crowding out of prosocial behavior by extrinsic incentives. We also identify the settings that are conducive to multiple social norms and more generally those that make individual actions complements or substitutes, which we show depends on whether stigma or honor is (endogenously) the dominant reputational concern. Finally, we analyze the socially optimal level of incentives and how monopolistic or competitive sponsors depart from it. Sponsor competition is shown to potentially reduce social welfare.

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Incentives and Prosocial Behavior

A number of economists find that growth and schooling are highly correlated across countries. A model is examined in which the ability to build on the human capital of one's elders plays an important role in linking growth to schooling. The model is calibrated to quantify the strength of the effect of schooling on growth by using evidence from the labor literature on Mincerian returns to education. The upshot is that the impact of schooling on growth explains less than one-third of the empirical cross-country relationship. The ability of reverse causality to explain this empirical relationship is also investigated.

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Does Schooling Cause Growth

Four main messages emerge from the study of subjective survey data. First, a large experimental literature by and large supports economists' skepticism of subjective questions. Second, put in an econometric framework, these findings cast serious doubts on attempts to use subjective data as dependent variables, because the measurement error appears to correlate with a large set of characteristics in behaviors. Third, these data may be useful as explanatory variables. Finally, the empirical work suggests that subjective variables are useful in practice for explaining differences in behavior across individuals. Changes in answers to these questions, however, do not appear useful in explaining changes in behavior.

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Do People Mean What They Say? Implications for Subjective Survey Data

Bailing out expectations and public health expenditure

In this paper we attempt to identify behavioral differences between public and private not-for-profit hospitals, by exploiting the introduction of the DRG-based payment system in the Italian NHS during the second half of the 1990s. We estimate the technical efficiency of a sample of hospitals for the period 1995-2000 considering an output distance function, and adopting both parametric (COLS and SF) and nonparametric (DEA) approaches. Our results show a convergence of mean efficiency scores between not-for-profit and public hospitals, and seem to suggest that differences in economic performances between competing ownership forms are more the result of the institutional settings in which they operate than the effect of the incentive structures embedded in the different proprietary forms. We also observe a decline in technical efficiency, probably due to policies aimed at reducing hospitalization rates.

/pdf/behavioral-differences-between-public-and-private-not-for-rnbn4f2tdg.pdf

Behavioral differences between public and private not‐for‐profit hospitals in the Italian national health service

All over the world, recent legislative reforms share the goal of increasing fiscal autonomy of lower tiers of governments. The aim of this policy is to reduce vertical fiscal imbalance (VFI) and enhance the efficiency in the provision of public services, via increased accountability of local politicians. The purpose of this paper is to assess whether inefficiency of local governments is really affected by the degree of VFI, relying on a sample of Italian municipalities to study the determinants of spending performance. Consistently with modern fiscal federalism theories, our results show that more fiscally autonomous municipalities exhibit less inefficient behavior, thus supporting the waves of reforms towards the devolution of taxing power to lower government tiers.

/pdf/decentralization-and-local-governments-performance-how-does-2an43of4cq.pdf

Decentralization and local governments' performance: How does fiscal autonomy affect spending efficiency?

In this paper we study the determinants of volunteering. We depart from previous literature that considers only economic incentives and investigate the role that extrinsic and intrinsic motivations play in shaping the supply of voluntary labour. We build on previous theoretical research and derive a framework for interpreting results from our econometric analysis. We consider a sample of Italian workers of which we can observe proxies of motivations and volunteering choices in three different sectors: social services, political activism and union activism. We make due allowance for the endogeneity of motivations and show that both types of motivations have an effect on volunteering. Consistently with theoretical models, we find extrinsic motivations to lower voluntary labour supply, whereas the opposite holds for intrinsic motivations.

Volunteer Labour Supply: The Role of Workers Motivations

The objective of the paper is to study the disciplining role of both market forces and regional governments own resources in the provision of educational services. The historical evolution of school regulation in Italy and Spain (in particular regarding the funding of private schools run by Roman Catholic Church, and the role of regional governments financing education) created different institutions in terms of both dimensions, private funds and regional governments funds. We take advantage of these institutional diversities to estimate the disciplining role of different sources of funds in the context of educational production function using PISA data. Our results provide support to these accountability drivers. Moreover, we find evidence on the role played by a national standardised test in providing adequate incentives to improve schools' performance.

/pdf/fiscal-decentralisation-private-school-funding-and-students-1jev0oyccs.pdf

Gilberto Turati

Papers

Bailing out expectations and public health expenditure

Behavioral differences between public and private not‐for‐profit hospitals in the Italian national health service

Decentralization and local governments' performance: How does fiscal autonomy affect spending efficiency?

Volunteer Labour Supply: The Role of Workers Motivations

Fiscal Decentralisation, Private School Funding, and Students Achievements. A Tale From Two Roman Catholic Countries