The paper investigates the costs of waste disposal and recycling services by using a well-behaved Composite cost function model. Our estimates on a unique sample of more than 500 Italian municipalities highlight that the refuse collection technology exhibits constant returns to scale as well as...

This paper investigates the determinants of board compensation for a sample of Italian State Owned Enterprises (SOEs). To that purpose, we use a newly collected panel data of 106 local public utilities observed form 1994 through 2004, which includes detailed information on the boards of...

This paper explores the link between accountability, corruption and efficiency in the context of a career concern model where politically con- nected local monopolies are in charge of the provision of a local public service. We fi?nd that both corruption and a low degree of accountabil- ity...

This paper deals with the problem of analyzing the behavior of an agent-based (AB) model.

We present JAS 2, a new Java platform which aims at providing a unique simulation tool for discrete-event simulations, including agent-based and dynamic microsimulation models. JAS 2 is not released as a self-contained stand-alone application for model development. With the aim to develop...

Agent-based (AB) models are considered a promising tool for macroeconomic analysis. However, until estimation of AB models become a common practice, they will not get to the center stage of macroeconomics. Two difficulties arise in the estimation of AB models: (i) the criterion function has no...

In this paper, using a sample of Italian passenger transport firms, we compare the estimates from a Composite Cost Function econometric model (Pulley and Braunstein, 1992) with the ones coming from other traditional functional forms such as the Standard Translog, the Generalized Translog, and...

Dynamic microsimulation modeling involves two stages: estimation and forecasting. Unobserved heterogeneity is often considered in estimation, but not in forecasting, beyond trivial cases. Non-trivial cases involve individuals that enter the simulation with a history of previous outcomes. We show...

We review the literature on agent-based labor market models by tracing its roots to the microsimulation literature, and surveying a selection of contributions made since the work by Bergmann (1974) and Eliasson (1976). Agent-based models have been applied to explain stylized facts of labor...