Fundamental and Non-Fundamental Equilibria in the Foreign Exchange Market. A Behavioural Finance Framework

We develop a simple model of the exchange rate in which agents optimize their portfolio and use different forecasting rules. They check the profitability of these rules ex post and select the more profitable one. This model produces two kinds of equilibria, a fundamental and a bubble one. In a stochastic environment the model generates a complex dynamics in which bubbles and crashes occur at unpredictable moments. We contrast these ”behavioural” bubbles with ”rational” bubbles.exchange rate, bounded rationality, heterogeneous agents, bubbles and crashes, complex dynamics, basins of attraction

The transformation of the Education State in Italy: a critical policy historiography from 1944 to 2011

This article attempts to reconstruct the main trends of educational policy-making in Italy since 1944, contextualizing them within historical and wider social landscapes. It is an exercise of critical policy historiography, in so far as it explores what have been the main issues in the Italian education policy debate during the last sixty-five years, how they have been addressed, what has changed both in the debate and in policy-making, what are the complexities and who are the subjects that have benefited or have been disadvantaged by those arrangements. The work interprets the recent trajectory of the Italian education system identifying two different political eras, namely the era of the welfarist education state and the (re)building of the nation and the era of the restructuring of education, between managerialism, decentralisation and a tentative neoliberalism. Whereas the former (1944-1990) witnessed the building up of the welfarist and centralized education system, the latter is still an open era, where multiple trials are in place to reform and modernize education matching temperate and radical interpretations of managerialist, neoliberal and Third Way recipes

Interview with Stephen J. Ball

The conversation with Stephen J. Ball, Karl Mannheim Professor of Sociology of Education at the Institute of Education – University of London and co-editor of the Journal of Education Policy addresses key questions such as what are the role of social scientists and the purposes of sociology, with a specific reference to the field of education

The Measure of Land Consumption Caused by Urban Planning

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Discourses of Distribution: Anchoring Educational Leadership to Practice

The paper deals with the fashioning idea of distributed leadership and the related issue of education ecology democratization. The analysis of distributed leadership theories is carried on using two interpretative dimensions: discourses as regimes of truth and ontological and epistemological presuppositions. This first dimension refers to the classical tripartition between welfarism (bureauprofessionalism), managerialism and democratic-critical discourse. The second dimension recalls Seddon’s distinction between categorical and relational education contexts and, drawing on Bottery’s and Gronn and Ribbins works, exploites it in the light of a focus on both human and practice ontologies. The paper shows three conceptions of distribution. The first one is recognisable through the connection between the ontology of practice and the welfarist discourse (distributed leadership in practice). Another conception could be called delegated, more than distributed, leadership because it stresses this idea from a managerialist perspective grounding on a human ontological basis. The third one refers to different conceptions such as dispersed or ecological leadership or to the anchoring of leadership practices to the social division of labour and to the power relationships in the field of education. The anchoring of leadership theories to the ontologies of practice, it is argued, is crucial to ‘discuss’ the idea of distribution in a democratic perspective

Discourses of distribution: anchoring educational leadership to practice

The paper deals with the fashioning idea of distributed leadership and the related issue of education ecology democratization. The analysis of distributed leadership theories is carried on using two interpretative dimensions: discourses as regimes of truth and ontological and epistemological presuppositions. This first dimension refers to the classical tripartition between welfarism (bureauprofessionalism), managerialism and democratic-critical discourse. The second dimension recalls Seddon’s distinction between categorical and relational education contexts and, drawing on Bottery’s and Gronn and Ribbins works, exploites it in the light of a focus on both human and practice ontologies. The paper shows three conceptions of distribution. The first one is recognisable through the connection between the ontology of practice and the welfarist discourse (distributed leadership in practice). Another conception could be called delegated, more than distributed, leadership because it stresses this idea from a managerialist perspective grounding on a human ontological basis. The third one refers to different conceptions such as dispersed or ecological leadership or to the anchoring of leadership practices to the social division of labour and to the power relationships in the field of education. The anchoring of leadership theories to the ontologies of practice, it is argued, is crucial to ‘discuss’ the idea of distribution in a democratic perspective

Introduction. The final Foucault and Education

The emphasis of this collection of papers is on using Foucault for thinking differently about education. A distinctive feature of the contributions is to mobilise a foucauldian attitude towards the historicisation and denaturalisation of what it means to be educated, and the privileging of a critical ontology of the self as part of wider projects for the critical reconstruction of both education as a practice of government and our modes of being as educational subjects. In relation to that, it is possible to identify four distinctive issues around which the papers of this collection coalesce: a) the formulation of a distinctive foucauldian ethical standpoint for a post neoliberal education; b) the mobilisation of the foucauldian concept of self formation to outline a different ethics of education; c) the sketching of a politics of the care of the self as a tool to remake the school as heterotopy; d) the use of the foucauldian analysis of parrhesia to rethink professional practice in education as a practice of self

Surgical Implications of Ischemia Reperfusion Damage and Future Perspectives.

Flaps are often used in plastic and reconstructive surgery, and random pattern flaps were the first to be described. The indications for their use are numerous and include post-traumatic loss of su..

Skin graft donor site: a procedure for a faster healing

Background: The authors want to evaluate the efficacy of fibrillary tabotamp dressing in skin graftdonor site. A comparison was made with Vaseline gauzes. Tabotamp is an absorbable haemostatic product of Ethicon (Johnson and Johnson) obtained by sterile and oxidized regenerated cellulose (Rayon). It is used for mild to moderate bleeding. Materials and methods: 276 patients were subject to skin graft and divided into two group: Group A and Group B. The donor site of patients in Group A was medicated with fibrillary tabotamp, while the patients of Group B were medicated only with Vaseline gauze. We recorded infection, timing of healing, number of dressing change, the pain felt during and after the dressing change with visual analog scale (VAS) and a questionnaire. Results: Patients allocated in Group A healed faster than the Group B. Questionnaires and VAS analysis showed lower pain felt, lower intake of pain drugs and lower infection rate in the Group A than the Group B. Analysis of coast showed lower dressing change in Group A than the Group B. Conclusion: We believe that the use of tabotamp is a very viable alternative to improve healing. (www.actabiomedica.it)