In Switzerland, nursing home services are mainly provided by regulated public and private nonprofit organizations. Some of them are created by local governments as foundations. This provides a unique setting to analyze the impact of the institutional form on the performance of nursing homes. We propose a model where the institutional form is represented as a legal constraint which affects...
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In: Empirical economics, 2012, vol. 42, no. 2, p. 471-486
Because of bacterial resistance, current antibiotic consumption is reinforced by past use, and future utility is lower. The purpose of this article is to provide evidence on habit and addictive behavior toward antibiotics by exploring variations in the average consumption of antibiotics across 20 Italian regions. Using a balanced panel data set (2000–2009), we estimate myopic and rational...
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In: Journal of transport economics and policy, 2012, vol. 46, no. 1, p. 51-66
Efficiency measurement in public transport requires an adequate account of unobserved network characteristics that are typically modelled as factors separable from the production process. This paper proposes a panel data model that allows for non-separable firm-specific heterogeneity in an input distance function. The proposed model is applied to a sample of German and Swiss urban transit...
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In: Applied economics, 2013, vol. 45, no. 8, p. 1041-1054
Literature on socioeconomic determinants of antibiotic consumption in the community is limited to few countries using cross-sectional data. This article analyses regional variations in outpatient antibiotics in Italy using a balanced panel dataset covering the period 2000 to 2008. We specify an econometric model in which antibiotic consumption depends upon demographic and socioeconomic...
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In: Energy economics, 2011, vol. 33, no. 5, p. 889-895
In this paper we present an empirical analysis of the residential demand for electricity using annual aggregate data at the state level for 48 US states from 1995 to 2007. Earlier literature has examined residential energy consumption at the state level using annual or monthly data, focusing on the variation in price elasticities of demand across states or regions, but has failed to recognize...
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In: Energy policy, 2011, vol. 39, no. 10, p. 5811-5817
This paper presents an empirical analysis on the residential demand for electricity by time-of-day. This analysis has been performed using aggregate data at the city level for 22 Swiss cities for the period 2000 to 2006. For this purpose, we estimated two log- log demand equations for peak and off-peak electricity consumption using a static and a dynamic partial adjustment approach. These...
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In: Applied economics, 2012, vol. 44, no. 3, p. 387-397
Traffic noise, air pollution and electromagnetic pollution (i.e. non-ionizing radiation, also called electrosmog) are typical negative local externalities in urban areas. They are side-effects of human and economic activity (e.g. road transport, telecommunication) and they affect individuals’ well-being negatively without compensation. In recent years, the increased number of mobile phone...
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Fiscal decentralization is high on the agenda in policy fora. This paper empirically investigates the underlying causes of fiscal decentralization, based on the predictions of a simple political economy model. We argue that the likeliness that a central government engages in devolution of powers depends in important ways on the political forces that it faces, the theory's main insight...
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Literature on socioeconomic determinants of antibiotic consumption in the community is limited to few countries using cross-sectional data. This paper analyses regional variations in outpatient antibiotics in Italy using a balanced panel dataset covering the period 2000-2008. We specify an econometric model where antibiotic consumption depends upon demographic and socioeconomic characteristics...
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In: Rivista italiana di ragioneria e di economia aziendale, 2008, vol. CVIII, no. 9-10, p. 631-637
In the United States, governmental organisations are among the unintended victims of the subprime crisis. In fact, the downturn in the real estate market and the crisis in the financial market create difficulties on the side of fiscal resources, as well as on the side of the public expenditure. This paper intends to verify whether French municipalities can have similar problems in the future.
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