In the second half of 1950 the Italian Central Institute of Statistics published a special volume... more In the second half of 1950 the Italian Central Institute of Statistics published a special volume containing the results of an exhaustive investigation into the structure and recent trends of Italy’s national income. The present article describes and comments on the recapitulative data, pointing out the essential features of Italy’s national product and national income. The author calls attention to the war disturbances, the post-war recovery movement, the changes that have occurred since 1938 in the percentage weight of the several component items (private activities, public sector, indirect taxes, incomes from abroad and donations), and especially to the industrial and agricultural income. The statistical analysis is preceded by explanatory remarks as to clear up certain problems of method and definition.
While the Journal gives preference to empirical studies concerning the economic, sociological, in... more While the Journal gives preference to empirical studies concerning the economic, sociological, industrial and managerial issues related to the Maltese Islands, articles on theoretical aspects in the disciplines referred, and having a direct application to the Maltese Islands, will also be considered for publication.
Income inequality has had a minor role in the European integration process' institutional framewo... more Income inequality has had a minor role in the European integration process' institutional framework. This is unfitting given that reducing disparities has been one of the most explicit goals of EU, which has consequently devoted an increasing share of its budget to regional policy. This issue has potentially relevant policy implications because if the European integration has a role in increasing inequalities within member countries it is harmful for social cohesion. This paper intends to assess inequality determinants in EMU countries and whether the European integration process has been itself among them. It performs an empirical investigation on a panel of 12 EMU member States in the period 1980-2015. The contribution of this paper to the literature is twofold: first, it focuses on the effects of European integration on inequality in EMU countries over the last 25 years, on which the evidence is still scarce. Second, it tries to disentangle the European integration impact on inequality in core and periphery EMU countries. The empirical evidence suggests that the effects of the European integration process, captured by trade and financial openness indicators, on income inequality was heterogeneous across country groups. Once disentangling the country sample in core and periphery groups, as identified by the relevant literature, estimate results seem to support the hypothesis of a core periphery dualism also for what concerns income inequality trends within the EMU.
Income inequality has a minor role in the European integration process' institutional framework. ... more Income inequality has a minor role in the European integration process' institutional framework. This is particularly unfitting given that reducing disparities has been one of the most explicit and resolute goals of the EU, which has consequently devoted an increasing share of its budget to regional policy. This issue has potentially relevant policy implications because if EMU does not converge endogenously and increases inequalities more efforts to reform European governance and more strict policy coordination among members are needed to limit the risk of a break-up. In fact, recent events proved that inequality concerns in combination with other factors can boost protest vote. This paper intends to assess inequality determinants in EMU countries and whether the European economic integration within the broader globalization process has been itself among them. We run an empirical analysis on a panel of 17 EU members in the period 1980 and 2015. Our contribution to the existing literature in twofold: i) it focused on the effects of globalization on inequality in EMU 15 over the last 25 years, ii) it tries to identify the separate effects of globalization on core and periphery and new entrants EMU members shedding some light on the mechanisms behind the so called "core periphery dualism".
The working paper series promotes the dissemination of economic research produced in the Departme... more The working paper series promotes the dissemination of economic research produced in the Department of the Treasury (DT) of the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) or presented by external economists on the occasion of seminars organized by MEF on topics of institutional interest to the DT, with the aim of stimulating comments and suggestions. The views expressed in the working papers are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the MEF and the DT.
