Simone Bertoli

Dottorando - XIX Ciclo

e-mail: simone.bertoli@unifi.it

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Interessi di ricerca

Economic impact of remittances on recipient countries; Inequality and Development; Developing Countries Macroeconomics; International Environmental Issues; Game Theory

Paper

I paper sono stati compilati, presentati ed accettati nel programma di dottorato, ma non sono stati sottoposti ad una procedura formale di referaggio

2004, Evidenza Empirica e una Possibile Interpretazione Teorica dell’Evoluzione Recente della Distribuzione Funzionale dei Redditi

The literature on endogenous growth theory has renewed the interest towards the functional distribution of income, a theme that had been central in the analysis of classical authors but was rather neglected since the marginalist revolution. There has been a long-standing view, first expressed in the so called Bowley’s Law, that the functional distribution of income does not evolve along the growth process. In endogenous growth models, the functional distribution of income both influences and it is affected by the growth process; however, there are no economic factors leading to a shift in the functional distribution. The distribution of income among the factors of production remains constant unless the government does not intervene with taxation policies to alter factors’ rewards, either to pursue an optimal growth policy or to meet redistribution demands. The use of Cobb-Douglas production function does not allow to render the functional distribution of income sensitive to factor intensity in production, while a CES function can be a more flexible analytical tool that allows to capture shift in the distribution due to economic reasons. Indeed, an analysis of UN data on functional distribution of income from both developing and developed countries over the 1960-95 period suggest that there is a trend that is shared by most countries: the labour share reverses an upward trend in the early 80s, and begins a decline, that is often sharp. The structural breaks appear to coincide with the change in the monetary policy in the US: in 1982, a year after the sharp increase in interest rate decided the the Fed, labour share declines in 35 out of 38 sample countries. In later years, the evolution of US real interest rate and that of the labour share in our sample are closely linked, whit the latter declining in the majority of countries when the former increases. Rigidities in the production process, captured in a CES function, can possibly explain the link between monetary policies and the functional distribution of income.

2005, The Macroeconomic Impact of Workers’ Remittances: a Study of the Ecuadorian Case

An increasing emphasis is currently placed upon the role that workers’ remittances can play in fostering economic development of recipient countries. However, theoretical and empirical research have not yet produced a broad consensus about the economic impact of remittances. Country studies may provide more convincing evidence, as they allow to overcome the data shortcomings that currently hinder broad econometric analysis and to pay attention to the economic and institutional factors that are likely to shape the economic effects of remittances. This paper analyzes the case of Ecuador, where a severe economic crisis in the late 90s gave rise to a strong migration wave. Workers’ remittances buffered receiving households from the worst effects of the crisis, but there is little evidence that the demand stimulus they provide is triggering private investments. The increase in liquidity and bank deposits that has been brought about by remittances has not given rise to a corresponding increase in domestic credit, as banks have increased the share of liquid assets since dollarization. Thus, economic growth is skewed towards those sectors that can access international credit. It is the high oil price recorded in recent years, rather than remittances, that is playing a leading role in the recovery of the Ecuadorian economy.

2006, The Circumstantial Contingency of Desires and Participatory Definitions of Well-Being in the Capability Space

The lack of a pre-specified well-being definition in the capability space constitutes a notable and intentional lacuna in Sen's version of the Capability Approach. This paper revises the reasons behind Sen's reluctance to endorse a specific list of relevant capabilities and the methodological criteria that different authors have proposed for any attempt to fill this gap and allow for a deeper operationalization of the approach. Following these criteria - and some indications provided by Sen himself - we point to a possible tension between a participatory definition of well-being and the critical attitude towards people's preferences that represents one of the constitutive features of the approach. The concept that drives the analysis is that of adaptive preference formation, that builds on the intuition that individuals tend to downgrade their desires to their actual achievement opportunities. Finally, we provide a preliminary empirical analysis of the relevance of the nexus between past well-being achievements and the current expression of value judgments on the corresponding dimension of well-being from a dataset collected during the Second Children World Congress on Child Labour and Education.