Agricultural Expenditure in the Future European Union Budget

Agricultural and Food Policy, Agricultural Finance,

Pairs Trading in the Index Option Market

We test the Index options market efficiency by means of a statistical arbitrage strategy, i.e. pairs trading. Using data on five Index Option Market of the Euro Area, we first identify any potential option mispricing based on deviations from the long-run relationship linking their implied volatilities. Then, we evaluate the profitability of a simple pair trading strategy on the mispriced options. Despite the signals of potential mispricing are frequent, the statistical arbitrage does not produce significant profits, thus providing evidence in support of Index Option market efficiency. The results, which remain unchanged in a variety of robustness checks, also prove that the observed profits are strongly associated to the moneyness of the options traded while they do not correlate to options’ maturity or to financial market turbulence

Effect of anisotropy on the onset of convection in rotating bi-disperse Brinkman porous media

AbstractThermal convection in a horizontally isotropic bi-disperse porous medium (BDPM) uniformly heated from below is analysed. The combined effects of uniform vertical rotation and Brinkman law on the stability of the steady state of the momentum equations in a BDPM are investigated. Linear and nonlinear stability analysis of the conduction solution is performed, and the coincidence between linear instability and nonlinear stability thresholds in the$$L^2$$L2-norm is obtained

Hub-and-Spoke or else? Free trade agreements in the 'enlarged' European Union

The object of this paper is to estimate if and how the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) and the Baltic Free Trade Agreement (BFTA) exerted a significant impact on intra-European trade, effectively reducing the influence of the European Association Agreements (EAs) in shaping the European trade structure as a hub-and-spoke system - with the EU15 being the hub and the CEECs the spoke. This paper analyses bilateral trade flows between eight CEECs and EU-23. We estimate a gravity equation using a system GMM dynamic panel data approach. Results support the assumptions that gravity forces and "persistence effects" matter. With respect to the effect of free trade agreements, evidence is found that Free trade agreements between CEECs matter: There is evidence that the presence of intra-periphery agreements helped expand intra-periphery trade and limited the emergence of a "hub-and-spoke" relationship between CEECs and EU. This results have important policy implications for the trade strategy of "future" EU members of the Southeastern European Countries as well as of the Southern Mediterranean Countries. According to the empirical results, these countries should move towards a regional free-trade area as exemplified by the CEFTA and the BFTA to avoid "hub-and-spoke" effects.Trade flows, regional integration, EU eastward enlargement, gravity model, dynamic panel data

Historical Single-Use Heritage Assets: A Treasure to be Catalogued and Preserved

Special-purpose historical assets are those built in the twentieth century, in certain environmental, social, industrial, economic, infrastructural contexts, which carried out a single function. This unique function determined the dimensions, partitions, accesses and, in short, the very particular and specific characteristics that excluded their reuse. Having lost their usefulness, they are destined in the space of a few years to disap­pear, to be demolished, their past lost without leaving any memory or mark, because they are not protected by current legislation.The proposed cataloging and conservation of these structures is aimed at focus­ing attention on the afore-mentioned historical assets and protecting these significant testimonies not only from an architectural perspective but also from that of the history of work, popular culture and social aggregation.Gli edifici finalizzati sono quelle costruzione sorte, nel Novecento, in determinati contesti ambientali, sociali, industriali, economici, infrastrutturali, che svolgevano una unica funzione. Questa unica funzione ne ha determinato le dimensioni, le ripartizioni, gli accessi e, in sintesi, le caratteristiche così particolari e specifiche che fanno esclu­dere riutilizzi. Perdendo la loro utilità, sono destinati nel giro di pochi anni a scomparire, ad essere demoliti, a perdersi nella memoria senza lasciare spoglie anche perché non oggetto di tutela da parte delle Normative vigenti.La proposta di catalogazione e conservazione degli edifici finalizzati è finalizzata a porre l’attenzione sui suddetti manufatti e a tutelare queste testimonianze significative dal punto di vista non solo architettonico ma anche della storia del lavoro, della cultura popolare, della aggregazione sociale