Functional distribution is an important driver of inequality. When market remuneration of labour ... more Functional distribution is an important driver of inequality. When market remuneration of labour and capital are very uneven, as they have been in recent decades, personal distribution tends to polarise, jeopardising social cohesion. This fact explains a renewed interest in functional distribution. Nevertheless, in the estimates on functional distribution the role of self-employed income has been undervalued. National accounts provide estimates of the compensation of employees and the operating surplus, but do not refer to self-employed workers as a specific productive factor and implicitly include their income in the ‘mixed income’ and in some minor items. Most analysts estimate self-employed income by attributing the same average unit compensation of the corresponding employees to each worker, that in fact is not necessarily consistent with the GDP estimates.Other estimates take a fixed share of the ‘mixed income’, usually the same for every country. When national accounts are very detailed, as in the case of Italy, it is possible to estimate self-employment income from non-financial accounts by sectors with some accuracy, under some weak assumptions. In this paper we analyse four workable estimates, since only the total amount of ‘mixed income’ received by households is available for most countries. We analyse the data of the OECD countries focusing mainly on eight large countries: the US, Japan, the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. The results are somehow unexpected. First of all, evaluating the income of the self employed properly, the overall labour share is declining much faster than reported by the official data in some countries, and more countries showed a decrease in the 2000s. Indeed, the real unit compensation of the self employed reduced significantly in most of the eight countries (and in some of the others) after the mid or the end of the nineties, since self-employment has been used extensively to reduce the overall labour cost. Unit labour cost (ULC) also increased much slower (or even declined more) after 2000 in most countries, shedding new light on the pattern of international competitiveness and the drivers of inflation. The share of operative surplus of non-financial and financial corporations, properly recalculated, has had different dynamics, whereas the component related to imputed rentals of owner occupied houses played an unexpectedly important role. Finally, the mark-up on variable production costs has been higher than expected and its dynamic has been faster in most countries, showing a minor sensitivity to the business cycle. Indeed, statistical data on self-employment income is not fully satisfactory in many countries, thus our estimation of self-employment income represents only a first step towards a deeper comprehension of the dynamic of primary distribution. Indirect evidence of the reliability of our estimates is in their capacity to explain some key variables more accurately, strictly related to labour share, mark-up and ULC, which are income inequality, inflation and export performance.
... Le opinioni espresse nei Documenti di Lavoro riflettono esclusivamente il pensiero degli au... more ... Le opinioni espresse nei Documenti di Lavoro riflettono esclusivamente il pensiero degli autorie non ... that Y lays just in the middle point, say di, of the two bounds of the inequality. ... of data both in standard likelihood and in Bayesian inference, unless bracketing itself induces a ...
A special qualitative questionnaire attached to the Business Surveys carried on in February 2016 ... more A special qualitative questionnaire attached to the Business Surveys carried on in February 2016 by Istat sheds some light on the labour demand after the Great Recession, also related to the output perspectives, the utilized productive capacity and the specific conditions and strategies of the firms. An ordered logit model is used to analyse the characteristics of the firms with different levels of employment response to a 10% permanent output increase. The first result is that the employment elasticity to output lies only between 0.10 and 0.25, with little differences by sector and firm’s size. It could be a sign that labour intensity of output is low and possibly reducing (and that productivity is increasing as well), or that jobs are created mainly by newborn firms (necessarily underrepresented in the survey sample). The estimated models also support the relevance of thresholds in firm’s behavior. For instance, capacity utilization and firm’s size apparently raise employment only...
Functional distribution is an important driver of inequality. When market remuneration of labour ... more Functional distribution is an important driver of inequality. When market remuneration of labour and capital are very uneven, as they have been in recent decades, personal distribution tends to polarise, jeopardising social cohesion. This fact explains a renewed interest in functional distribution. Nevertheless, in the estimates on functional distribution the role of self-employed income has been undervalued. National accounts provide estimates of the compensation of employees and the operating surplus, but do not refer to self-employed workers as a specific productive factor and implicitly include their income in the ‘mixed income’ and in some minor items. Most analysts estimate self-employed income by attributing the same average unit compensation of the corresponding employees to each worker, that in fact is not necessarily consistent with the GDP estimates.Other estimates take a fixed share of the ‘mixed income’, usually the same for every country. When national accounts are ver...
