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To replicate and extend research on psychopathy and intrinsic interpersonal preferences under the broader umbrella of affiliation, intimacy and antagonism, this paper aims to examine motivational correlates of psychopathy in a nonclinical sample (N = 125).

We used a multimethod design, including self-reports, a behavioral task and a physiological assessment of motive dispositions (automatic affective reactions to stimuli of interpersonal transactions measured with facial electromyography).

Results showed that self-reported psychopathy was negatively associated with self-reported intimacy motive. In the same vein, via the social discounting task, this paper found a negative association between psychopathy and a tendency to share hypothetical monetary amounts with very close others. Finally, regarding fEMG findings, multilevel analyses revealed that although individuals with low levels of psychopathy reacted more positively to affiliative stimuli, individuals with high levels of psychopathy reacted equally positively to both affiliative and antagonistic stimuli, and these results were robust across psychopathy measures. Results remained mostly unchanged on the subscale level.

These findings highlight the contribution of multimethod assessments in capturing nuances of motivation. Implicit physiological measures might be particularly sensitive in capturing motive dispositions in relation to psychopathy. Identifying mechanisms that foster positive connections between psychopathic traits and nonprosocial tendencies may be theoretically and clinically informative, with implications for forensic and penal practices.

How many hours per week should workers in the USA and Germany spend at their paying jobs? The present paper aims to address this question by constructing policymakers' reaction functions capable of modelling the optimal length of working time as a function of the relevant labour market variables.

The study is based on a counterfactual policy experiment. Given a policymaker's loss function and a structural model of the labour market alternative specifications of reaction functions are defined where the response coefficients indicate how policymakers should react to any news in the labour market in order to stabilise employment and wages.

The results suggest that simple rules perform quite well and that the advantages obtained from adopting an optimal control‐based rule are not so great. Moreover, the analysis emphasises the success of the wage‐based rule and of the employment‐based rule in the USA and Germany, respectively.

The study is based on a counterfactual policy experiment, which perhaps limits its operational value.

Labour market authorities might stabilise employment and wages by implementing policy rules.

The paper proposes a policy rule to capture the dynamics of the weekly working hours. According to the rule in the paper the length of the workweek is an inverse function of the deviation between the actual and potential employment level.

This chapter provides a list and a brief description of files and documents where the name of Piero Sraffa is mentioned and are currently kept at the Archivio Centrale dello Stato and at the Archivio Storico Diplomatico. For each file or document we provide indication of the reference number where it is conserved and a transcription of one or two of the relevant documents out of more than 500 which have been located. The purpose of the chapter is to illustrate the results of archival research of the last decade, including more recent findings, and furnish a groundwork for further research, which may throw further light on documents already known to us, and lead to the discovery of new documents or information, so as to provide a better basis for the reconstruction of the biography of Piero Sraffa and of people whose lives entwined with his – Antonio Gramsci certainly ranking high among them.

The aim of this paper is to assess the effects of traditional inputs and firms' R&D capital on labour productivity growth.

The study measures the effects of the traditional inputs on firms' productivity growth, through four procedures: OLS in first differences, within group, GMM in first differences and GMM system.

Whatever the specification considered, the more efficient estimates obtained from the GMM system show a similar effect of the firm's R&D stock upon its labour productivity performance.

The results suggest that physical capital plays a more prominent role for European firms than for US ones, while employees are more productive in the USA.

By presenting some empirical evidence on the effects of R&D on labour productivity, at the firm level, the present study makes two main contributions to the existing literature. First, a unique firm‐level database for European and US firms is used. It is self evident that firms in these countries operate in different economic and institutional settings; as a consequence the results identify some robust common effects concerning the two areas considered (the USA versus Europe) at the micro level. Second, service and manufacturing sectors are merged.

The purpose of this paper is to provide excerpts of selected Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Regulatory Notes issued in July and August 2008.

The paper provides excerpts from the June 2008 Supplement to the Options Disclosure Document; Regulatory Notice 08‐38, SEC Emergency Orders on Short Selling; Regulatory Notice 08‐39, Variable Insurance Products; Regulatory Not ice 08‐41, Portfolio Margin Program; Regulatory Notice 08‐42, SEC Rule 144 and TRACE Eligibility; and Regulatory Notice 08‐43, Trade Reporting and Compliance Engine (TRACE)

The Orders and Guidance in Regulatory Notice 08‐38 address the naked short selling of the securities of 19 public companies. Through Regulatory Notice 08‐39, FINRA proposes to update and consolidate the rules governing member firm communications with the public about variable insurance products. Regulatory Notice 08‐41 addresses margin requirements based on projected loss scenarios, and also discusses concentrated equity positions and day trading. Regulatory Notice 08‐42 notes that once a security meets the definition of “TRACE‐eligible security”, all secondary market transactions in such securities are “reportable TRACE transactions”. Regulatory Notice 08‐43 describes additional data elements in real‐time TRACE data that will identify transactions as either inter‐dealer or customer transactions and, in customer transactions, whether the dealer is on the buy or sell side.

