Valuing the landscape benefits of rural policies actions in Veneto (Italy)

<p class="p1">This study addresses, with reference to the landscape, a precise request of the EU to quantify the benefits of public expenditure in agriculture. It analyses the implications on rural landscape of some measures of the Common Agricultural Policy at a regional level, taking the Rural Development Programme (RDP) 2007-2013 of the Veneto Region, in north-eastern Italy, as case study. A choice experiment (CE) is applied to value four measures of the RDP that directly affect the landscape characteristics.<br />The CE results point out that the landscape benefits of the measures in the Veneto RDP are higher than the subsidies paid to farmers for the provision of services that improve landscape quality. The CE results suggest the opportunity to rethink the distribution of the subsidies.</p

The Value of a Properly Maintained Hiking Trail Network and a Traditional Landscape for Mountain Recreation in the Dolomites

Alpine mountains represent one of the most important tourist destinations in the world, constituting approximately 3.1% of the global tourism market when considering the tourist flows coming from abroad. While there may be numerous factors that motivate tourists to choose rural areas, an important role is played by the opportunity to visit well-conserved landscapes and uncontaminated natural areas. The purpose of this study was to make a monetary valuation of the social benefits generated by the adoption of three measures of the Rural Development Plan (RDP) of Veneto (Italy) aimed specifically at enhancing the recreational usability of the mountain territory. In this regard, a discrete choice experiment (DCE) was applied for the economic valuation, and a qualitative survey was used to collect the opinion of respondents related to the measures to protect the meadows and mountain hiking trails. According to the DCE estimates, on average, the benefits due to the conservation of the existing meadows and pastures was equal to \u20ac851 per hectare, those due to the conservation and improvement of the trail network were \u20ac12,260 per km, and the benefits due to the recovery of the meadows and pastures of uncultivated and abandoned areas for naturalistic purposes amounted to \u20ac6,852 per hectare. Comparing the estimates obtained with the expenditure incurred by the RDP to finance the three actions considered in our DCE, it can be seen that the benefits are considerably higher than the costs, especially with regard to the conservation of paths and the recovery of abandoned areas for naturalistic purposes

Testing the difference between experts\u2019 and lay people\u2019s landscape preferences

The European Landscape Convention, ratified by 40 nations, has placed emphasis on the necessity that the value of the landscape is assessed by the population. However it is standard practice that a few experts decide which areas are of landscape interest and the transformations that are compatible with their conservation. To compare the landscape preferences of experts and lay people a study was done on the Po Delta Natural Park (Italy) using a psychophysical approach. In our case study the average scores of experts and lay people are not very different. However it was also ascertained that the experts evaluate the presence of some elements in a way that differs from lay people. As the responsibility for landscape policies is normally devolved to a few experts it would appear necessary that the preferences and opinions of lay people should always be carefully analysed

Sensitivity analysis of volatility: a new tool for risk management

The extension of GARCH models to the multivariate setting has been fraught with difficulties. In this paper, we suggest to work with univariate portfolio GARCH models. We show how the multivariate dimension of the portfolio allocation problem may be recovered from the univariate approach. The main tool we use is the "variance sensitivity analysis", which measures the change in the portfolio variance as a consequence of an infinitesimal change in the portfolio allocation. We derive the sensitivity of the univariate portfolio GARCH variance to the portfolio weights, by analytically computing the derivatives of the estimated GARCH variance with respect to these weights. We suggest a new and simple method to estimate full variance-covariance matrices of portfolio assets. An application to real data portfolios shows how to implement our methodology and compares its performance against that of selected popular alternatives. JEL Classification: C32, C53, G15Dynamic Correlations, GARCH, risk management, Sensitivity Analysis

Organic vs local claims: substitutes or complements for wine consumers? A marketing analysis with a discrete choice experiment

