Personal Saving and Social Security in Italy: Fresh Evidence from a Time Series Analysis

The paper provides an econometric analysis of the aggregate saving function of Italian households in the vein of the life cycle theory. Results from an ECM representation based on yearly data for 1951-1998 point to depressive effects on private consumption of recent reforms of social security, actual and expected for next few years. In order to compensate for both reductions in actual pension payments and increased uncertainty about their future claims, households stepped up accumulation of real and financial assets since the beginning of the nineties. First estimates of capital gains do not show a significant impact on consumption demand, in the short and in the long period: their high volatility has likely hindered a fair assessment of their contribution to personal purchasing power on the part of households. Demographic changes, while in the long run not seemingly determined in conjunction with the economic variables we consider, turn out to play a significant role in the evolution of consumption demand.life cycle, saving, pension wealth, capital gains, demographic changes

Social mobility and endogenous cycles in redistribution

By allowing median voterÂ’s location and preferred policy to change over time, a variety of redistributive policies results in the long-run with no unique relationship to inequality. Single outcome depends on the interaction between the pure economic structure and policy action in determining wealth distribution over time. The standard positive correlation between redistribution and inequality is confirmed when the pattern of social mobility, potentially prevailing in a free market, proves robust to public action. Otherwise the non-linear relationship found in recent literature is confirmed. With balanced intensity of backward and upward mobility in free market, policy cycles endogenously arise, with inequality shrinking and enlarging periodically and counter-cyclically.social mobility, political cycle, credit rationing, redistributive policy

A sectoral analysis of Italy's development : 1861 -2010

Italy‘s economic growth over its 150 years of unified history did not occur at a steady pace nor was it balanced across sectors. Relying on an entirely new input (labour and capital) database by us built and presented in the Appendix, together with new Banca d‘Italia estimates of GDP by sector, this paper evaluates the different labour productivity growth trends within the Italian economy‘s sectors, as well as the contribution of structural change to productivity growth. Italy‘s performance is then set in an international context: a comparison of sectoral labour productivity growth rates and levels within a selected sample of countries (UK, US, Germany, Japan, India) allows us to better time, quantify and gauge the causes of Italy‘s catching-up process and subsequent more recent slowdown. Finally, the paper analyses the proximate sources of Italy‘s growth, relative to the other countries, in a standard growth accounting framework, in an attempt also to disentangle the contribution of both total factor productivity growth and capital deepening to the country‘s labour productivity dynamics

Changing institutions in the European market: the impact on mark-ups and rents allocation

We investigate whether the completion of the Single Market Programme has enhanced competition on the product markets across European countries, taking into account the companion structural reforms undertaken by the member countries, particularly in the labour market and the institutional setting of important industries (i.e. network industries). We test for a break in both mark-ups and the division of rent between capital and labour based on a statistical model incorporating efficient bargaining in the labour market. Using industry data for ten EU countries we find that, without controlling for changes in the rent sharing, mark-up estimates tend to increase in the 1990s. However, once we assume efficient bargaining in the labour market, mark-ups remain virtually unchanged or, in some sectors or groups of countries, even decrease; this reflects the declining shares of rents accruing to workers as a result of their diminished bargaining power. The evidence is particularly strong for high and medium-tech manufacturing, for construction and for those activities that went through deep institutional changes and privatization programmes.institutional changes, mark-up, rent-sharing

Changing Institutions in the European Market: the Impact on Mark-ups and Rents Allocation

In this paper, we investigate whether the completion of the Single Market Programme has enhanced competition on the product markets across European countries, while taking into account the companion structural reforms undertaken by the member countries. In particular, since the Single Market Programme went hand in hand with major reforms in the labour market and in the institutional setting of important industries (i.e. network industries), we test for a break in both mark-ups and the division of rent between capital and labour. For this purpose we encompass efficient bargaining in the labour market in both our theoretical and empirical model. Using industry data for ten EU countries we find that, without controlling for changes in the rent sharing, mark-up estimates tend to increase in the 1990s. However, once we assume efficient bargaining in the labour market, mark-ups remain virtually unchanged or even decrease in some sectors or groups of countries; the result stems from the declining shares of rents accruing to workers owing to a decline in their bargaining power. Without controlling for this development, a rise in firms� profitability due to rent reallocation could be wrongly interpreted as an increase in market power. At the industry level the evidence is particularly strong for high and medium-tech manufacturing, for construction and for those activities that went through deep institutional changes and privatization programmes.Mark-ups, Rent Sharing, Bargaining

