Purpose: Our main purpose is to test the unemployment invariance hypothesis in Italy. Design/methodology/approach: This paper provides an empirical investigation of the unemployment and labor force participation in Italy. Findings: Cointegration analysis results strongly suggest a clear...

This experimental study investigates insurance decisions in low-probability, high-loss risk situations. Results indicate that subjects consider the probability of loss (loss size) when they make buying decisions (paying decisions). Most individuals are risk averse with no specific threshold...

This paper purports to provide some evidence on the effect of rating agencies in financial markets. By means of a laboratory experiment, we investigate the effect and interaction between private and public information. We reached two conclusions: (1) indeed, the rating agency can speed up price...

In this paper we analyze the role played by the tie-breaking assumptions in Banerjee’s model of herd behavior. Changing one assumption we obtain three important results: players’ strategies are parameter dependent; an incorrect herd could be reversed; a correct herd is irreversible.

Seminal models of herd behaviour and informational cascades point out existence of negative information externalities, and propose to ?destroy? information in order to achieve social improvements. Although in the last years many features of herd behaviour and informational cascades have been...