Advanced Studies in Theoretical and Applied Econometrics, 1990
In Italy, as in other countries, inflation and nominal interest rates showed a strong positive co... more In Italy, as in other countries, inflation and nominal interest rates showed a strong positive correlation in the short run during the seventies. Depending on the share of inflation transferred on rates, this empirical evidence has often been regarded as consistent with a causal relation running from inflation to rates, according to the hypothesis that the real rate is substantially constant over time1.
Economic agents are aware of incurring a loss in basing their decisions on their own extrapolatio... more Economic agents are aware of incurring a loss in basing their decisions on their own extrapolations instead of on sound statistical data, but this loss may be smaller than the one related to waiting for the dissemination of the final data. Broad guidelines on deciding when statistical offices should release preliminary and final estimates of the key statistics may come from comparing the loss attached to users’ predictions with the loss associated to possible preliminary estimates from incomplete samples. Furthermore, the cost of delaying decisions may support the dissemination of very early estimates of economic indicators, even if their accuracy is not fully satisfactory from a strict statistical viewpoint. Analysing the vintages of releases of quarterly Euro area GDP supports the view that even very inefficient predictions may beat some official preliminary releases of GDP, suggesting that the current calendar of data dissemination requires some adjustment. In particular, actual ...
... market, possibly related also to demographic unbalances, and tends to widen inequality. The a... more ... market, possibly related also to demographic unbalances, and tends to widen inequality. The aim of ... the fund F0 should be less than the investment in the fund itself. ... pension funds which can be granted on the long run is necessarily lower or equal to the real growth ...
Abstract Firms change their size through a row of discrete leaps. A basic model allowing for disc... more Abstract Firms change their size through a row of discrete leaps. A basic model allowing for discontinuous growth can be based on several assumptions that entail testable consequences: profitability is not a continuous function of the firms’ size, but exhibits peaks, each corresponding to a locally optimal size. The model has been tested by using a panel of Italian manufacturing firms. Both the non-parametric analysis and a panel estimation confirm the presence of ‘peaks’ in the distribution of profitability by size.
In the second half of 1950 the Italian Central Institute of Statistics published a special volume... more In the second half of 1950 the Italian Central Institute of Statistics published a special volume containing the results of an exhaustive investigation into the structure and recent trends of Italy’s national income. The present article describes and comments on the recapitulative data, pointing out the essential features of Italy’s national product and national income. The author calls attention to the war disturbances, the post-war recovery movement, the changes that have occurred since 1938 in the percentage weight of the several component items (private activities, public sector, indirect taxes, incomes from abroad and donations), and especially to the industrial and agricultural income. The statistical analysis is preceded by explanatory remarks as to clear up certain problems of method and definition.
While the Journal gives preference to empirical studies concerning the economic, sociological, in... more While the Journal gives preference to empirical studies concerning the economic, sociological, industrial and managerial issues related to the Maltese Islands, articles on theoretical aspects in the disciplines referred, and having a direct application to the Maltese Islands, will also be considered for publication.
Income inequality has had a minor role in the European integration process' institutional framewo... more Income inequality has had a minor role in the European integration process' institutional framework. This is unfitting given that reducing disparities has been one of the most explicit goals of EU, which has consequently devoted an increasing share of its budget to regional policy. This issue has potentially relevant policy implications because if the European integration has a role in increasing inequalities within member countries it is harmful for social cohesion. This paper intends to assess inequality determinants in EMU countries and whether the European integration process has been itself among them. It performs an empirical investigation on a panel of 12 EMU member States in the period 1980-2015. The contribution of this paper to the literature is twofold: first, it focuses on the effects of European integration on inequality in EMU countries over the last 25 years, on which the evidence is still scarce. Second, it tries to disentangle the European integration impact on inequality in core and periphery EMU countries. The empirical evidence suggests that the effects of the European integration process, captured by trade and financial openness indicators, on income inequality was heterogeneous across country groups. Once disentangling the country sample in core and periphery groups, as identified by the relevant literature, estimate results seem to support the hypothesis of a core periphery dualism also for what concerns income inequality trends within the EMU.