This study aims to understand people's preferences concerning five different extrinsic characteristics of wine and among them organic production. Consumers' preferences were assessed by means of a choice experiment on a sample of people living in Friuli-Venezia-Giulia (north-eastern Italy). The wines considered in the hypothetical market were differentiated considering the area of origin, landscape features, production method (organic or conventional), wine denomination of origin label and price. According to our results, denomination of origin labelling is the most important factor considered by all respondents. More than one quarter of the sample is interested in purchasing organic wine and willing to pay more for it. In this respect, organic production combined with a good communication strategy in order to increase the knowledge about its benefits can be a good marketing diversification strategy. Therefore, organic production seems to be a necessary (for at least 27% of people) but not sufficient condition in characterizing wine quality: it should be supported by an appropriate promotion of the product characteristics

Evaluating the efficacy of psychodynamic treatment on a single case of autism. A qualitative research.

Autism spectrum disorder refers to a group of diseases determined by multiple conditions and primarily defined on the basis of behavioral patterns. The literature and guidelines provide indications regarding adequate treatments, underlying how psychologically and behaviorally structured interventions, should be considered the best programs. Anyway, there is still a scarcity of studies evidencing the effectiveness of therapeutic and developmental approaches situated in a psychodynamic framework and researches aimed to evaluate the quality of psychodynamic interventions on autism are rare. The present study illustrate a qualitative research on the single-case intervention with an autistic adolescent, admitted to the Educational - Rehabilitation Centre Antenna 112. The Centre bases its intervention on a specific psychodynamic approach, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, named Pratique \ue0 Plusieurs. The efficacy of the psychodynamic intervention is evaluated by monitoring the therapeutic process with the adolescent from his admission. The evaluation took place in three different stages of the intervention: at the beginning of the treatment, after 6 months and after 12 months. In particular, the level of adaptive behaviors (Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale), Social Communication (Social Communication Questionnaire), and the seriousness of behavioral patterns, specific for the autism disorders (Childhood Autism Rating Scale) have been assessed. Results highlight that the psychodynamic setting of the Centre and the therapeutic intervention, which takes place in it, foster an improvement of adaptive behavior, such as life skills and socialization. Limitations of the present study and clinical implications regarding residential psychodynamic treatments in cases of autism disorders are discussed

Un lexique satellite : les diagnostics infirmiers

L’autonomisation des soins infirmiers a entraîné l’élaboration d’une terminologie spécifique pour formaliser les pratiques de cette composante des services de santé. Il sera question dans cet article de dresser un panorama du lexique employé dans la pratique clinique, les diagnostics infirmiers, à partir d’un corpus trilingue basé sur les taxinomies de l’association NANDA International. Cet outillage terminologique est développé d’abord en anglais, suivant principalement l’arrière-plan théorique de Henderson (1966; 1969) et de Gordon (1987), et traduit en français et en italien. Ce corpus se caractérise par son homogénéité, les termes étant constitués presque totalement par des mots composés autochtones. L’analyse porte sur les mots communs récurrents dans la composition des termes, sur les choix de traduction et les structures récurrentes dans les trois langues. De cette façon, on constate que le lexique des diagnostics infirmiers constitue une illustration de la contiguïté entre lexique commun et lexique spécialisé, ou «satellite» dans le sens évoqué par la méthodologie du lexique-grammaire

Clear, Easy, Plain, and Simple as Keywords for Text Simplification

In this paper, we distinguish between four interconnected notions that recur in the literature on text simplification: clarity, easiness, plainness, and simplicity. While plain language and easy language have both been the subject of standardization efforts, there are few attempts to define text clarity and text simplicity. Indeed, in the definition of plain language, clarity has been favored at the expense of simplicity but is employed as a self-evident notion. Meanwhile, text simplicity suffers from a negative connotation and is more likely to be defined by its antonym, text complexity. In our analysis, we examine the current definitions of plain language and easy language and discuss common definitions of text clarity and text complexity. We propose a model of text simplification that can clarify the transition from specialized texts to plain language texts, and easy language texts. It is our contention that text simplification should be placed in a more general framework of discursive ergonomics. Since "plain language" is an international movement, we will compare the English, French and German languages in our examples