Political institutions and central bank independence revisited

We build on earlier studies regarding Central Bank independence (CBI) by relating it to political, institutional and economic variables. The data suggest that CBI is positively related to the presence of federalism, the features of the electoral system and parties, the correlation between the shocks to the level of economic activity in the countries included in the sample and, for a sub-sample of economies, the convergence criteria to join the European Monetary Union (EMU).ICentral Bank independence; institutional systems; variable selection

SDN Architecture and Southbound APIs for IPv6 Segment Routing Enabled Wide Area Networks

The SRv6 architecture (Segment Routing based on IPv6 data plane) is a promising solution to support services like Traffic Engineering, Service Function Chaining and Virtual Private Networks in IPv6 backbones and datacenters. The SRv6 architecture has interesting scalability properties as it reduces the amount of state information that needs to be configured in the nodes to support the network services. In this paper, we describe the advantages of complementing the SRv6 technology with an SDN based approach in backbone networks. We discuss the architecture of a SRv6 enabled network based on Linux nodes. In addition, we present the design and implementation of the Southbound API between the SDN controller and the SRv6 device. We have defined a data-model and four different implementations of the API, respectively based on gRPC, REST, NETCONF and remote Command Line Interface (CLI). Since it is important to support both the development and testing aspects we have realized an Intent based emulation system to build realistic and reproducible experiments. This collection of tools automate most of the configuration aspects relieving the experimenter from a significant effort. Finally, we have realized an evaluation of some performance aspects of our architecture and of the different variants of the Southbound APIs and we have analyzed the effects of the configuration updates in the SRv6 enabled nodes

Joint Energy Efficient and QoS-aware Path Allocation and VNF Placement for Service Function Chaining

Service Function Chaining (SFC) allows the forwarding of a traffic flow along a chain of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs, e.g., IDS, firewall, and NAT). Software Defined Networking (SDN) solutions can be used to support SFC reducing the management complexity and the operational costs. One of the most critical issues for the service and network providers is the reduction of energy consumption, which should be achieved without impact to the quality of services. In this paper, we propose a novel resource (re)allocation architecture which enables energy-aware SFC for SDN-based networks. To this end, we model the problems of VNF placement, allocation of VNFs to flows, and flow routing as optimization problems. Thereafter, heuristic algorithms are proposed for the different optimization problems, in order find near-optimal solutions in acceptable times. The performance of the proposed algorithms are numerically evaluated over a real-world topology and various network traffic patterns. The results confirm that the proposed heuristic algorithms provide near optimal solutions while their execution time is applicable for real-life networks.Comment: Extended version of submitted paper - v7 - July 201

Traffic Engineering with Segment Routing: SDN-based Architectural Design and Open Source Implementation

Traffic Engineering (TE) in IP carrier networks is one of the functions that can benefit from the Software Defined Networking paradigm. By logically centralizing the control of the network, it is possible to "program" per-flow routing based on TE goals. Traditional per-flow routing requires a direct interaction between the SDN controller and each node that is involved in the traffic paths. Depending on the granularity and on the temporal properties of the flows, this can lead to scalability issues for the amount of routing state that needs to be maintained in core network nodes and for the required configuration traffic. On the other hand, Segment Routing (SR) is an emerging approach to routing that may simplify the route enforcement delegating all the configuration and per-flow state at the border of the network. In this work we propose an architecture that integrates the SDN paradigm with SR-based TE, for which we have provided an open source reference implementation. We have designed and implemented a simple TE/SR heuristic for flow allocation and we show and discuss experimental results.Comment: Extended version of poster paper accepted for EWSDN 2015 (version v4 - December 2015

The institutional design of monetary policy

The aim of this thesis is to provide a general framework for the analysis and interpretation of the determinants that help to define monetary stability goals. The main issue is that money supply, and therefore inflation are not exogenous; rather, they depend on interactions between monetary institutions and other economic agents (including governments, commercial banks, trade unions, etc.), as determined by the institutional rules and by the socioeconomic structure. This approach requires identifying factors that help to define the greater (or lesser) desirability of long‐term inflation control goals. In this regard, certain fundamental determinants characterizing the political, social, and economic context of decisions on monetary policy should be further analysed. Factors such as social sensitivity to the costs and benefits of inflation, the degree of political instability, the existence of asymmetrical information between the policymaker and the public influence the ability to be constrained by a rule or an institution. This work is therefore an attempt to carry out a theoretical and empirical analysis of the implications of these determinants for both the institutional design and the inflation rate. This is a very important issue, certain countries have often borrowed their institutional designs from others, but without achieving the same results in terms of control over inflation. More specifically, this thesis consists of four parts: 1. Monetary Policy in the presence of Imperfect Observability of the Objectives of Central Bankers. 2. On the Determinants of Central Bank Independence in open economies. 3. Political institutions and Central Bank Independence revisited. 4. Political Stabilization by an independent Central Bank

OSHI - Open Source Hybrid IP/SDN networking (and its emulation on Mininet and on distributed SDN testbeds)

The introduction of SDN in IP backbones requires the coexistence of regular IP forwarding and SDN based forwarding. The former is typically applied to best effort Internet traffic, the latter can be used for different types of advanced services (VPNs, Virtual Leased Lines, Traffic Engineering...). In this paper we first introduce the architecture and the services of an "hybrid" IP/SDN networking scenario. Then we describe the design and implementation of an Open Source Hybrid IP/SDN (OSHI) node. It combines Quagga for OSPF routing and Open vSwitch for OpenFlow based switching on Linux. The availability of tools for experimental validation and performance evaluation of SDN solutions is fundamental for the evolution of SDN. We provide a set of open source tools that allow to facilitate the design of hybrid IP/SDN experimental networks, their deployment on Mininet or on distributed SDN research testbeds and their test. Finally, using the provided tools, we evaluate key performance aspects of the proposed solutions. The OSHI development and test environment is available in a VirtualBox VM image that can be downloaded.Comment: Final version (Last updated August, 2014

Italian Spending on Education: a Long-Term Perspective

This paper analyses the long-term evolution of public spending on education in Italy. After presenting a historical overview of the Italian school system, we analyse the trend of public expenditure on education from the Unification of Italy up to the present day, comparing it with other items of public expenditure, in particular social expenditure. We also explore a long-term comparison of expenditure on education between some European countries. Our analysis seems to suggest extremely clear policy implications. Expenditure on the social system appears to be too high compared to expenditure on education, for this reason rebalancing intervention seems necessary

La mujer protagonista de la música argentina desde 1950

Actas de la I Jornadas de Música de la Escuela de Música de la U.N.R. Práctica Musical, Docencia e Investigación "Música en Contexto". Rosario, 14 y 15 de octubre, 2010.Para comenzar, este proyecto se aboca a la investigación de la producción musical académica de compositoras, pedagogas y musicólogas argentinas, recortada en un período ubicado desde 1950 en adelante. El relevamiento de sus obras será objeto de análisis para determinar la evolución y las tendencias. El análisis de las producciones se realizará según las metodologías contemporáneas que se consideren pertinentes, de acuerdo con el corpus estudiado. La selección de las obras se dirigirá hacia aquellas que sean representativas de una época, relevantes por el impacto generado a partir del conocimiento de la misma, significativas en tanto modificadoras de concepciones acerca de la música, de la educación musical, etc. Los objetos de estudio previamente recopilados y analizados se abordarán desde distintas dimensiones La producción generada a partir de la investigación permitirá constituir un archivo que servirá como material de consulta, para uso didáctico, para audiciones o como base para nuevas instancias investigativas