Approaches for Modelling User’s Acceptance of Innovative Transportation Technologies and Systems

The gradual penetration of new transport modes and/or new technologies (advanced information systems, automotive technologies, etc.) requires effective theoretical paradigms able to interpret and model transportation system users’ propensity to purchase and use them. Along with the traditional approaches mainly based on random utility theory, it is a common opinion that numerous nonquantitative variables (such as psychological factors, attitudes, perceptions, etc.) may affect users’ behaviors. Different traditional approaches and more advanced ones (e.g. hybrid choice model (HCM) with latent variables, theory of planned behaviour, regret theory, prospect theory, etc.) may be identified and properly applied in the literature. In particular, the chapter will focus on the hybrid choice modeling with latent variables, aiming to incorporate users’ perceptions, attitudes and concerns in order to model the user’s propensity to use and the willingness to buy a new technology. The methodology overview and the results of the application at real data are discussed

Accounting for attitudes and perceptions influencing users' willingness to purchase Electric Vehicles through a Hybrid Choice Modeling approach based on Analytic Hierarchy Process

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Psychosocial Training: A Case of Self-Efficacy Improvement in an Italian School

The changes that the regulatory institutions have imposed on the Italian school system over the last decades may actually result in contradictory effects at the individual and organizational levels: resistance or indifference on the one hand and training or coping strategies on the other. The paper focuses on the impact of such changes on teachers, as professional workers within public schools and individual participants of change. The paper refers to psychosocial training as a coping strategy, analysing how school teachers deal with work-related stress, and what impact a training intervention might have on some individual dimensions. Subsequently, in the longitudinal study presented, we analysed whether the training intervention conducted was effective in terms of learning and change. The case under consideration is a primary school located in the South of Italy, and the participants in the training and research were 92 female teachers. In order to investigate the effectiveness of the designed and applied training programme, we measured how some important psychological dimensions have changed over time: self-efficacy, job satisfaction and interpersonal strain. According to a sociological learning approach, the results suggest the effectiveness of training programmes as enablers of change and solutions to some change paradoxes; when they respond to the identified needs, they are based on practical activities that require a collective participation, they focus on social relationships and processes and the knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. In the school context, the psychosocial training might represent a solution, if not a prevention strategy, for change management

Engaging Public Servants: Public Service Motivation, Work Engagement and Work-Related Stress

Considering the ongoing international debate on the role of public administrations in economic systems, public service motivation (PSM) has significantly and increasingly attracted the attention of practitioners and scholars in the past two decades. Following the research streams that have investigated topics of organizational behavior in the public context, this study examines the influence of PSM on the feeling of job satisfaction for public employees. The novelty of the study lies in linking some features of the work context considered to be more prevalent in public organizations with specific job characteristics, seen as determinant antecedents of job satisfaction. Based on two complementary studies conducted in an Italian public administration, this paper shows how PSM influences job satisfaction, job engagement, and life satisfaction. Additionally, the findings display how job engagement affects both job and life satisfaction in these particular contexts. Furthermore, the paper sheds new light on how to deal with such problems and at the same time opens new avenues for investigation

Analysis of a model for waterborne diseases with Allee effect on bacteria

A limitation of current modeling studies in waterborne diseases (one of the leading causes of death worldwide) is that the intrinsic dynamics of the pathogens is poorly addressed, leading to incomplete, and often, inadequate understanding of the pathogen evolution and its impact on disease transmission and spread. To overcome these limitations, in this paper, we consider an ODEs model with bacterial growth inducing Allee effect. We adopt an adequate functional response to significantly express the shape of indirect transmission. The existence and stability of biologically meaningful equilibria is investigated through a detailed discussion of both backward and Hopf bifurcations. The sensitivity analysis of the basic reproduction number is performed. Numerical simulations confirming the obtained results in two different scenarios are shown