Unemployment scarring in high unemployment regions

This paper investigates the effect of individual unemployment experiences on re-employment wages. The empirical analysis is carried out on a panel of Italian individuals. The main result is that while in the northern regions the effect is similar to the one estimated for the UK, in the southern area of the country the impact is not significant. We link this result to the particular socio-economic environment in which the unemployment spells are experienced. We argue that this might be due to the fact that in a high unemployment environment individual unemployment experiences are perceived as "normal" and do not necessarily signal poor quality of the worker. This might have effects in inducing the hysteresis of unemployment, and reducing the downward pressure of unemployment on wages at the macro level.

Family Income and Students’ Mobility

This paper investigates the reasons that determine students’ mobility in Italy and tries to explain why in the presence of quality differentials among universities the majority of students choose to remain in their regions of origin. We find that low mobility is related to family income and other financial and background characteristics. Low mobility in turn implies the existence of little competition among universities, and hence little incentive for improvement in either teaching or research. A crucial issue is therefore to evaluate if and how the government may affect this process and improve the supply of higher education quality and the degree of competition among academic institutions.Higher education, University choice, Liquidity constraints

Testing for asymmetry in economic time series using bootstrap methods

In this paper we show that phase-scrambling bootstrap offers a natural framework for asymmetry testing in economic time series. A comparison with other bootstrap schemes is also sketched. A Monte Carlo analysis is carried out to evaluate the size and power properties of the phase-scrambling bootstrap-based test.Asymmetric time series

Average Labor Taxes and Unemployment: Evidence from Italian Regions

By focusing on the Italian experience, we ask whether the relationship between labor taxes and unemployment varies across regions. In spite of similar national labor market institutions, we show that this relationship is significantly stronger in the highly industrialized North than in the less developed South, where unemployment is much higher. An important source of variation in the regional responsiveness of unemployment originates from the fact that regional gross wages in the North increase more than in the South in response to a hike in labor taxes.regional unemployment, labor taxes.

