Does player specialization predict player actions? Evidence from penalty kicks at FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro Cup

Penalty-kicks are analysed in the literature as `real life experiments' for assessing the use of rational mixed strategies by professional players. However, each penalty kick cannot be considered a repetition of the same event because of the varying background conditions, in particular the heterogeneous ability of different players. Consequently, aggregate statistics over datasets composed of a large number of penalty kicks mediate the behaviour of the players in \emph{different} games, and the properties of optimal mixed strategies cannot be tested directly because of \emph{aggregation bias}. In this paper we model the heterogeneous ability of players. We then test the hypothesis that differently talented players randomise over different actions. To this aim, we study a dataset that collects penalties kicked during shootout series in the last editions of FIFA World-Cup and UEFA Euro-Cup (1994-2012) where kickers are categorized as specialists and non-specialists. The results support our theoretical prediction

Accurate simulation estimates of phase behaviour in ternary mixtures with prescribed composition

This paper describes an isobaric semi-grand canonical ensemble Monte Carlo scheme for the accurate study of phase behaviour in ternary fluid mixtures under the experimentally relevant conditions of prescribed pressure, temperature and overall composition. It is shown how to tune the relative chemical potentials of the individual components to target some requisite overall composition and how, in regions of phase coexistence, to extract accurate estimates for the compositions and phase fractions of individual coexisting phases. The method is illustrated by tracking a path through the composition space of a model ternary Lennard-Jones mixture.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

‘The only game in town?’: football match-fixing in Greece

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12117-014-9239-3Football match-fixing in Greece has a relatively long history, however, from the late 1990s it has been considered as a serious problem for the sport in the country. Despite the history of the phenomenon in the country, Greece has only relatively recently been identified as one of the hotspots for football match-fixing on an international level. Following the recent scandal exposure of fixed matches in Greece in 2011, also known as Koriopolis (a pun name on the Italian scandal Calciopolis and the Greek word ‘korios’ or phone-tap), detailed information about numerous matches played in the 2008/09, 2009/10 and 2010/11 seasons that attracted UEFA’s attention were brought into the public eye. Soon after, legal action was taken against individuals involved in the process, with a number of club officials facing lifelong bans from any footballrelated activity, and football clubs either relegated or excluded from European competitions and the Super League itself for their involvement in the scandal. In May 2013, the number of people facing charges exceeded 200, with some of them having already been imprisoned for their involvement in the scandal. Following the aforementioned scandal exposure, a vast amount of information regarding football match-fixing was made available to the public. The aim of the current article is to provide an account of the social organisation of football match-fixing in Greece. Our account is based on three main sources of data: the telephone conversations that were the result of wiretapping by the National Intelligence Agency in relation to the latest football match-fixing scandal (of 2011), published media sources, and interviews with informed actors from the realm of Greek football

The role of venture capitalists in the regional innovation ecosystem : a comparison of networking patterns between private and publicly backed venture capital funds

This paper empirically examines the development of social networks among venture capitalists and other professionals of the regional innovation ecosystem. Using an online survey of venture capitalists, the article considers their networking behaviour, focusing particularly on the distinction between those employed by private and those employed by publicly backed venture capital funds, and on the composition and spatial search of their networks. It investigates whether the frequency of interaction between venture capitalists and other members of the innovation ecosystem is associated with the nature of the venture capital funds. The paper provides the first detailed investigation of the relationship between different types of venture capitalists and other players of the innovation ecosystem such as universities incubators, research institutes, and business support organisations. The results show that there are distinctive differences within the two seemingly similar professional groups (private and public venture capitalists), and public dependence of the venture capital fund is strongly and significantly associated with higher volumes of interactions. The more publicly dependent a fund is, the more it interacts with other players of the innovation system. This finding has important implications for both academics and practitioners and suggests that publicly backed funds have a wider role to play in mobilising the different players of the regional innovation ecosystem

Process of medical malpractice risk allocation in the Italian public health systems

This paper is aimed at analysing the key issues of the process of medical malpractice risk allocation in the Italian public health system. We introduce the function of liability insurance and we discuss also the problems related to optimal coverage design. We then turn to the empirical section thanks to a large database which includes all the information contained in 308 tender notices concerning the acquisition of RCT/O coverage by the Italian local public health firms between 2003 and 2006. The analysis of the data collected provides a first assessment of i) the ability of the Italian public sector to find risk coverage on the private insurance market, ii) the dynamics of prices and market power of insurance firms, and iii) the role of insurance brokers. We propose two alternative scenarios which explain the proposed empirical evidence

The shift of the triangle: density and economic transformation in Northern Italy

The study analyzes the evolution of the economic-spatial organization of Northern Italy over the last fifteen years, with the purpose of highlighting its internal differences and the progressive shift of the macroregion economic center of gravity from the North-West towards the NorthEast. This objective, however, requires to reflect on which unit of investigation is relevant for the economic-spatial analysis at the regional scale. Assuming the hypothesis of multiscalarity, the North is first disarticulated starting from the minimum economically relevant scale – identified in the single local labor system – for then variously re-aggregating these units to recompose the areas of extension of the agglomerative processes. The interpretation adopted is that recalling the role of density, a measure that incorporates in a non-arbitrary way the results of a more or less efficient allocation of resources with heterogeneous quality. The empirical strategy described here develops in three distinct steps. The first reports – mainly for descriptive purposes – the values taken by some relevant variables that illustrate the endowment of factors and the economic dynamic in the Italian territories, with particular reference to the different aggregations of the geographical units that constitute the Northern macroregion. The second step then investigates the correlation between density and economic performance at the finer scale of the local labor system, to understand whether, and to what extent, it is reasonable to expect that the divergence in regional dynamics of the North can be explained by differentials in terms of density. The third empirical analysis, finally, focuses on the relationship between density and performance at a more aggregated level to investigate the multiple scales in which the advantages of agglomeration are expressed. The composite evidence collected suggests that some of the sources of the competitive advantage acquired by the North-East in the last twenty years operate at a wider reach than that of the local labor market since a greater elasticity of the performance variables with respect to density appears to be clustered into a spatial entity that takes the configuration of a new industrial triangle. The presence of territorial networks with a larger extension than the functional areas examined requires deepening their shape and connective mechanisms

The Italian economic and institutional system in a pandemic situation

This paper provides a first assessment of the effect of the Covid-19 emergency on the Italian economy. The impact of the pandemic is analyzed from three points of view: the institutional settings and the differences in power between the central and local governments; the impact on the real economy and sectoral differences; the role of the banking sector in supporting the real economy during and after the crisis. The paper highlights how the pandemic affected Italian regions and sectors differently, and presents policy consideration regarding the European banking sector.Artykuł zawiera wstępną ocenę wpływu pandemii Covid-19 na włoską gospodarkę. Wpływ pandemii analizowany jest z trzech punktów widzenia: otoczenia instytucjonalnego i różnic między władzami centralnymi oraz lokalnymi; wpływu na realną gospodarkę i różnic sektorowych; roli sektora bankowego we wspieraniu realnej gospodarki podczas kryzysu i po nim. Podkreślono w jaki sposób pandemia wpłynęła na włoskie regiony i sektory gospodarki, oraz rozważono kwestie polityki europejskiego sektora bankowego