1,892 research outputs found
Interpreting employment policy change in Italy since the 1990s: nature and dynamics
This paper analyzes the evolution of employment policy in Italy, focusing on the period from the mid-1990s to the economic crisis started in 2008. Two aspects of the policy change process are taken into consideration: its nature and its dynamics. As regards the former, three dimensions - strategic, distributive and organizational - are singled out in order to analyze the specific employment policy reforms occurred in the period taken into account. A framework is then developed for the interpretation and explanation of the dynamics of change, based on causal sequences identified by the combination of politico-institutional factors, and a preliminary appraisal of the impact of reforms on the pre-existing institutional configuration is provided. The paper concludes focusing on the shortcomings of the reform process, and highlighting foreseeable directions of future change.employment policy, policy change, veto opportunities, unemployment benefits, active labour market policies, employment protection legislation
The Economic Crisis as a Trigger of Convergence? Short-time work in Italy, Germany and Austria
In all European countries, emergency policy measures have been introduced in order to counteract the employment consequences of the economic crisis. In the context of variously composed anticrisis packages, many European countries have used Short-Time Work (STW) schemes, that is measures to subsidize a temporary reduction in working time intended to maintain an employment relationship. Countries which already had STW schemes, such as Kurzarbeit in Germany and Austria and the Cassa Integrazione Guadagni (CIG) in Italy, have loosened the eligibility requirements and extended their maximum duration. This paper focuses on the issue whether the economic crisis has spurred any convergence in the use of STW in these three social-insurance countries - Austria, Germany and Italy - or whether policy change has rather occurred in a path-dependent fashion. In order to do so, the paper also adopts a systemic approach, focusing on relationships of complementarity or functional substitution and equivalence among the various schemes comprising income maintenance systems to tackle the risks of partial or total unemployment. In addition to shedding light on a rather under-researched province of contemporary welfare states such as STW, this article also aims to contribute to the debate on the analytical levels in the study of social policy by showing the relevance and potential of adopting an intermediate level of analysis between a regime-centred and a programme-centred approach.short time work; unemployment compensation; social protection; convergence; path dependence
Austerity and Adjustment from the Great Recession to the Pandemicâ and Beyond
In 2010â2015 almost all democratic countries pursued austerity. Then countries exited austerity, although following different paths. The onset of the pandemic brought about a hike in public spending to cope with its social and economic consequences that does, however, plant the seeds of future economic adjustments. In this chapter we study the political strategies and options of governments during austerity periods using a new dataset for 30 democratic nations, from 2010 to 2019. We ask where and when democratic politics mattered for austerity policies from the Great Recession to the Covid-19 pandemic. Our main finding is that austerity policies were mostly driven by economic forces. Focusing on the process of exiting austerity, we show that such policies cannot be sufficiently explained by changed economic fundamentals. Rather, the longer governments pursue austerity the more likely they are to exit it, even if the economic fundamentals do not support it
Improving information/disturbance and estimation/distortion trade-offs with non universal protocols
We analyze in details a conditional measurement scheme based on linear
optical components, feed-forward loop and homodyne detection. The scheme may be
used to achieve two different tasks. On the one hand it allows the extraction
of information with minimum disturbance about a set of coherent states. On the
other hand, it represents a nondemolitive measurement scheme for the
annihilation operator, i.e. an indirect measurement of the Q-function. We
investigate the information/disturbance trade-off for state inference and
introduce the estimation/distortion trade-off to assess estimation of the
Q-function. For coherent states chosen from a Gaussian set we evaluate both
information/disturbance and estimation/distortion trade-offs and found that non
universal protocols may be optimized in order to achieve better performances
than universal ones. For Fock number states we prove that universal protocols
do not exist and evaluate the estimation/distortion trade-off for a thermal
distribution.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures; published versio
Dialysis-dependent renal failure at diagnosis continues to be associated with very poor outcome in multiple myeloma - response to Murphy et al
The study by Murphy et al supports the observation made
by several groups regarding the benefit of the novel agents in
both young and elderly patients affected by multiple
myeloma (MM) (Kumar et al, 2008; Ludwig et al, 2008;
Turesson et al, 2010; Pozzi et al, 2013). Their single institution
data collected over 18 years in 262 patients shows an
improvement in overall survival (OS) starting from 1995
with an OS not yet reached in the period 2007â2012, after
the introduction of bortezomib in their clinical practice.
However the study clearly highlights renal insufficiency as a
very poor prognostic factor, with a median OS shorter than
1 year in patients requiring dialysis.