Multi-layer traffic control for wireless networks

Le reti Wireless LAN, così come definite dallo standard IEEE 802.11, garantiscono connettività senza fili nei cosiddetti “hot-spot” (aeroporti, hotel, etc.), nei campus universitari, nelle intranet aziendali e nelle abitazioni. In tali scenari, le WLAN sono denotate come “ad infrastruttura” nel senso che la copertura della rete è basata sulla presenza di un “Access Point” che fornisce alle stazioni mobili l’accesso alla rete cablata. Esiste un ulteriore approccio (chiamato “ad-hoc”) in cui le stazioni mobili appartenenti alla WLAN comunicano tra di loro senza l’ausilio dell’Access Point. Le Wireless LAN tipicamente sono connesse alla rete di trasporto (che essa sia Internet o una Intranet aziendale) usando un’infrastruttura cablata. Le reti wireless Mesh ad infrastruttura (WIMN) rappresentano un’alternativa valida e meno costosa alla classica infrastruttura cablata. A testimonianza di quanto appena affermato vi è la comparsa e la crescita sul mercato di diverse aziende specializzate nella fornitura di infrastrutture di trasporto wireless e il lancio di varie attività di standardizzazione (tra cui spicca il gruppo 802.11s). La facilità di utilizzo, di messa in opera di una rete wireless e i costi veramente ridotti hanno rappresentato fattori critici per lo straordinario successo di tale tecnologia. Di conseguenza possiamo affermare che la tecnologia wireless ha modificato lo stile di vita degli utenti, il modo di lavorare, il modo di passare il tempo libero (video conferenze, scambio foto, condivisione di brani musicali, giochi in rete, messaggistica istantanea ecc.). D’altro canto, lo sforzo per garantire lo sviluppo di reti capaci di supportare servizi dati ubiqui a velocità di trasferimento elevate è strettamente legato a numerose sfide tecniche tra cui: il supporto per l’handover tra differenti tecnologie (WLAN/3G), la certezza di accesso e autenticazione sicure, la fatturazione e l’accounting unificati, la garanzia di QoS ecc. L’attività di ricerca svolta nell’arco del Dottorato si è focalizzata sulla definizione di meccanismi multi-layer per il controllo del traffico in reti wireless. In particolare, nuove soluzioni di controllo del traffico sono state realizzate a differenti livelli della pila protocollare (dallo strato data-link allo strato applicativo) in modo da fornire: funzionalità avanzate (autenticazione sicura, differenziazione di servizio, handover trasparente) e livelli soddisfacenti di Qualità del Servizio. La maggior parte delle soluzioni proposte in questo lavoro di tesi sono state implementate in test-bed reali. Questo lavoro riporta i risultati della mia attività di ricerca ed è organizzato nel seguente modo: ogni capitolo presenta, ad uno specifico strato della pila protocollare, un meccanismo di controllo del traffico con l’obiettivo di risolvere le problematiche presentate precedentemente. I Capitoli 1 e 2 fanno riferimento allo strato di Trasporto ed investigano il problema del mantenimento della fairness per le connessioni TCP. L’unfairness TCP conduce ad una significativa degradazione delle performance implicando livelli non soddisfacenti di QoS. Questi capitoli descrivono l’attività di ricerca in cui ho impiegato il maggior impegno durante gli studi del dottorato. Nel capitolo 1 viene presentato uno studio simulativo delle problematiche di unfairness TCP e vengono introdotti due possibili soluzioni basate su rate-control. Nel Capitolo 2 viene derivato un modello analitico per la fairness TCP e si propone uno strumento per la personalizzazione delle politiche di fairness. Il capitolo 3 si focalizza sullo strato Applicativo e riporta diverse soluzioni di controllo del traffico in grado di garantire autenticazione sicura in scenari di roaming tra provider wireless. Queste soluzioni rappresentano parte integrante del framework UniWireless, un testbed nazionale sviluppato nell’ambito del progetto TWELVE. Il capitolo 4 descrive, nuovamente a strato Applicativo, una soluzione (basata su SIP) per la gestione della mobilità degli utenti in scenari di rete eterogenei ovvero quando diverse tecnologie di accesso radio sono presenti (802.11/WiFi, Bluetooth, 2.5G/3G). Infine il Capitolo 5 fa riferimento allo strato Data-Link presentando uno studio preliminare di un approccio per il routing e il load-balancing in reti Mesh infrastrutturate.Wireless LANs, as they have been defined by the IEEE 802.11 standard, are shared media enabling connectivity in the so-called “hot-spots” (airports, hotel lounges, etc.), university campuses, enterprise intranets, as well as “in-home” for home internet access. With reference to the above scenarios, WLANs are commonly denoted as “infra-structured” in the sense that WLAN coverage is based on “Access Points” which provide the mobile stations with access to the wired network. In addition to this approach, there exists also an “ad-hoc” mode to organize WLANs where mobile stations talk to each other without the need of Access Points. Wireless LANs are typically connected to the wired backbones (Internet or corporate intranets) using a wired infrastructure. Wireless Infrastructure Mesh Networks (WIMN) may represent a viable and cost-effective alternative to this traditional wired approach. This is witnessed by the emergence and growth of many companies specialized in the provisioning of wireless infrastructure solutions, as well as the launch of standardization activities (such as 802.11s). The easiness of deploying and using a wireless network, and the low deployment costs have been critical factors in the extraordinary success of such technology. As a logical consequence, the wireless technology has allowed end users being connected everywhere – every time and it has changed several things in people’s lifestyle, such as the way people work, or how they live their leisure time (videoconferencing, instant photo or music sharing, network gaming, etc.). On the other side, the effort to develop networks capable of supporting ubiquitous data services with very high data rates in strategic locations is linked with many technical challenges including seamless vertical handovers across WLAN and 3G radio technologies, security, 3G-based authentication, unified accounting and billing, consistent QoS and service provisioning, etc. My PhD research activity have been focused on multi-layer traffic control for Wireless LANs. In particular, specific new traffic control solutions have been designed at different layers of the protocol stack (from the link layer to the application layer) in order to guarantee i) advanced features (secure authentication, service differentiation, seamless handover) and ii) satisfactory level of perceived QoS. Most of the proposed solutions have been also implemented in real testbeds. This dissertation presents the results of my research activity and is organized as follows: each Chapter presents, at a specific layer of the protocol stack, a traffic control mechanism in order to address the introduced above issues. Chapter 1 and Charter 2 refer to the Transport Layer, and they investigate the problem of maintaining fairness for TCP connections. TCP unfairness may result in significant degradation of performance leading to users perceiving unsatisfactory Quality of Service. These Chapters describe the research activity in which I spent the most significant effort. Chapter 1 proposes a simulative study of the TCP fairness issues and two different solutions based on Rate Control mechanism. Chapter 2 illustrates an analytical model of the TCP fairness and derives a framework allowing wireless network providers to customize fairness policies. Chapter 3 focuses on the Application Layer and it presents new traffic control solutions able to guarantee secure authentication in wireless inter-provider roaming scenarios. These solutions are an integral part of the UniWireless framework, a nationwide distributed Open Access testbed that has been jointly realized by different research units within the TWELVE national project. Chapter 4 describes again an Application Layer solution, based on Session Initiation Protocol to manage user mobility and provide seamless mobile multimedia services in a heterogeneous scenario where different radio access technologies are used (802.11/WiFi, Bluetooth, 2.5G/3G networks). Finally Chapter 5 refers to the Data Link Layer and presents a preliminary study of a general approach for routing and load balancing in Wireless Infrastructure Mesh Network. The key idea is to dynamically select routes among a set of slowly changing alternative network paths, where paths are created through the reuse of classical 802.1Q multiple spanning tree mechanisms

