In this paper, we study the so-called “wrong skewness” anomaly in Stochastic Frontiers (SF), which consists in the observed difference between the expected and estimated sign of the asymmetry of the composite error. We propose a more general and flexible specification of the SF model,...

In this paper we study the bivariate Rodriguez-Burr III distribution from a reliability point of view. In particular, we derive various functions used in reliability theory of conditional distributions, viz hazard rate, reversed hazard rate, mean residual life and mean reversed residual life...

In this note, we provide the mathematical tools for computing the entries of the Fisher information matrix in case of the observations are doubly censored from a Dagum distribution.

In this note, we provide the mathematical details of the calculation of the Fisher information matrix when the data involve type I right censored observations from a Dagum distribution.

Rank correlation is a fundamental tool to express dependence in cases in which the data are arranged in order. There are, by contrast, circumstances where the ordinal association is of a nonlinear type. In this paper we investigate the effectiveness of several measures of rank correlation. These...

In this paper we analyse the effect of gender quotas on women involvement in political activity using a rich data set providing information on all Italian local administrators elected from 1985 to 2007. Gender quotas were introduced in Italy by law in 1993 and were in force until 1995. Because...

This paper describes some policy instruments set up by the IMF and the European Union in order to provide financial assistance to developing countries whose economies are affected by exogenous shocks from exports side. After briefly reviewing the IMF’s CFF and the EU’s STABEX, the paper...

The aim of this paper is to discuss the state-of-the art and the directions for research on the make-orbuy problem. After thirty years of research efforts, we now have numerous contributions explaining different aspects of the nature and existence of the firm. The search for a unified theory,...

We investigate whether Italian regions have converged in terms of output per worker because of physical capital accumulation, human capital accumulation or thanks to technological catch-up. In order to identify channels of convergence we adopt the methodology recently proposed by Wong (2007) and...