Global events demand global data: COVID-19 crisis responses and the future of selling and sales management around the globe

In the context of the global crisis presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors investigate the perspectives of sales managers regarding their organizations’ responses to the crisis and future expectations in a post-COVID-19 world. While there has been much discussion about these topics in the sales literature, very little research has examined them globally by collecting data from many nations and across many continents. Yet, how can global events be understood without analyzing global data? In response, the authors convened the first, to their knowledge, global data coalition by hosting video-recorded group interviews with 76 sales executives representing 27 nations. This inductive investigation, informed by institutional logics, reveals how organizations accepted new norms, retained old ones, or blended the old with the new in response to the crisis. The results simultaneously validate certain emerging concepts on a global scale (e.g., customer success management, bricolage) and give rise to several insights not currently detailed by extant scholarship (e.g., localization, cultural cringe). This work also catalyzes new, relevant avenues for international research and sheds light on issues facing sales practice globally

La Corte di Giustizia UE sulla vendita dei farmaci online

Il capitolo descrive la sentenza della Corte di Giustizia dell’UE Dictopharma Sas c. Union des Groupements de pharmaciens d’officine. La questione vede protagonista la società francese Doctipharma, creatrice di un sito fungente da piattaforma al quale gli utenti possono accedere al fine acquistare prodotti farmaceutici e medicinali, raggiungendo in tal modo siti di farmacie collegate. Tale piattaforma si pone in contrasto con la normativa francese. Dopo un iter presso le corti nazionali, la questione è arrivata in CGUE, la quale ha affermato che si rende necessaria una valutazione caso per caso, tentando di fornire una cornice ai giudici nazionali, ma lasciando margini di indeterminatezza. Rispetto al sistema italiano, urge segnalare in proposito l’esistenza di due circolari ministeriali che non ammette l’utilizzazione di piattaforme o simili per facilitare la commercializzazione di farmaci. Di certo, tali circostanze non paiono essere in linea con il recente fenomeno dell’home delivery, che ben consentono al cliente registrato di selezionare una farmacia ed incaricare il vettore di andare a ritirare il prodotto desiderato. A fronte della sentenza citata, pare ammissibile ritenere che il Ministero della Salute sia indotto a rivedere le proprie posizioni in materi

Essays in Barriers and Pathways to Equitable Development

This dissertation examines how policy interventions can shape individual behavior and development across three distinct contexts: admission tests, mandatory markets for pension savings, and early childhood development. The first paper explores how textual context in Brazil’s ENEM affects performance gaps by socioeconomic status, gender, and ethnicity, revealing that semantic features in test questions significantly influence disparities and identifying pathways for fairer test design. The second paper evaluates a pro-competition reform in Chile’s pension system that made cheaper options available but saw limited uptake due to high levels of inertia. By exploring the timing and consequences of changes in fees, the study finds that participants are much more sensitive to price increases than to equivalent cost reductions. The third paper, co-authored with Diana Krüger, Matias Berthelon, and Rafael Sánchez, leverages an exogenous shock to breastfeeding caused by an earthquake in Chile to estimate its causal effects on child development, showing significant cognitive benefits of extended breastfeeding. Together, these essays highlight the nuanced ways in which policies can mitigate barriers to equity and promote development, offering evidence-based insights for designing effective interventions

The bidirectional link between left ventricular hypertrophy and chronic kidney disease. A cross lagged analysis

Background:Heart failure (HF) is known to reduce glomerular filtration rate (GFR), while chronic kidney disease (CKD) significantly increases the risk of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) and HF. Although these connections have been explored in separate studies, comprehensive research examining the mutual links between CKD and LVH progression is lacking.Methods:Our study investigates the longitudinal relationship between estimated GFR (eGFR) and left ventricular mass index (LVMI) in a cohort of 106 CKD patients across stages G1-5. Using a cross-lagged model, we paired each predictor (eGFR or LVMI) with subsequent outcome measurements, adjusting for previous values to ensure accuracy. Over a three-year follow-up period, we analyzed 257 paired LVMI and eGFR measurements.Results:At baseline, the median eGFR was 54 ml/min/1.73 m2, and the LVMI was 134 ± 48 g/m2, with a 62% prevalence of LVH. Our adjusted models revealed that a decrease in eGFR by 1 ml/min/1.73 m2 predicted an increase in LVMI of 1.12 g/m2 (95% CI: 0.71-1.54, P < 0.001). In contrast, high LVMI did not predict a reduction in eGFR over time. This analysis highlights a significant risk of LVH worsening due to GFR loss, while the reverse risk does not achieve statistical significance.Conclusions:Although these observational analyses cannot establish causality, they suggest that the risk of cardiomyopathy driven by kidney disease in stable CKD patients may be more substantial than the risk of CKD progression driven by heart disease. This insight underscores the importance of monitoring kidney function to manage cardiovascular risk in CKD patients