In the past few years many attempts have been made to
classify and stratify patients based on various refined biological
characteristics, however, as clearly stated here, the clinical
presentation, particularly organ damage, still represents a
negative prognostic factor that not even modern medicine
has been able to overcome. The introduction of the International
Staging System Criteria (ISS) (Greipp et al, 2005) only
indirectly takes renal function into account, while the Durie
and Salmon Criteria differentiates stage âAâ and âBâ MM
based on kidney damage (Durie & Salmon, 1975). However
Durie-Salmon âBâ stage is based on a creatinine cut-off point
of 177 lmol/l and it is unable to better differentiate between
moderate and severe impairment of renal damage requiring
dialysis. It is also unable to predict the response to the
treatment and reversibility of the organ damage, between
possibly transitory kidney impairment due to dehydration,
hyperuricaemia and hypercalacemia, and cast nephropathy.
In this subset of MM patients it would be beneficial to
introduce further parameters in the staging system (i.e. glomerular
filtrate; type of light chain) in order to better stratify
the risks and prevent treatment-related toxicity. For this reason,
ad hoc clinical trials for this group of patients are
strongly needed (Haynes et al, 2012).
Finally, the Murphy study highlights the selection of
patients enrolled in clinical trials and the necessity to evaluate
the survival in the population of every day clinical practice,
together with the need to develop high resolution analysis
from data collected by cancer registers.
Moreover, early diagnosis, compared with late or misdiagnosis,
especially for light chains MM, is mandatory to prevent
severe organ damage
The cost of treating relapsed indolent non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in an international setting: retrospective analysis of resource use
Background and Objectives. Few economic data exist on the treatment of indolent non-HodgkinÂŽs lymphoma (NHL) and there are none in the published literature concerning relapsed disease. This international analysis (Canada, Germany, Italy) was established to estimate the overall direct cost of treating patients with relapsed indolent NHL and determine the main cost components of treatment. Design and Methods. Telephone interviews were used to identify the most commonly used treatment regimens in each country. CHOP, CVP and fludarabine were chosen for economic analysis, which was based on retrospective data from 424 patients. Results. Overall treatment costs for a course of six cycles varied more than 5-fold, from EURO3,445 to 17,940 between regimens and countries. The treatment setting had a major impact on costs, with in-patient costs being up to three times greater than the equivalent out-patient values. Drug administration costs comprised 46-60% of the overall treatment costs in the in-patient setting. Adverse event management was the major cost component for out-patient CHOP and CVP therapy (52-75%), and a significant proportion (24-40%) of in-patient costs for these regimens. Drug acquisition accounted for less than half of treatment costs for most of the regimens analyzed. Interpretation and Conclusions. This study shows that not simply drug acquisition costs, but the costs of drug administration, particularly in the in-patient setting, and adverse event management are major contributors to the overall treatment costs for relapsed indolent NHL
Experimental detection of quantum channel capacities
We present an effcient experimental procedure that certifies non vanishing
quantum capacities for qubit noisy channels. Our method is based on the use of
a fixed bipartite entangled state, where the system qubit is sent to the
channel input. A particular set of local measurements is performed at the
channel output and the ancilla qubit mode, obtaining lower bounds to the
quantum capacities for any unknown channel with no need of a quantum process
tomography. The entangled qubits have a Bell state configuration and are
encoded in photon polarization. The lower bounds are found by estimating the
Shannon and von Neumann entropies at the output using an optimized basis, whose
statistics is obtained by measuring only the three observables
, and
.Comment: 5 pages and 3 figures in the principal article, and 4 pages in the
supplementary materia
Globalisation and automation as sources of labour-market competition, and support for European Union unemployment insurance
Societies and economies are experiencing deep and intertwined structural changes
that may unsettle the perceptions European citizens have of their economic and
employment security. Such labour-market perceptions are likely in turn to alter
peopleâs political positions. For instance, those worried by labour-market competition
may prefer greater social protection to compensate for the accrued risk, or might prefer
more closed economies where external borders provide protection (or the illusion of
protection). We test these expectations with a conjoint experiment in 13 European
countries on European-level social policy, studying how citizensâ demands align
with partiesâ political supply. Results broadly corroborate our expectations on the
moderating effects of different types of concerns about perceived sources of labour-
market competition on the features of preferred European-level social policy
Colour variation of the Maltese wall lizards (Podarcis filfolensis) at population and individual levels in the Linosa island
AbstractThe research on animal colouration has always been of great interest for biologists but since the last decades it has grown exponentially thanks to multidisciplinary approaches. Animals have found several ways to deal with the camouflage/communication trade-off in colouration, leading to the evolution of alternative patterns of variation of colourations at different levels including signal partitioning and spatial resolution of colouration. In this paper we analyse the variability of dorsal and ventral colouration in males and females of Maltese wall lizards in three populations on Linosa. We collected high-resolution digital images of dorsal, ventral and throat colouration from 61 lizards (32 males and 29 females). We showed that the colouration differs among sexes and body regions within the same individual. Colourations are also variable among individuals within population, as well as among different populations across the Island. Finally, we detected a lizard's colouration shifts with increasing body size. Those result supports the hypothesis that colouration in this species evolved under the competing pressures of natural and sexual selection to promote signals that are visible to conspecifics while being less perceptible to avian predators.
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