Political Business Cycles through Lobbying

In this paper we build a framework where the interplay between the lobby power of special interest groups and the voting power of the majority of the population leads to political business cycles. We apply our set up to explain electoral cycles in government expenditure composition as well as to cycles in aggregate expenditures and in real exchange rates.

The Political Economy of Exchange Rate Policy in Brazil: 1964-1997

This paper analyzes political economy determinants of exchange rate policy in Brazil over the past thirty years. Two complementary methodologies are used. The first consists of investigating the exchange rate policy historical context over this period. Thus, part of the paper is dedicated to an historical account of the political economy of the exchange rate policy in Brazil from 1964 to 1997. The driving force affecting exchange rate policy was the tradeoff between the positive effect of a depreciated exchange rate on the balance of payments and its negative effect on inflation. The exchange rate policy resulting from this tradeoff depended on the political environment. An analytical framework is sketched to interpret the real exchange rate policy history, and then it is extended to encompass short-run election cycles. The second methodology is statistical. A Markov Switching Model is used to characterize statistically the exchange rate regimes, defined as valued or devalued real exchange rates, and the influence of political economy variables on regime changes. The results support the interpretation pursued in the analytical part. We found statistical evidence that the probability of an appreciated exchange rate is higher under democracy than under dictatorship. Furthermore, according to our statistical results there is also an election cycle: the probability of having an appreciated exchange rate is higher in the months preceding elections while the probability of having a depreciated exchange rate is higher in the months succeeding elections.

Be vicarious: the challenge for project management in the service economy

Purpose. The paper aims to answer to the following questions: which are the critical dynamic capabilities to survive in the rubber landscape of service economy? Does it exist in service economy a dynamic capabilities provider? Methodology. The paper combines the literature review on dynamic capability perspective and that on vicariance to the Project Management professional services. Findings. Firstly, the paper identifies vicariance as an intriguing dynamic capability, crucial to survive in the rubber landscape of service economy. Secondly, the paper sheds light on Project Management (PM) as a vicarious that provides vicariance. Practical implications. For each critical organizational dimension, the paper identifies the links among the service economy challenges and the vicariance typology required to the project manager to face those challenge. Originality/value.The approach to conceive the PM as a vicarious that provides vicariance is original and leads to new insights on the professional services management. In fact, on one hand, dynamic capabilities cannot easily be bought through a market transaction; on the other hand, they must be built. This building can be achieved internally, by the organization itself (i.e. hierarchy), or through a partnership (i.e. hybrid form among hierarchy and market). PM professional services enrich organizations with additional information variety according to a hybrid (i.e. non- market) coordination model

Efficiency & sustainability model to design and manage two-stage logistic networks

The distribution and storage efficiency together with the environmental sustainability are mandatory targets to consider when designing and managing modern supply chain (SC) networks. The current literature continuously looks for quantitative multi-perspective strategies and models, including and best balancing such issues that often diverge. This paper presents and applies a bi-objective optimization model to best design and manage two-stage logistic networks looking for the best trade-off between the SC stock level and the building and distribution environmental impact. The existence of good balance confirms the possibility to reduce the average SC stock level without a relevant increase of the emissions due to frequent replenishments

The PMBOK standard evolution: leading the rising complexity

The aim of this work is to enlighten how the Standard for Project Management (part II of PMBOK® Guide) has evolved over the last 30 years as it has introjected the perspective of complexity. The several contexts (private firms, public institutions etc.) in which Project Management is applied become more and more complex (i.e. uncertain and characterized by unpredictable feedbacks among their own variables and their environments). This needs an enrichment (and perhaps a new conceptualization) of the endowment of information variety provided by the Standard for Project Management with respect to the specific requisite variety asked at a local level (i.e. the specific organizational contexts), to lead a project with efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability. The traditional Standard for Project Management can no longer be considered as a “comfort zone” (i.e. a set of established and “familiar” frameworks, rules and tools aiming to ensure certain and predictable results). On the contrary, the Standard for Project Management should shift towards an open standard, that is able to consistently co-evolve with the increasingly complex contexts that even more ask for new tools, creative solutions and original combinations between exploitative and explorative knowledge

Long Term Structural Changes in the EU Countries (1970-2000): Convergence or Divergence in the Agri-Food System?

