DISES

Empirical evidence on the productive efficiency of non-profit organisations is at present scarce and not conclusive. In the present work, we analyse this issue by relying on a new data-set about Italian for-profit and non-profit organisations engaged in the provision of communal services. While most of the existing evidence relates to health-care organisations only, our data-set also surveys organisations involved in other communal services. The results indicate that the efficiency of non-profit organisations does not significantly differ ...

Objective of this paper is to analyse the presence of gender differences in the purchase motivations of Fair Trade (FT) food products sold in the Italian World Shops (WS). At the end of investigating FT purchase motivations, a questionnaire has been distributed to a sample of consumers in four Italian regions. A bivariate ordered probit analysis has been performed in order to identify the determinants of the two main ethical purchase motivations: worker guarantees and solidarity. The variables used as determinants are individual and ...

Objective of the paper is to verify which are the determinants of the innovation process in the Italian food industry and whether they are different according to firm property rights. The data used are the 9 th (2001)(2002)(2003) wave of Capitalia surveys based on a representative sample of manufacturing firms with information on firm characteristics, employee education levels, innovation, R&D investments. The approach is a bivariate probit analysis where the dependent variables are the presence of firm R&D and of innovations and the independent variables are firm characteristics. The results of the analysis show that the determinants of firm R&D intra moenia and of firm innovations in the food industry have been the subsidies for R&D extra moenia, which have the highest marginal effect, and the level of employee education.

Consumers in developed countries are increasingly interested in the consumption of products incorporating ethical aspects, particularly fair trade products. They are usually distributed in a network of World Shops and more recently also introduced in supermarkets and shopping centres. The fair trade product with the highest share on the total is coffee. This study aims to ascertain the implicit price paid by Italian consumers for the fair trade content of coffee. The sample utilised is based on the purchase data of a representative sample of supermarket and shopping centre consumers observed from 1998 to 2002. Since scanner data are used, the analysis can allow for the numerous coffee attributes described by the labels: branded, organic, decaffeinated, fair trade, soluble, and so on. The empirical approach followed is the calculation of hedonic prices for the fair trade content and other attributes of coffee.

Objective of this paper is to analyse the motivations in the purchase of Fair Trade (FT) food products sold in the World Shops (WS) in order to characterize WS consumer profiles according to the ethical content of their motivations. A questionnaire has been distributed, at this end, to a sample of consumers in Emilia Romagna, Puglia and in Campania. A principal component analysis has been performed in order to identify the main motivations in the purchase. On the basis of these results, consumers have been classified, by applying a cluster analysis, in homogenous segments. The cluster analysis reveals that 76% of consumers in Emilia Romagna buy FT products for an ethical motivation, 56% of consumers in Puglia and 43% of consumers in Campania buy these products for an ethical motivation. These percentages reflect the rank of social capital, intended as the civicness component a la Putnam, of the regions analysed. These results show a clear relationship between the civicness component...

In this paper, we test the extent to which producers' cooperatives can experience an increase in technical efficiency following a tightening of financial constraints. This hypothesis is tested on a sample of Italian conventional and cooperative firms for the wine production and processing sector, using frontier analysis. The results support the hypothesis that increasing financial pressure can affect positively the cooperatives efficiency. * We want to thank Toke Aidt, Sergio Destefanis, Pasquale Lombardi, Mario Padula and Virginie Perotin for very valuable comments on previous versions of the work. We want also to thank the CSEF, University of Salerno, Italy for kindly providing the data. The usual disclaimer applies.

The shadow cost model can be estimated by adopting two different normalizations of the input price distortions. However, the normalization suggested by Balk [Econ. Lett. 55 (1997) 45] produces estimates not invariant to the choice of the shadow input price chosen as numeraire in order to obtain linear homogeneity of the cost function. 

Consumers in developed countries are increasingly interested in the consumption of products incorporating ethical aspects, particularly fair trade products. They are usually distributed in a network of World Shops and more recently also introduced in ...

Consumers in developed countries are increasingly interested in the consumption of food products incorporating ethical aspects, particularly fair trade products. These products are usually distributed in a network of World Shops and, more recently, in supermarkets and shopping centres. The fair trade product with the highest market share is coffee. This study aims to ascertain the implicit price paid by Italian consumers for the fair trade content of coffee and how this implicit price is influenced by the level of social capital of the territory where consumers live. The data utilised are scanner data, based on the purchase at supermarkets and shopping centres observed from 2005 to 2007, referred to a territorial unit that is the province. Since scanner data are used, the analysis can allow for the coffee attributes described by the labels: branded, organic, decaffeinated, fair trade, espresso, and so on. The approach followed is the application of an hedonic regression where the dependant variable is the coffee price while the regressors are coffee characteristics (fair trade content and coffee other attributes) and several indicators of provincial social capital, alternatively included.

Esemplare fuori commercio per il deposito legale agli effetti della legge 15 aprile 2004 n. 106" Quaderno riprodotto dal Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche, Matematiche e Statistiche nel mese di settembre 2009 e depositato ai sensi di legge.

Objective of this paper is to analyze the motivations in the purchase of Fair Trade (FT) food products sold in the World Shops (WS) in order to characterize WS consumer profiles according to the ethical content of their motivations. At this end, a questionnaire has been distributed to a sample of consumers in Emilia Romagna and in Campania. A principal component analysis has been performed in order to identify the main motivations in the purchase. On the basis of these results, consumers have been classified, by applying a cluster analysis, in homogenous segments. The cluster analysis reveals that 76% of consumers in Emilia Romagna buy FT products for an ethical motivation, while only the 43% of consumers in Campania buy these products for the same ethical motivation.

This paper tries to identify under which conditions increasing market competition may help cooperatives to improve technical efficiency to guarantee positive profits. This hypothesis is first formalized in a partial equilibrium framework and then is tested on a sample of Italian conventional and cooperative firms, using frontier analysis. Technical efficiency indexes are computed by using the one-stage approach as suggested by , where proxies for competition are introduced as determinants of efficiency, along with other exogenous factors accounting for the firms' heterogeneity. However, the overall impact of increasing competition on efficiency is negative.

This paper analyses the mechanisms through which increasing market competition may help cooperatives to improve technical efficiency to guarantee positive profits. This hypothesis is first formalised in a partial equilibrium framework and then is tested on a sample of European investor owned and cooperative firms, belonging to the dairy industry, using frontier analysis. Technical efficiency indexes are computed by using

This paper focuses on an important issue currently debated in literature: the role of public research institutions in helping to promote the processes of technological and economic catch up, development and growth. Objective of the paper is to verify whether and how Universities and other public research institutions influence the innovation process in the Italian agro-food sector. The data used