Seasonality and spikes in the natural gas market

In this paper we propose and examine an arbitrage-free model for the natural gas spot price and its convenience yield. Performing an empirical analysis of the European natural gas spot and futures markets, we observe that log spot prices are non-stationary, exhibit mild seasonality, and display almost continuous behaviour. In contrast, the implied convenience yield is stationary, shows strong seasonality, and experiences frequent spikes. Motivated by this evidence, we model the spot convenience yield as a combination of a deterministic seasonal component and a mean-reverting stochastic process with jumps. By assuming an appropriate distribution for the jump component, we derive a closed-form expression for futures prices. Our model demonstrates an excellent fit to European data, both before and after the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia–Ukraine war

The Social Reality of Organised Crime in Australia: Lawfare, Security, and the Politics of Exclusion in the Settler-Colonial State

This thesis critically examines the legal, political, and social construction of organised crime within the Australian settler-colonial context, using Operation Ironside as a case study. It interrogates how the state defines, enforces, and narrates organised crime to serve broader interests of sovereignty, economic control, and racialised securitisation. While dominant legal and criminological frameworks present organised crime as an objective phenomenon, this research argues that its definition is inherently political, operating as a mechanism for legitimising state power, managing internal threats, and criminalising economic activities that fall outside state-sanctioned financial systems. The study is structured around four key dimensions of organised crime as a legal and political construct: (1) the historical and contemporary formulation of organised crime laws in Australia and their colonial and imperial legacies; (2) the enforcement of these definitions through surveillance, intelligence-led policing, and preemptive legal measures; (3) the sentencing patterns and outcomes of individuals prosecuted under organised crime frameworks, with a particular focus on ethnicity and class; and (4) the media’s role in constructing public perceptions of organised crime, reinforcing moral panics and justifying extraordinary state powers. Through statistical analysis of outcomes from Operation Ironside and critical discourse analysis of media reporting, the thesis reveals patterns of racial and class-based disparities in sentencing, as well as the alignment between media narratives and state securitisation agendas. By drawing on critical legal studies, criminology, and postcolonial theory, this thesis 3 4 situates organised crime within the broader apparatus of the settler-colonial state. It highlights how organised crime laws function as tools of governance, enabling legal exceptions that expand state authority and consolidate economic hierarchies. The findings contribute to contemporary debates on criminalisation, surveillance, and state power, challenging the assumed neutrality of organised crime frameworks and advocating for a more critical, historically situated understanding of crime, security, and justice

Exchangeability, prediction and predictive modeling in Bayesian statistics

There is currently a renewed interest in the Bayesian predictive ap- proach to statistics. This paper offers a review on foundational concepts and focuses on ‘predictive modeling’, which by directly reasoning on prediction, bypasses inferential models or may characterize them. We detail predictive characterizations in exchangeable and partially exchangeable settings, for a large variety of data structures, and hint at new directions. The underly- ing concept is that Bayesian predictive rules are probabilistic learning rules, formalizing through conditional probability how we learn on future events given the available information. This concept has implications in any statis- tical problem and in inference, from classic contexts to less explored chal- lenges, such as providing Bayesian uncertainty quantification to predictive algorithms in data science, as we show in the last part of the paper. The pa- per gives a historical overview, but also includes a few new results, presents some recent developments and poses some open questions

New development: The implementation (gap) of senior civil service recruitment reform - a matter of organizational size?

oai:iris.unibocconi.it:11565/4068856The public sector is increasingly challenged to address complex societal issues, highlighting the need to develop and recruit senior civil servants with the right skills and motivation. Numerous reforms have been introduced to improve the effectiveness of senior civil service recruitment, but successful implementation at the organizational level is not guaranteed. This study explores the implementation gap in public management reforms within the context of the Italian public sector, focusing on the potential influence of organizational size. The article supports a significant and positive correlation between size and innovation, within the specific context of public employment reforms, given that smaller organizations are less likely to adopt a broad set of innovative recruitment practices

L’impatto dell’Intelligenza Artificiale nel settore del lusso e della moda

Dall’ideazione alla produzione, l’AI sta rivoluzionando le industrie creative. La tecnologia crea nuove opportunità, ma anche inedite sfide etich