The main objective of this paper is to analyse the structural changes in European Agri-food systems in the last 30 years in order to verify the presence of a convergence process towards a more homogeneous structure among EU countries. This analysis considers the relative importance of the main components of Agri-food systems (agriculture, food industry and food consumption) and how they change over time. The analysis of convergence utilise the European National Accounting Data (from the SEC2 Data Base of Eurostat) from 1970 to 2000 for twelve EU countries. We use tests of convergence on cross section data by countries, but also stochastic kernel methodologies to verify the dynamic evolution of groups of countries inside the EU. The results show there are important process of convergence among countries for the variables of the Agri-food system that are more linked to the economic development, such as the importance of agriculture and food consumption in GDP. On the other hand there are divergences on the variables more linked to the openness degree and to the competitiveness of the Agri-food system. The presence of polarisation process among groups of countries contribute to the permanence of long run structural changes among Northern and Southern countries in the EU.agro-food System, structural Changes, EU countries, convergence, Industrial Organization, A1, C23, O1, Q10, Q17,

Experimental evaluation of shear and compression strength of masonry wall before and after reinforcement: Deep repointing

Masonry presents some inadequacies due to its almost total lack of tensile strength. Typical damage to multiple leaf walls during earthquakes is the loss of bond between the leaves with consequent collapse of the external leaf. Retrofitting or repair of this damage is a very difficult task. In many cases grout injection or wall jacketing fail due to incompatibility with the construction technique of the walls. A complementary technique to the grouting has been proposed by the authors. Experimental results and applications of the technique on site have shown positive characteristics and the results of tests carried out on site show, in some cases, increases in shear strength and stiffness of the masonry walls

Unveiling the multimedia unconscious: implicit cognitive processes and multimedia content analysis

One of the main findings of cognitive sciences is that automatic processes of which we are unaware shape, to a significant extent, our perception of the environment. The phenomenon applies not only to the real world, but also to multimedia data we consume every day. Whenever we look at pictures, watch a video or listen to audio recordings, our conscious attention efforts focus on the observable content, but our cognition spontaneously perceives intentions, beliefs, values, attitudes and other constructs that, while being outside of our conscious awareness, still shape our reactions and behavior. So far, multimedia technologies have neglected such a phenomenon to a large extent. This paper argues that taking into account cognitive effects is possible and it can also improve multimedia approaches. As a supporting proof-of-concept, the paper shows not only that there are visual patterns correlated with the personality traits of 300 Flickr users to a statistically significant extent, but also that the personality traits (both self-assessed and attributed by others) of those users can be inferred from the images these latter post as "favourite"

Co-axial wet-spinning in 3D Bioprinting: state of the art and future perspective of microfluidic integration

Nowadays, 3D bioprinting technologies are rapidly emerging in the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine as effective tools enabling the fabrication of advanced tissue constructs that can recapitulate in vitro organ/tissue functions. Selecting the best strategy for bioink deposition is often challenging and time consuming process, as bioink properties-in the first instance, rheological and gelation-strongly influence the suitable paradigms for its deposition. In this short review, we critically discuss one of the available approaches used for bioprinting-namely co-axial wet-spinning extrusion. Such a deposition system, in fact, demonstrated to be promising in terms of printing resolution, shape fidelity and versatility when compared to other methods. An overview of the performances of co-axial technology in the deposition of cellularized hydrogel fibres is discussed, highlighting its main features. Furthermore, we show how this approach allows (i) to decouple the printing accuracy from bioink rheological behaviour-thus notably simplifying the development of new bioinks- A nd (ii) to build heterogeneous multi-materials and/or multicellular constructs that can better mimic the native tissues when combined with microfluidic systems. Finally, the ongoing challenges and the future perspectives for the ultimate fabrication of functional constructs for advanced research studies are highlighted. © 2018 IOP Publishing Ltd