Technical Appendix to "Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy under Sectorial Heterogeneity"

This is the complete technical appendix to "Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy under Sectorial Heterogeneity".

Optimal Fiscal and Monetary Policy under Sectorial Heterogeneity

This paper characterizes optimal fiscal and monetary policy in a new keynesian model with sectorial heterogeneity in price stickiness. In particular, we (i) derive a purely quadratic welfare-based loss function from an approximation of the representative agent's utility function and (ii) provide the optimal target rule for fiscal and monetary policy. Differently from the homogeneous case, the loss function includes sectorial inflation variances instead of aggregate inflation, with weights proportional to the degree of price stickiness; and sectorial output gaps instead of aggregate output gap with equal weight in each sector. Optimal policy implies a very strong positive correlation among sectorial output gaps and some dispersion of sectorial inflation in response to shocks. Larger heterogeneity in price stickiness implies larger impact of shocks on aggregate inflation. Optimal taxes are more responsive in sectors with stickier prices.

Henri Temianka Correspondence; (photographs)

This collection contains photographs pertaining to the life, career, and activities of Henri Temianka, violin virtuoso, conductor, music teacher, and author.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/temianka_photos/1012/thumbnail.jp

DOMESTIC CARE WORK AND SLAVERY: A HUMAN-RIGHTS BASED APPROACH

openCare work is at the heart of humanity and our societies. We need care to survive in infancy, when we suffer an accident or illness, whether the impact is short, chronic or long-term, to support families and households, and to ensure the best possible quality of life as we age, including at the close of life. (ILO, 2022). Care is necessary for the existence and reproduction of societies and the workforce and for the overall well-being of every individual (ILO, 2018). Economies depend on care work to survive and thrive. (ILO, 2018). Yet, domestic work is one of the least protected sectors, both by law and by practice for a variety of gendered social, economic and cultural factors. The thesis aims to provide a global picture of the care economy from the angle of care workers, in particular from a human rights-based approach to care workers. It has four chapters. Chapter I looks at the main features of domestic care work and the socio-economic factors that affect the labour demand and supply in this sector. Through a human-rights based approach, Chapter II investigates the care workers’ risks of human rights violations. Chapter III looks at the regulatory system covering domestic work at the international level and the legal provisions regulating domestic care workers’ rights and the labour conditions of them. Finally, Chapter IV focuses on the processes that can help care workers, as rights holder and change makers, contribute to a shift of paradigm in the care sector.Care work is at the heart of humanity and our societies. We need care to survive in infancy, when we suffer an accident or illness, whether the impact is short, chronic or long-term, to support families and households, and to ensure the best possible quality of life as we age, including at the close of life. (ILO, 2022). Care is necessary for the existence and reproduction of societies and the workforce and for the overall well-being of every individual (ILO, 2018). Economies depend on care work to survive and thrive. (ILO, 2018). Yet, domestic work is one of the least protected sectors, both by law and by practice for a variety of gendered social, economic and cultural factors. The thesis aims to provide a global picture of the care economy from the angle of care workers, in particular from a human rights-based approach to care workers. It has four chapters. Chapter I looks at the main features of domestic care work and the socio-economic factors that affect the labour demand and supply in this sector. Through a human-rights based approach, Chapter II investigates the care workers’ risks of human rights violations. Chapter III looks at the regulatory system covering domestic work at the international level and the legal provisions regulating domestic care workers’ rights and the labour conditions of them. Finally, Chapter IV focuses on the processes that can help care workers, as rights holder and change makers, contribute to a shift of paradigm in the care sector

Marietta Anca. A Portrait of a Lady

Marietta Anca was not the only artist to catch the eye of a number of personalities who wrote about theater. Alice Voinescu, Camil Petrescu, Mihail Sebastian, N. Carandino, Lucia Demetrius, Ioan Massoff, Petre Comarnescu have left testimonies about the artists who were at the heart of Bucharest’s theatrical life. Their opinions, read with maximum possible objectivity, make up the portrait of an artist with a vigorous personality, over whom a veil had settled, seemingly inexplicably, since the last years of her career. She was in demand and she excelled in historical evocation tragedy and in the modern psychological analysis  drama

Henri Temianka Correspondence; (sinigaglia)

This collection contains material pertaining to the life, career, and activities of Henri Temianka, violin virtuoso, conductor, music teacher, and author. Materials include correspondence, concert programs and flyers, music scores, photographs, and books.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/temianka_correspondence/4167/thumbnail.jp

Mirroring and making sense of others

the parieto-frontal mirror circuit: interpretations and misinterpretations. Nature Rev. Neurosci. 11, 264\u2013274 (2010))1, Giacomo Rizzolatti and I were aiming to highlight the functional role of the parieto-frontal mirror network in understanding the actions and intentions of others. Leonhard Schilbach has recently argued (A second-person approach to other minds. Nature Rev. Neurosci. 20 May 2010 (doi: 10.1038/nrn2805-c1))2 that, although \u201cwell balanced\u201d, the Review does not take into account the enactive approach to social cognition and so overlooks the fundamental difference between being directly engaged in interaction with someone else (that is, having a second-person perspective) and merely observing others (assuming a third-person perspective). In this reply I argue that Schildbach''s criticism is misleading to characterize the mirror-based action and intention understanding as a pure third-person grasp of other individuals\u2019 mental states that is performed in a mere observational \u2014 that is, detached \u2014 stance, as it fails to appreciate the full implications of the discovery of the mirror system

