Brain drain, remittances, and fertility model

How do high and low skilled migration affect fertility and human capital in migrants’ origin countries? This question is analyzed within an overlapping generations model where parents choose the number of high and low skilled children they would like to have. Individuals migrate with a certain probability and remit to their parents. It is shown that a brain drain induces parents to have more high and less low educated children. Under certain conditions fertility may either rise or decline due to a brain drain. Low skilled emigration leads to reversed results, while the overall impact on human capital of either type of migration remains ambiguous. Subsequently, the model is calibrated on a developing economy. It is found that increased high skilled emigration reduces fertility and fosters human capital accumulation, while low skilled emigration induces higher population growth and a lower level of education.Skilled emigration, remittances, fertility, human capital

Vantaggio di differenziazione e ruolo della comunicazione: il caso Tagetik

Il presente lavoro è dedicato ad approfondire il ruolo della comunicazione come risorsa indispensabile per “creare valore” e come fattore della differenziazione intangibile nella gestione strategica dell’azienda. La necessità per l’organizzazione di conseguire posizioni di equilibrio economico a valere nel tempo si traduce infatti, a livello strategico/gestionale, in un impegno costante alla ricerca e per la realizzazione di un vantaggio competitivo di differenziazione sulla concorrenza e nella sua conseguente valorizzazione sul mercato al fine di accrescere il valore del capitale economico. A testimonianza del rilievo strategico che tali riflessioni assumono per il governo dell’azienda si prende in esame il caso Tagetik, realtà italiana che opera nel mercato business-to-business dei sistemi software direzionali di Corporate Performance Management (CPM) e di Financial Governance (FG), e si racconta la sua esperienza di crescita nella gestione strategica della comunicazione e delle attività di marketing, con particolare riferimento al posizionamento e alle iniziative promossi nel “Marketing & Sales Plan 2008”

Migration and human capital in an endogenous fertility model

How do high and low skilled migration affect fertility and human capital in migrants’ origin countries? This question is analyzed within an overlapping generations model where parents choose the number of high and low skilled children they would like to have. Individuals migrate with a certain probability and remit to their parents. It is shown that a brain drain induces parents to have more high and less low educated children. Under certain conditions fertility may either rise or decline due to a brain drain. Low skilled emigration leads to reversed results, while the overall impact on human capital of either type of migration remains ambiguous. Subsequently, the model is calibrated on a developing economy. It is found that increased high skilled emigration reduces fertility and fosters human capital accumulation, while low skilled emigration induces higher population growth and a lower level of education.migration, human capital, fertility

Immigration, occupational choice and public employment

Marchiori L, Pieretti P, Zou B. Immigration, occupational choice and public employment. Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers. Vol 516. Bielefeld: Center for Mathematical Economics; 2014.This paper investigates the theoretical effects of immigration in an occupational choice model with three sectors: a low-skilled, a high-skilled and a public sector. The originality of our approach is to consider (i) intersectoral mobility of labor and (ii) public employment. We highlight the fact that including a public sector is crucial, since omitting it implies that low-skilled immigration unambiguously reduces wages and welfare of all workers. However, when public employment is considered, we demonstrate that immigration increases wages in the high-skilled and the public sectors, provided that the immigrant workforce is not too large and the access to public jobs is not too easy. The average wage of natives may also increase accordingly. Moreover, immigration may improve workers’ welfare in each sector. Finally, the mechanism underlying these results does not require complementarity between natives and immigrants

Moderate Neonatal Stress Decreases Within-Group Variation in Behavioral, Immune and HPA Responses in Adult Mice

BACKGROUND: The significance of behavioral neuroscience and the validity of its animal models of human pathology largely depend on the possibility to replicate a given finding across different laboratories. Under the present test and housing conditions, this axiom fails to resist the challenge of experimental validation. When several mouse strains are tested on highly standardized behavioral test batteries in different laboratories, significant strain x lab interactions are often detected. This limitation, predominantly due to elevated within-group variability observed in control subjects, increases the number of animals needed to address fine experimental questions. Laboratory rodents display abnormal stress and fear reactions to experimental testing, which might depend on the discrepancy between the stability of the neonatal environment and the challenging nature of the adult test and housing conditions. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Stimulating neonatal environments (e.g. brief maternal separations, increased foraging demands or maternal corticosterone supplementation) reduce stress and fear responses in adulthood. Here we tested whether reduced fearfulness associated with experimental testing would also reduce inter-individual variation. In line with our predictions, we show that a moderate elevation in neonatal corticosterone through maternal milk significantly reduces fear responses and inter-individual variability (average 44%) in adult mouse offspring. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We observed reduced variation in pain perception, novelty preference, hormonal stress response and resistance to pathogen infection. This suggests that the results of this study may apply to a relatively broad spectrum of neuro-behavioral domains. Present findings encourage a reconsideration of the basic principles of neonatal housing systems to improve the validity of experimental models and reduce the number of animals used

