Oliari and the European Court of Human Rights: Where the Court Failed

The European Court of Human Rights revisited the issue of legal recognition for same-sex partnerships on July 21, 2015 when it decided Oliari and Others v. Italy. This Note explores the implications of that decision and what it may mean for same-sex couples within Italy and throughout the Council of Europe. Through a careful analysis of the decision, this Note concludes that Oliari provides slight yet important movement on the issue of a Contracting State’s obligation to afford legal recognition for same-sex partnerships, but a practical implementation of the Court’s holding likely will yield little additional movement in more conservative Contracting States, as the factors utilized to find a violation on the part of Italy remain highly unique to the Italian experience, rendering any perception of a victory as merely psychological in nature

How many labour force states? An analysis based on the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS)

The motivation of this paper is to investigate the characteristics of the British labour force, using data from the BHPS (British Household Panel Survey). The goal is to examine whether there are statistically significant differences between the unemployed and non participants, as well as inside each of the two groups, considering their transitions in the job market. Using logistic regression for a pooled cross section-time series sample of employed as well as non employed persons, 3 different Out of Work subgroups are identified: Seeking Out of Work, Attached Out of Work, and Voluntary Out of Work. The first group can be broadly assimilated to the official definition of unemployment, ILO unemployment, while all the others are usually classified as economically inactive. Nonetheless, the last two groups are characterised by significantly different transition rates, showing a behaviourally distinct attitude in their labour market dynamics. This result points out that the aggregate non employment has several dimensions, which are not caught by the distinction between unemployment and economic inactivity, and should be accounted for by policy makers and researchers.inactivity; attachment; transition probabilities.

Dual Labour Market Theories And Irregular Jobs: Is There a Dualism Even in The Irregular Sector?

The research deals with the characteristics of the irregular labour. Current literature considers that irregular labour arises because of the heavy tax burden on labour, or because of the existence of regulations which impose too many constraints on the labour market. In Italy the labour market has some effective constraints, for instance, due to firing regulations, minimum wage legislation, or to regulations on multiple job holdings (for instance it is only since last year that retired people can have new jobs legally), whereas, regarding taxation, we think that it is not always a valid explanation of irregular labour. Actually, during past years there were several facilities to new hiring, especially in Southern Italy. We suggest that irregular jobs can originate from different causes, and, consequently, they can have different characteristics, referred to as good and bad irregular match. As to our opinion, dual labour market theories are the main framework for studying this phenomenon. This theory assesses that there are two tiers in the labour market, therefore, two type of jobs: the jobs in the primary sector and those in the secondary sector; the secondary tier of the market is the one where turnover is more accentuated. This hypothesis is supported by some empirical observation about irregular labour. Actually, data available for Italy, (INPS), tells us that irregular workers, in the most of cases, have been employed very recently. The 85% of irregular workers censored by INPS during 2001 had been working for less than 12 months; the same percentage in 2002 was 0.88. Dual labour market approach has been used by Boeri and Garibaldi (2002), who analyzed irregular labour in depressed areas. We use a similar framework, which is mainly adapted from the research of Acemoglu (2001), where dualism arises as endogenous choice caused by the different technology used in two different sectors.bad irregular match; good irregular match

Search on the job in European countries: evidence based on the European Community Household Panel Survey (ECHP)

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Structural and Cyclical Patterns of Underground Labour Input in Italy from 1980 to 2004

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Market Consumption and Hidden Consumption: A Test for Substitutability

In this paper we perform an empirical analysis on the relationship between private consumption and underground economy for the Italian case. We find that private market consumption and underground (or hidden) consumption may be defined as ”complementary goods”: an increase in underground consumption tends to rise family market consumption and increase its marginal utility. An implication of this result is that the nonmarket sector does not offer hedging opportunities to the consumer-worker as stressed in Busato and Chiarini (2002) artificial economy. Moreover, wealth effects associated with a change in underground consumption are negative. A statistical model confirms this structural interpretation.-

MARKET COMSUMPTION AND HIDDEN CONSUMPTION. A TEST FOR SUBSTITUTABILITY

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Self-harm in a men's prison: staff's and prisoners' perspectives.