Security Analysis of Multi-Factor Authentication Security Protocols

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is being increasingly adopted by on- line services in order to achieve an adequate level of security. MFA is based on security protocols, called MFA protocols, that integrate the use of credentials with additional identity proofs, called authentication factors (based on knowledge, possession or inherence). The authentication factors are provided through specific objects, called authenticators (e.g., hardware token). To date, MFA has been widely adopted in the most diverse security-critical application scenarios (e.g., online banking, eHealth). Various solutions have been proposed, leveraging MFA protocols which employ different kinds of authenticators and providing different user experience. When considering various MFA protocols, few questions may arise. How do MFA protocols differ in terms of (i) level of protection, (ii) compliance w.r.t. current regulations and (iii) complexity for the user? To answer the question concerning the level of protection, traditional verification techniques for security protocols require a formal specification of the protocol under analysis. However, as a matter of fact, several service providers employ ad-hoc MFA protocols and do not disclose their internals. In addition, classical attacker models, such as the Dolev-Yao adversary, hardly apply. Hence, new protocol modeling techniques and new attacker models should be investigated. Concerning regulations, public and private authorities have introduced directives and guidelines for the design of MFA protocols (e.g., recommendations for online payment services from the European Banking Authority, and the guidelines from NIST about the digital identity management through MFA). In principle, these initiatives aim to guide the design of more secure and usable MFA protocols, but there is no evidence that the existing MFA protocols actually comply with the aforementioned regulations. Thus, a novel methodology is needed to provide such an evidence. The ease-of-use is a relevant aspect to be considered in the analysis of an MFA protocol. Indeed, the use of multiple authenticators in the execution of an MFA protocol can negatively affect user experience, which can have an impact on its security as well. However, none of the research works managed to measure the usability of a conspicuous number of MFA protocols design. Hence, a methodology for evaluating the ease-of-use of an MFA protocol should be identified. In this work, we propose a framework to analyze MFA protocols, which does not rely on the implementation details, being able to assess the (i) level of protection, (ii) compliance w.r.t. current regulations and (iii) complexity for the user. To this aim, we define a specification language which is compatible with the typical (amount of) information publicly released by service providers on the employed MFA protocols. For what concerns the security analysis, we propose an evaluation of MFA protocols in terms of resistance against a set of attacker models, tailored for the specific case of MFA protocols. For what concerns the regulatory aspects and best practices, we include the possibility to evaluate a protocol in terms of compliance with a customizable set of requirements and best practices. Furthermore, for what concerns the ease-of-use of an MFA protocol, we propose a new metric, called complexity, for evaluating a protocol in terms of efforts that an user is required to perform during its execution. The aforementioned framework has been then implemented in a working tool, MuFASA, allowing (even non-expert) users to model an MFA protocol and to automatically analyze it. Finally, the presented framework has been applied on some selected use cases. First, it has been employed in the early stages of the design of a novel MFA protocol, integrated into the Citizens\u2019 Clinical Record platform developed in the Trentino region (Italy). Then, it has been used for performing a latitudinary study on online banking services, allowing us to model and analyze more than 150 MFA protocols employed by banks all over the world

Studio degli effetti del montelukast sul fenotipo pro-infiammatorio indotto in cellule muscolari lisce bronchiali umane da microparticelle di origine monocito/macrofagica

Lo scopo di questa tesi è stato quello di valutare l'azione proinfiammatoria svolta da microparticelle di orgine monocito/macrofagica su cellule muscolari lisce bronchiali. Il razionale di questo studio nasce dal fatto che le microparticelle hanno evidenziato un'azione proinfiammatoria su cellule umane eipteliali polmonari. La muscolatura liscia bronchiale è perciò un altro possibile bersaglio per l'azione delle microparticelle che quindi possono svolgere un ruolo nella patogenesi dell'asma

Modelli biomeccanici per lo studio della performance sportiva nel canottaggio

La modellizzazione biomeccanica di un gesto atletico costituisce un utile mezzo per indagare sia sugli aspetti cinematici e dinamici del movimento, sia per formulare considerazioni di carattere tecnico, necessarie per la valutazione della performance ottenuta come conseguenza del gesto eseguito. Nel canottaggio non esistono strumenti che valutino le prestazioni dei singoli atleti se non limitandosi alla potenza sviluppata nella durata dell’intera competizione. Il modello sviluppato in questa tesi consente di evidenziare, oltre alle differenze tra soggetti riguardanti gli aspetti energetici, anche le caratteristiche posturali di ogni singolo atleta, con il vantaggio di poter mettere in relazione la tecnica di voga con i risultati ottenuti. Il mezzo più comune di allenamento, utilizzato dagli atleti che svolgono la preparazione fisica per il canottaggio, è il vogatore indoor. Fimando alcuni soggetti durante l’esercizio di voga in palestra, ed estraendo dalle riprese informazioni di carattere cinematico, si è in grado di sviluppare un modello che descrive in modo completo la performance del singolo atleta e può essere utilizzato sia da chi esegue l’esercizio, sia da chi ha il compito di insegnare la disciplina sportiva, come controllo istantaneo della prestazione