These are direct excerpts designed to provide a useful digest for the reader and an indication of regulatory trends. The FINRA staff is aware of this summary but has neither reviewed nor edited it. For further detail as well as other useful information, the reader should visit www.finra.org

This paper aims to shed light upon the controversial relationship between labour market flexibility and innovation in Italy, paying attention both to inter‐sectoral heterogeneity and to the regional differences.

A set of hypotheses concerning the context‐dependent relationship between labour market flexibility and innovation has been formulated by combining the main results of the theoretical literature concerning this topic. Regional patents are used as a proxy of innovation, while job turnover and wages represent labour market indicators of flexibility. Non‐parametric models and dynamic structural specification of panel data have been estimated to test the aforementioned hypotheses.

The results show that higher job turnover has a significant and negative impact on patent activities in regional sectors of northern Italy, while a positive and significant effect of blue and white collar wages has been generally found in the estimations.

There is a lack of updated information regarding labour market data in the Italian economy.

Knowing in which sectoral and regional context labour flexibility has (or does not have) a positive influence on innovation plays a key role for the decisions of policy makers.

This paper deals with the influence that the heterogeneity of the contexts (at the sectoral and geographical level) exerts on the relationship between the labour market and innovation. Moreover, the endogenous character of this relationship and the cumulative nature of innovative activities have been taken into account by means of a parsimonious dynamic econometric model.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main factors influencing agri-food small and medium enterprises (SMEs) participation in business networks and to evaluate the impacts of these factors on network structure and the ensuing competitive strategy.

The study is articulated in four main steps. First, a critical literature review is conducted concerning the main approaches to firm competitive advantage and the role of stakeholder relationships. Then, three research questions are formulated and discussed in the light of two case studies describing the implementation of an innovative contractual solution in Italy (i.e. business network contracts). Finally, based on these findings, a set of more general “propositions” are stated and included in a provisional conceptual model that schematically depicts an integrated vision of the antecedents and mechanisms influencing SMEs business network structure and competitive strategy.

The study results pointed out the opportunity to adopt an integrated approach, combining resource-based view and stakeholder causal scope approaches. The provisional conceptual model proposed illustrates the role of both external and internal resources and relational constructs to shaping network structure and competitive strategy.

The study’s contribution is twofold. First, the empirical study shed light on opportunities and limits of two business networks with different backgrounds, approaches and outcomes towards value creation. Second, the conceptual framework proposed advances our understanding and knowledge of the factors and mechanisms influencing SMEs business network structure and competitive strategy.

The aim of this paper is to develop and test a behavioral theory of chief executive officer (CEO) succession and its performance consequences in family firms. Building upon performance feedback and slack research, the study hypothesizes that the effect of selecting a non-family outsider CEO on post-succession firm performance is contingent upon pre-succession firm performance aspirations level and the available slack resources.

The hypotheses are tested using a panel of 430 CEO successions in Italian family firms.

The findings show that a non-family outsider CEO is particularly valuable when performance resides far below aspiration levels, and there is a high availability of slack resources.

The study provides novel insights of the benefits and drawbacks of selecting non-family outsider CEOs offering behavioral-based theoretical explanations of performance consequences of CEO successions.

The determinants of the fear of crime have been extensively investigated over the past three decades, yet few studies are comparative, include data from developing countries or use attitudes toward the police as explanatory variables. Understanding how perceptions of police performance influence fear of crime is essential to developing strategies which will reduce citizens’ isolation and reluctance to exert informal social control in their communities. Such lack of engagement creates opportunities for increased crime and disorder and heightens fear of crime. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study examines the mediating effect of perceived confidence in the police on citizens’ fear of crime in seven developing Caribbean region countries using structural equation modeling. The data were collected in a 2011 United Nations survey from representative samples in each nation.

The results indicate that confidence in the police plays a significant and partial mediating role in explaining fear of crime and that community- and individual-level characteristics influence the level of confidence and independently affect fear of crime as well.

This is one of the few studies that employs comparative victimization data in the Caribbean to examine the role that confidence in the police has on fear of crime. The findings of this study will contribute to fill the gap in the understanding of the drivers of fear of crime in developing countries.