Income inequality has a minor role in the European integration process' institutional framework. ... more Income inequality has a minor role in the European integration process' institutional framework. This is particularly unfitting given that reducing disparities has been one of the most explicit and resolute goals of the EU, which has consequently devoted an increasing share of its budget to regional policy. This issue has potentially relevant policy implications because if EMU does not converge endogenously and increases inequalities more efforts to reform European governance and more strict policy coordination among members are needed to limit the risk of a break-up. In fact, recent events proved that inequality concerns in combination with other factors can boost protest vote. This paper intends to assess inequality determinants in EMU countries and whether the European economic integration within the broader globalization process has been itself among them. We run an empirical analysis on a panel of 17 EU members in the period 1980 and 2015. Our contribution to the existing literature in twofold: i) it focused on the effects of globalization on inequality in EMU 15 over the last 25 years, ii) it tries to identify the separate effects of globalization on core and periphery and new entrants EMU members shedding some light on the mechanisms behind the so called "core periphery dualism".
The working paper series promotes the dissemination of economic research produced in the Departme... more The working paper series promotes the dissemination of economic research produced in the Department of the Treasury (DT) of the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) or presented by external economists on the occasion of seminars organized by MEF on topics of institutional interest to the DT, with the aim of stimulating comments and suggestions. The views expressed in the working papers are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the MEF and the DT.
Functional distribution is an important driver of inequality. When market remuneration of labour ... more Functional distribution is an important driver of inequality. When market remuneration of labour and capital are very uneven, as they have been in recent decades, personal distribution tends to polarise, jeopardising social cohesion. This fact explains a renewed interest in functional distribution. Nevertheless, in the estimates on functional distribution the role of self-employed income has been undervalued. National accounts provide estimates of the compensation of employees and the operating surplus, but do not refer to self-employed workers as a specific productive factor and implicitly include their income in the ‘mixed income’ and in some minor items. Most analysts estimate self-employed income by attributing the same average unit compensation of the corresponding employees to each worker, that in fact is not necessarily consistent with the GDP estimates.Other estimates take a fixed share of the ‘mixed income’, usually the same for every country. When national accounts are very detailed, as in the case of Italy, it is possible to estimate self-employment income from non-financial accounts by sectors with some accuracy, under some weak assumptions. In this paper we analyse four workable estimates, since only the total amount of ‘mixed income’ received by households is available for most countries. We analyse the data of the OECD countries focusing mainly on eight large countries: the US, Japan, the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. The results are somehow unexpected. First of all, evaluating the income of the self employed properly, the overall labour share is declining much faster than reported by the official data in some countries, and more countries showed a decrease in the 2000s. Indeed, the real unit compensation of the self employed reduced significantly in most of the eight countries (and in some of the others) after the mid or the end of the nineties, since self-employment has been used extensively to reduce the overall labour cost. Unit labour cost (ULC) also increased much slower (or even declined more) after 2000 in most countries, shedding new light on the pattern of international competitiveness and the drivers of inflation. The share of operative surplus of non-financial and financial corporations, properly recalculated, has had different dynamics, whereas the component related to imputed rentals of owner occupied houses played an unexpectedly important role. Finally, the mark-up on variable production costs has been higher than expected and its dynamic has been faster in most countries, showing a minor sensitivity to the business cycle. Indeed, statistical data on self-employment income is not fully satisfactory in many countries, thus our estimation of self-employment income represents only a first step towards a deeper comprehension of the dynamic of primary distribution. Indirect evidence of the reliability of our estimates is in their capacity to explain some key variables more accurately, strictly related to labour share, mark-up and ULC, which are income inequality, inflation and export performance.
... Le opinioni espresse nei Documenti di Lavoro riflettono esclusivamente il pensiero degli au... more ... Le opinioni espresse nei Documenti di Lavoro riflettono esclusivamente il pensiero degli autorie non ... that Y lays just in the middle point, say di, of the two bounds of the inequality. ... of data both in standard likelihood and in Bayesian inference, unless bracketing itself induces a ...