Prices of residential property in Italy: constructing a new indicator

We present a new indicator of house prices in Italy, with more extensive geographical and time coverage. The new indicator now makes it possible to analyze medium- and long-term trends with satisfactory representation of the Italian housing market. It also allows for timely updating, for prompt assessment of housing input both to the business cycle and to inflationary pressures. We offer a preliminary identification, based solely on graphical inspection, of four different property price cycles since the late 1960s; the latest began at the end of the 1990s and signaled a slowdown since 2006. Finally, we tentatively assess the effect of including transactions in dwellings in the Italian HICP basket according to the net acquisition approach, which apparently results in about a quarter point of additional inflation each year since 2000.business cycle, housing market, property prices, inflation measures

A Sectoral Analysis of Italy's Development, 1861-2011

Italy's economic growth over its 150 years of unified history did not occur at a steady pace nor was it balanced across sectors. Relying on an entirely new input (labour and capital) database by us built and presented in the Appendix, together with new Banca d'Italia estimates of GDP by sector, this paper evaluates the different labour productivity growth trends within the Italian economy's sectors, as well as the contribution of structural change to productivity growth. Italy's performance is then set in an international context: a comparison of sectoral labour productivity growth rates and levels within a selected sample of countries (UK, US, Germany, Japan, India) allows us to better time, quantify and gauge the causes of Italy's catching-up process and subsequent more recent slowdown. Finally, the paper analyses the proximate sources of Italy's growth, relative to the other countries, in a standard growth accounting framework, in an attempt also to disentangle the contribution of both total factor productivity growth and capital deepening to the country's labour productivity dynamics.Labour productivity, sectoral disaggregation, international comparison, growth accounting

A Sectoral Analysis of Italy's Development: 1861 -2010

Italy’s economic growth over its 150 years of unified history did not occur at a steady pace nor was it balanced across sectors. Relying on an entirely new input (labour and capital) database by us built and presented in the Appendix, together with new Banca d’Italia estimates of GDP by sector, this paper evaluates the different labour productivity growth trends within the Italian economy’s sectors, as well as the contribution of structural change to productivity growth. Italy’s performance is then set in an international context: a comparison of sectoral labour productivity growth rates and levels within a selected sample of countries (UK, US, Germany, Japan, India) allows us to better time, quantify and gauge the causes of Italy’s catching-up process and subsequent more recent slowdown. Finally, the paper analyses the proximate sources of Italy’s growth, relative to the other countries, in a standard growth accounting framework, in an attempt also to disentangle the contribution of both total factor productivity growth and capital deepening to the country’s labour productivity dynamicsLabour, productivity, sectoral disaagregation, international comparison growth,accounting

Big Data for the Real-Time Analysis of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory

Lo scopo di questo lavoro di tesi è quello di progettare e sviluppare un framework che supporti l'analisi in tempo reale nel contesto del Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). CTA è un consorzio internazionale che comprende 1420 membri provenienti da oltre 200 istituti da 31 Nazioni. CTA punta ad essere il più grande e più sensibile osservatorio ground-based di raggi gamma di prossima generazione in grado di gestire un'elevata quantità di dati e un'alta velocità di trasmissione, compresa tra i 0,5 e i 10 GB/s, con una rate di acquisizione nominale di 6 kHz. A tale riguardo, è stata sviluppata la RTAlib in grado di fornire un'API semplice e ad alte prestazioni per archiviare o fare caching dei dati generati durante la fase di ricostruzione e analisi. Per far fronte alle elevate velocità di trasmissione di CTA, la RTAlib sfrutta il multiprocesso, il multi-threading, le transazioni ed un accesso trasparente a MySQL o Redis per far fronte a diversi casi d’uso. Tutte queste funzionalità sono state testate ottenendo risultati entro i requisiti richiesti. In particolare, con la libreria sviluppata si riesce a fare caching di dati con Redis, con processi scrittori e lettori che lavorano in parallelo, ad una rate di 8 kHz in scrittura e 30 kHz in lettura. Il team in cui ho lavorato ha basato sui principi dell'approccio Scrum e DevOps il proprio processo di sviluppo del software, in particolare dalle unit test fino alla continuous integration, utilizzando tools ad accesso pubblico su GitHub oppure tramite Jenkins. Grazie a questo approccio si è puntato ad avere una elevata qualità del codice fin dall’inizio del progetto, e questo è risultato uno degli approcci più importanti per ottenere i risultati raggiunti