eprintid: 1063 rev_number: 6 eprint_status: archive userid: 6 dir: disk0/00/00/10/63 datestamp: 2012-01-18 13:19:30 lastmod: 2012-01-18 13:19:30 status_changed: 2012-01-18 13:19:30 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Riccaboni, Massimo creators_name: Trento, Sandro creators_name: Zaninotto, Enrico creators_id: massimo.riccaboni@imtlucca.it creators_id: creators_id: title: L'illusione del controllo nelle politiche pubbliche ispublished: pub subjects: HJ subjects: JN divisions: EIC full_text_status: none abstract: It is quite common that public policies take as benchmark mean values of relevant policy variables (average firm size, average productivity, average income, etc.). In such case the policy maker introduces incentives that should change individual behaviour in order to increase average values of the policy relevant variables. When this kind of policies are unsuccessful it is thought that the incentives are badly designed so that the entire problem is considered a problem of "mechanism design". In this paper the Authors maintain that policy makers should always take into account that incentives have an impact not only on individual behaviour but also on the distribution and law of motion of the aggregate phenomena that may be different from the sum of micro behaviours. Three different cases of proportional growth phenomena (firm's size growth, income distribuition and research production) are analyzed, in the paper, through simulations. Some tentative general principles for public policies are identified. date: 2010-04 date_type: published publication: Stato e mercato volume: 1 publisher: Il Mulino pagerange: 113-148 refereed: TRUE issn: 0392-9701 official_url: http://www.mulino.it/rivisteweb/scheda_articolo.php?id_articolo=31876 citation: Riccaboni, Massimo and Trento, Sandro and Zaninotto, Enrico L'illusione del controllo nelle politiche pubbliche. Stato e mercato, 1. pp. 113-148. ISSN 0392-9701 (2010)