A Web-based Software System for Behavior Analysis of Laboratory Animals

The analysis of locomotion in laboratory animals plays a crucial role in many scientific research areas. In fact, important information on animals’ behavior and their reaction to a particular stimulus is deduced from a careful analysis of their movements. The techniques commonly adopted to support such analysis have many limitations, which make the related systems particularly ineffective. On the one hand, the human observation and annotation process is strongly observer-dependent and expensive in terms of time and efforts. On the other hand, the use of more sophisticated systems based on video recordings and recognition algorithms is very expensive and complex. In order to face this challenge, this paper presents a tracking solution based on passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology in Ultra High Frequency (UHF) band, allowing the tracking of laboratory animals with a high accuracy. The overall solution consists of a hybrid system including hardware and software components. In particular, in this paper, the attention is focused on the software component as the hardware has already been described in previous works. The software component is a Web-oriented solution that offers a complete 2D and 3D information tool including reports, dashboards, and tracking graphs. The proposed solution was widely tested using twelve laboratory mice and compared with an automated video-tracking software (i.e., EthoVision) in order to demonstrate its effectiveness and reliability. The obtained results have demonstrated that the proposed solution is able to correctly detect and reconstruct the events occurring in the animals’ cage, and to offer a complete and user-friendly tool to support researchers in behavioral analysis of small laboratory animals

Sensitivity and specificity of in vivo COVID-19 screening by detection dogs: Results of the C19-Screendog multicenter study

Trained dogs can recognize the volatile organic compounds contained in biological samples of patients with COVID-19 infection. We assessed the sensitivity and specificity of in vivo SARS-CoV- 2 screening by trained dogs. We recruited five dog-handler dyads. In the operant conditioning phase, the dogs were taught to distinguish between positive and negative sweat samples collected from volunteers’ underarms in polymeric tubes. The conditioning was validated by tests involving 16 positive and 48 negative samples held or worn in such a way that the samples were invisible to the dog and handler. In the screening phase the dogs were led by their handlers to a drive-through facility for in vivo screening of volunteers who had just received a nasopharyngeal swab from nursing staff. Each volunteer who had already swabbed was subsequently tested by two dogs, whose responses were recorded as positive, negative, or inconclusive. The dogs’ behavior was constantly monitored for attentiveness and wellbeing. All the dogs passed the conditioning phase, their responses showing a sensitivity of 83-100% and a specificity of 94-100%. The in vivo screening phase involved 1251 subjects, of whom 205 had a COVID-19 positive swab and two dogs per each subject to be screened. Screeningsensitivity and specificity were respectively 91.6-97.6% and 96.3-100% when only one dog was involved, whereas combined screening by two dogs provided a higher sensitivity. Dog wellbeing was also analysed: monitoring of stress and fatigue suggested that the screening activity did not adversely impact the dogs’ wellbeing. This work, by screening a large number of subjects, strengthen recent findings that trained dogs can discriminate between COVID-19 infected and healthy human subjects and introduce two novel research aspects: i) assessement of signs of fatigue and stress in dogs during training and testing, and ii) combining screening by two dogs to improve detection sensitivity and specificity. Using some precautions to reduce the risk of infection and spillover, in vivo COVID-19 screening by a dog-handler dyad can be suitable to quickly screen large numbers of people: it is rapid, non- invasiveand economical, since it does not involve actual sampling, lab resources or waste management, and is suitable to screen large numbers of people

Brain drain, remittances, and fertility

Marchiori L, Pieretti P, Zou B. Brain drain, remittances, and fertility. Working Papers. Institute of Mathematical Economics. Vol 408. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2008.This paper analyzes the effects of skilled migration and remittances on fertility decisions at origin. We develop an overlapping generations model which accounts for endogenous fertility and education. Parents choose the number of children they want to raise and decide upon how many children obtain higher education. Only high skilled individuals migrate with a certain probability and remit to their parents. We find that an increase in the probability to emigrate leads both high and low skilled parents to send more children to obtain higher education. However the effect on the number of children is ambiguous. In a further analysis, we calibrate the model to match different characteristics of a developing economy. When the destination country relaxes the immigration restrictions, more high skilled individuals leave the origin country. The result is that, at origin, increased high skilled emigration reduces fertility and fosters human capital accumulation

I controlli sugli atti tra pubblico e privato

La mia tesi tratta dei controlli nel diritto in particolare dei controlli sugli atti in ambito pubblico e privato analizzando le figure del segretario comunale, del notaio e valutando proposte di modific