BanksÂ’ participation in the Eurosystem auctions and money market integration

Bidding Behaviour, auctions, open market operations, money market, liquidity management Abstract: We perform a panel analysis of bidding in the Eurosystem auctions, using individual data that include the bidder code, size, nationality and membership in a banking group. We find that an increase in interest rate volatility lowers the probability of bidding, but induces bidders to shade rates less. Large bidders participate more regularly, while group bidders demand larger amounts, showing an aptitude to act as liquidity brokers. Our findings support the transnational bank hypothesis (Freixas- Holthausen, 2005): banks with a multinational profile use their informational advantage to arbitrage out the differences in interest rates across countries, thus fostering money market integration.

Family Income and Students Mobility

This paper investigates the reasons that determine students mobility in Italy and tries to explain why in the presence of quality differentials among universities the majority of students choose to remain in their regions of origin. We find that low mobility is related to family income and other financial and background characteristics. Low mobility in turn implies the existence of little competition among universities, and hence little incentive for improvement in either teaching or research. A crucial issue is therefore to evaluate if and how the government may affect this process and improve the supply of higher education quality and the degree of competition among academic [email protected]@unical.itpublished in Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia, vol 68 (2009), no. 1, pp. 1-23

D-Brane Physics: From Weak to Strong Coupling

In this thesis we discuss two aspects of branes relevant to high-energy phenomenology. First, we consider a single D6-brane wrapping a special Lagrangian cycle and the background space compactified in a Calabi-Yau orientifold the conditions needed to obtain a four-dimensional N = 1 supersymmetric theory. We calculate the bosonic part of the effective action by performing a Kaluza-Klein reduction of the brane seven-dimensional action, and obtain the N = 1 characteristic data. To discuss the moduli, we first fix the moduli from deformations of the background Calabi-Yau and study the D-brane deformation moduli space. We next allow for Calabi-Yau deformations, and show that the moduli space for complex structure deformations is corrected by the fields living on the D6-brane. We also calculate the scalar potential from D- and F-terms generated from brane and background configurations that would break the supersymmetry condition. We then, via Mirror Symmetry, relate the spectrum obtained in our work to the spectrum in Type IIB effective theory with D3- D5- and D7-branes, and we propose a Kähler potential for the moduli space of brane deformations in Type IIB theories. In the second part of the thesis we discuss effects of brane intersections when the string coupling can become strong, and we work in the framework of F-theory. After reviewing the basics of F-theory constructions and a particular SU(5) model already discussed in the literature, we construct a model which contains a point of E8 singularity, and curves of E6 singularity. By explictly resolving the space, we show that the resolution requires the introduction of higher dimensional fibers, and argue how we can circunvent this problem for the E6 curve, leading to the expected resolution that generate an E6 group, while at the E8 point we cannot make the resolution lead to an expected E8 structure