This thesis draws on feminist and critical phenomenological perspectives to explore the issue of self-harm in men's prisons. In relation to what remains a "hidden problem" (Howard League, 1999, p. 1), the needs of men harming themselves with no apparent suicidal intent have been particularly overlooked, as have those of staff dealing with this complex behaviour. In-depth interviews with 20 adult male prisoners and 38 members of staff explored participants' experiences, views and concerns in relation to repetitive, non-suicidal self-harm. A pluralistic methodological approach, drawing on the principles of thematic and discourse analysis, informed the analysis of interview data, to reveal dominant themes, as well as tensions, inconsistencies and possibilities for change. As shown by previous studies, the notion of non-suicidal self-harm as "attention seeking" was a recurrent theme amongst staff, especially officers, doctors and nurses. This was situated within multiple, and at times overlapping, discourses, including 'medication seeking', 'poor coping' and 'cry for help' themes. In many accounts, less stigmatising discourses also existed, but were applied to specific types of 'self-harmers' (often a minority) in a rigid and hierarchical manner. Interviews with specialists and prisoners challenged this "stereotypical view", re-positioning men who self-harm as 'victims' and/or 'survivors' of their "imported vulnerability" (Liebling, 1995), and of the "pains of imprisonment" (Sykes, 1958). Amongst the latter, difficult relations with staff, and negative reactions to self-harm, were reported to have important implications for prisoners and their self-harming behaviours. Locating these responses within the context of staffs roles and occupational cultures helped to further understand and deconstruct the sorts of reactions that prisoners identified as "dangerous" and dehumanising, and also brought attention to their possible functions and effects for staff themselves. The wider context of work also provided a useful focus to consider how negative staff reactions to self-harm may be addressed. Eliciting staffs views and preferences for training, support and supervision revealed some of the tensions in supporting staff – and prisoners - in an under-resourced and over-crowded environment, and where a 'macho' form of managerialism, and actuarial conceptualisations of 'care', arguably hinder the welfare of both prisoners and staff. The thesis concludes by reflecting on these findings, the ways in which they were produced, and their wider implications for future policy and research

Bayesian statistical analysis of ground-clutter for the relative calibration of dual polarization weather radars

A new data processing methodology, based on the statistical analysis of ground-clutter echoes and aimed at investigating the stability of the weather radar relative calibration, is presented. A Bayesian classification scheme has been used to identify meteorological and/or ground-clutter echoes. The outcome is evaluated on a training dataset using statistical score indexes through the comparison with a deterministic clutter map. After discriminating the ground clutter areas, we have focused on the spatial analysis of robust and stable returns by using an automated region-merging algorithm. The temporal series of the ground-clutter statistical parameters, extracted from the spatial analysis and expressed in terms of percentile and mean values, have been used to estimate the relative clutter calibration and its uncertainty for both co-polar and differential reflectivity. The proposed methodology has been applied to a dataset collected by a C-band weather radar in southern Italy

Moonlighting Production, Tax Rates and Capital Subsidies

Informal firms play a crucial role in both developing and developed countries, and there is evidence of a larger presence of moonlighting firms over ghost firms. The former are firms that operate simultaneously in the official and unofficial sectors, whereas the ghost firms undertake their production only underground. In order to deal with this evidence, through an ad-hoc assumption we represent a specific technological advantage of moonlighting firms over ghost firms, modelled through an aggregate-capital externality. In this setting we examine the steady state effect of fiscal policies aimed to support firms, in particular investment subsidies and tax allowances, on firm size and underground production. Among the main results, a tax cut (rise), induces the moonlighting firm to engage in more (less) official production. Contrary to the presumption that subsidies may also be useful for pushing firms to operate over ground, in the presence of moonlighting technology, the incentives to improve capital stock turn out to be counterproductive in that they increase the unofficial economy overall.formal and informal sectors, capital investment, tax exemptions