A special qualitative questionnaire attached to the Business Surveys carried on in February 2016 ... more A special qualitative questionnaire attached to the Business Surveys carried on in February 2016 by Istat sheds some light on the labour demand after the Great Recession, also related to the output perspectives, the utilized productive capacity and the specific conditions and strategies of the firms. An ordered logit model is used to analyse the characteristics of the firms with different levels of employment response to a 10% permanent output increase. The first result is that the employment elasticity to output lies only between 0.10 and 0.25, with little differences by sector and firm’s size. It could be a sign that labour intensity of output is low and possibly reducing (and that productivity is increasing as well), or that jobs are created mainly by newborn firms (necessarily underrepresented in the survey sample). The estimated models also support the relevance of thresholds in firm’s behavior. For instance, capacity utilization and firm’s size apparently raise employment only...
Functional distribution is an important driver of inequality. When market remuneration of labour ... more Functional distribution is an important driver of inequality. When market remuneration of labour and capital are very uneven, as they have been in recent decades, personal distribution tends to polarise, jeopardising social cohesion. This fact explains a renewed interest in functional distribution. Nevertheless, in the estimates on functional distribution the role of self-employed income has been undervalued. National accounts provide estimates of the compensation of employees and the operating surplus, but do not refer to self-employed workers as a specific productive factor and implicitly include their income in the ‘mixed income’ and in some minor items. Most analysts estimate self-employed income by attributing the same average unit compensation of the corresponding employees to each worker, that in fact is not necessarily consistent with the GDP estimates.Other estimates take a fixed share of the ‘mixed income’, usually the same for every country. When national accounts are ver...
Advanced Studies in Theoretical and Applied Econometrics, 1990
In Italy, as in other countries, inflation and nominal interest rates showed a strong positive co... more In Italy, as in other countries, inflation and nominal interest rates showed a strong positive correlation in the short run during the seventies. Depending on the share of inflation transferred on rates, this empirical evidence has often been regarded as consistent with a causal relation running from inflation to rates, according to the hypothesis that the real rate is substantially constant over time1.
Economic agents are aware of incurring a loss in basing their decisions on their own extrapolatio... more Economic agents are aware of incurring a loss in basing their decisions on their own extrapolations instead of on sound statistical data, but this loss may be smaller than the one related to waiting for the dissemination of the final data. Broad guidelines on deciding when statistical offices should release preliminary and final estimates of the key statistics may come from comparing the loss attached to users’ predictions with the loss associated to possible preliminary estimates from incomplete samples. Furthermore, the cost of delaying decisions may support the dissemination of very early estimates of economic indicators, even if their accuracy is not fully satisfactory from a strict statistical viewpoint. Analysing the vintages of releases of quarterly Euro area GDP supports the view that even very inefficient predictions may beat some official preliminary releases of GDP, suggesting that the current calendar of data dissemination requires some adjustment. In particular, actual ...
... market, possibly related also to demographic unbalances, and tends to widen inequality. The a... more ... market, possibly related also to demographic unbalances, and tends to widen inequality. The aim of ... the fund F0 should be less than the investment in the fund itself. ... pension funds which can be granted on the long run is necessarily lower or equal to the real growth ...
Abstract Firms change their size through a row of discrete leaps. A basic model allowing for disc... more Abstract Firms change their size through a row of discrete leaps. A basic model allowing for discontinuous growth can be based on several assumptions that entail testable consequences: profitability is not a continuous function of the firms’ size, but exhibits peaks, each corresponding to a locally optimal size. The model has been tested by using a panel of Italian manufacturing firms. Both the non-parametric analysis and a panel estimation confirm the presence of ‘peaks’ in the distribution of profitability by size.
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Papers by Enrico D'Elia