Growth, History, or Institutions? What Explains State Fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa

We explore the determinants of state fragility in sub-Saharan Africa. Controlling for a wide range of economic, demographic, geographic and istitutional regressors, we find that institutions, and in particular the civil liberties index and the number of revolutions, are the main determinants of fragility, even taking into account their potential endogeneity. Economic factors such as income growth and investment display a non robust impact after controlling for omitted variables and reverse causality. Colonial variables reflecting the history of the region display a marginal impact on fragility once institutions are accounted for.State fragility, Africa, institutions, colonial history

Incentives and uncertainty: an empirical analysis of the impact of demand on innovation

demand, product innovation, process innovation

The Fragile Definition of State Fragility

We investigates the link between fragility and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa over a yearly panel including 28 countries for the 1999-2004 period. Beside the conventional definition of fragility adopted by the OECD Development Assistance Committee, we introduce the more severe definition of extreme fragility. We show that only the latter exerts a significantly negative impact on economic development, once standard economic, demographic, and institutional regressors are accounted for. As a by-product of this investigation we produce up-to-date evidence on the growth performance of the area. We find a tendency to convergence and no influence of geographic and historical factors.State fragility; growth; Africa; aid.

Growth, History, or Institutions? What Explains State Fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa

We explore the determinants of state fragility in sub-Saharan Africa. Controlling for a wide range of economic, demographic, geographic and istitutional regressors, we find that institutions, and in particular the civil liberties index and the number of revolutions, are the main determinants of fragility, even taking into account their potential endogeneity. Economic factors such as income growth and investment display a non robust impact after controlling for omitted variables and reverse causality. Colonial variables reflecting the history of the region display a marginal impact on fragility once institutions are accounted for.state fragility, Africa, institutions, colonial history

Growth, History, or Institutions? What Explains State Fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa

We explore the determinants of state fragility in sub-Saharan Africa. Controlling for a wide range of economic, demographic, geographic and istitutional regressors, we find that institutions, and in particular the civil liberties index and the number of revolutions, are the main determinants of fragility, even taking into account their potential endogeneity. Economic factors such as income growth and investment display a non robust impact after controlling for omitted variables and reverse causality. Colonial variables reflecting the history of the region display a marginal impact on fragility once institutions are accounted for.State fragility, Africa, institutions, colonial history.

Sovrapposizioni culturali

Le due tavole, “Ricordo di avere visto una moschea dentro il tempio di Annone a Luxor” e “Sviluppo della decorazione di un vaso etrusco secondo una interpretazione ottocentesca”, avrebbero dovuto far parte di un più ampio e articolato progetto incentrato su un tema certamente legato a quelli tra i più cari allʼautore: il tema dellʼimmagine potenziale. Il progetto completo prevedeva la presenza di una terza tavola nella quale lʼimmagine sarebbe stata mentale, soltanto in potenza, per cui tradotta in una scritta, poiché la natura concettuale di tale immagine non avrebbe consentito una sua descrizione visiva. La presenza di una quarta tavola, dedicata alla utopica possibilità di impressionare una pellicola soltanto con la forza del pensiero, era solo ipotizzata sul piano concettuale. Questo lavoro, di chiara matrice concettuale, sarebbe stato quindi incentrato sul tema della “immagine potenziale”, argomento di grande interesse in seno alla produzione dellʼartista ma anche nel momento culturale che ha visto la nascita di questo progetto.The two figures “I remember I have seen a mosque inside the Amun Temple in Luxur” and “Development of the decoration of an Etruscan vase according to a nineteenth-century portrayal” were to be part of a broader and more structured project, centred on the theme of the potential image, a topic very dear to the author. The original project envisaged the presence of a third figure representing a mental image, merely potential, hence rendered in a writing. The conceptual nature of such an image would have not allowed any visual depiction. The presence of a fourth figure, devoted to the utopian possibility of exposing films with the only power of thoughts, was merely a working hypothesis. This work, of a cleary conceptual nature, was therefore to be centered on the theme of the “potential image”. Such topic takes on great importance for both the artist's production and the cultural context in which this project was conceived

Light flavour measurements with ALICE at the LHC: Elliptic flow and particle spectra

The study of the properties of the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP) produced in heavy ion collisions at the LHC at unprecedented energies is the main purpose of the ALICE Collaboration. Light flavour measurements give the possibility to study the parton energy loss in the hot and dense medium, the collective expansion of the fireball and the hadronization mechanism. In this talk results on elliptic flow and transverse momentum spectra of identified light flavour particles in Pb-Pb collisions at √sNN = 2.76TeV will be reported

Tappeti volanti

In questo disegno Franco Guerzoni immagina, nella chiave del tutto utopica dell’esercizio teorico più che in quella più concreta del progetto, la possibilità di realizzare dei tappeti volanti. Sul foglio, insieme alle forme disegnate dall’autore, vi è una poesia dell’amico Adriano Malavasi.In this drawing Franco Guerzoni speculates - with a theoretical exercise nearer to utopia than to a real project - about the possibility of realising flying carpets. On this drawing we can find, together with shapes and images by Guerzoni himself, a poetry written by his friend Adriano Malavasi