Medical device expenditures are an important driver of the growth in health care spending and hospitals pay significantly different prices for the same medical device. This paper uses hospitals’ acquisition data to explore the determinants of price discrimination in the acquisition of medical...

We analyse empirically the effects of urbanization on Italian college graduates’ work possibilities as entrepreneurs three years after graduation. We find that doubling the province of work’s population density reduces the chances of being an entrepreneur by 2-3 percentage points. This...

The adoption of a Taylor-type monetary policy rule and an inflation target for emerging market economies that choose a flexible exchange rate regime is often advocated. This paper investigates the issue of exchange rate determination when interest-rate feedback rules are implemented in a...

The narratives characterizing the current debate on world agricultural research tend to be part of a discourse that rationalizes past experience and future tendencies along the lines of extreme recounts of successes and failures. Stories of agricultural development and of accomplishments of...

This paper examines the relationship between economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions in Italy considering the developments in a 150-year time span. Using several statistical techniques, we find that GDP growth and carbon dioxide emissions are strongly interrelated, with a dramatic change of...

Extracting and forecasting the volatility of financial markets is an important empirical problem. Time series of realized volatility or other volatility proxies, such as squared returns, display long range dependence. Exponential smoothing (ES) is a very popular and successful forecasting and...

Background: Several clinical studies have shown that a low protein diet in patients with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), delays the natural progression of the end stage renal disease (ESRD) and the necessary treatment of chronic dialysis. The aim of this study is to estimate the cost-effectiveness...

We propose a model in which money performs an essential role in the process of exchange, despite the presence of a multilateral clearing house. Agents are assumed to be anonymous and unable to make binding commitments. The clearing house can detect deviations but it cannot identify the...

Given a scalar random variable Y and a random vector X defined on the same probability space, the conditional distribution of Y given X can be represented by either the conditional distribution function or the conditional quantile function. To these equivalent representations correspond two...

This paper presents annual estimates of total and per-capita GDP at 1910 prices for the regions of Imperial Austria from the origin of the Dual Monarchy (1867) to the eve of WWI (1913). The time paths of regional GDP are estimated from the yield of the tax on the transfer of real and financial...