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Is Economics What Women Economists Do? Gender Differences in Fields of Research Among Top Economists
No full textThis chapter analyses gender differences in the evolution of academic production to describe recent topics of interests among economists around the world. Specifically, using RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) as a primary source of information, the chapter tests if there is a convergence in research interests between men and women who are considered top economists. Analyzing the evolution of the gender composition across fields of research within economics is a necessary step in the direction of conceiving economic research as a social activity imbued with power dynamics deeply gendered
Towards a novel contactless autonomic biomarker: Investigating the relationship between heart rate variability and facial temperature during resting state
No full textFacial temperature is a promising non-invasive index of autonomic activity, yet its dynamics during resting state remain largely unexplored. In the present study, we investigated the relationship between facial temperature in the key regions of the nose tip and the periorbital area, and cardiac activity. Facial temperature was measured using functional infrared thermal imaging, while cardiac parasympathetic activity was indexed by high-frequency (HF) power and the root mean square of successive differences (RMSSD) of heart rate variability (HRV). Analyses included (i) grand-average correlations to identify overarching physiological patterns, (ii) within-subject correlations to explore the strength of individual-level relationship, and (iii) between-subject correlations to examine inter-individual variability in the association between cardiac and thermal signals. Across 32 participants, during a 13.5-min resting-state session, HF power showed a positive association with nose-tip temperature and a negative association with periorbital temperature, whereas RMSSD showed weaker effects. A differential temperature index (nose-tip minus periorbital) emerged as the most robust correlate of HF power. These findings suggest that facial thermal dynamics mirror vagal modulation at rest and that the differential index, which integrates information from distinct facial areas, may offer a sensitive, contactless indicator of autonomic activity
Unemployment risk, liquidity traps, and monetary policy
No full textWe study optimal monetary policy in a model with incomplete markets, in the form of uninsurable unemployment risk, and an occasionally binding zero lower bound (ZLB) constraint. The optimal policy consists of keeping the nominal rate at zero longer than implied by current macroeconomic conditions. Such policy improves expected labour market conditions, substantially mitigating the rise in unemployment risk and precautionary savings. As a result, we find that market incompleteness does not significantly amplify contractions in output and inflation at the ZLB. However, when the central bank follows more realistic policy rules instead of the optimal policy, incomplete markets exacerbate the fall in demand, emphasising the importance of unemployment insurance
All-optical subtractive convolution in photochromic absorbing media
No full textOptical image recognition represents a promising alterna- tive to traditional digital methods. In this paper, we present a fully optical system that performs subtraction convolu- tion, meaning that common features between two light maps, a reference and an unknown to be recognized, are elimi- nated. This is due to the use of a material with induced absorption at the heart of the beam interaction: a thin film of TII photochromic molecules in epoxy resin. The increased absorption in the illuminated regions of the pho- tochromic material causes the optical convolution between two light beams to eliminate the regions with common fea- tures, leaving only the dissimilar features in transmission. Both theoretical and experimental results demonstrate high selectivity and resolution, highlighting the great potential of photochromic materials for reconfigurable optical proces- sors
Lateral distribution of endometriotic lesions: the anatomical recesses hypothesis. A systematic review and meta-analysis
No full textStudy question: Are endometriotic lesions affecting bilateral organs or anatomical structures distributed symmetrically on both sides of the body? Summary answer: The left-sided preponderance of pelvic endometriotic lesions, and the right-sided dominance of thoracic and inguinal lesions, suggest that endometriotic lesions exhibit a non-random, asymmetric lateral distribution. What is known already: Evaluating the anatomical distribution of endometriotic lesions may elucidate the underlying pathogenic mechanism(s) of the disease. If the coelomic metaplasia or embryonic cell remnant theory is correct, a symmetrical right-left pattern would be expected. Conversely, retrograde menstruation would likely result in asymmetrical distribution, influenced by gravity, peritoneal fluid circulation, and anatomical niches. Study design size duration: This systematic review with meta-analysis included full-length, English-language articles published up to 10 June 2024. Literature searches were performed in PubMed/Medline and Embase databases with the keyword 'endometriosis', 'lateral', 'distribution', 'right', 'left', and 'asymmetry'. Participants/materials setting methods: The review focused on anatomical structures commonly affected by endometriosis with surgically defined right or left laterality: ovaries, uterosacral ligaments, colon, ureters, inguinal regions, and hemithorax (diaphragm, pleura, lungs). Case reports were excluded. Risk of bias was assessed using ROBINS-I for non-randomized studies and a dedicated tool for case series. Meta-analyses of proportions were conducted in R. Heterogeneity was quantified using the I 2 statistic. Funnel plots for publication bias and Egger tests were performed using Stata. Main results and the role of chance: Of 6356 articles screened, 154 met the inclusion criteria. A statistically significant left-sided preponderance was observed for ovarian (58%; 95% CI: 57-60%; P < 0.001), uterosacral ligament (56%; 95% CI: 54-59%; P < 0.001), ureteral (71%; 95% CI: 67-76%; P < 0.001), and bowel (72%; 95% CI: 64-79%; P < 0.001) lesions, whereas thoracic (98%; 95% CI: 96-100%; P < 0.001) and inguinal (92%; 95% CI: 83-98%; P < 0.001) lesions were predominantly right-sided. These findings were confirmed in the sensitivity analyses. Egger's test indicated a possible small study effect only for ovarian lesions (P = 0.012). Limitations reasons for caution: The preponderance of retrospective studies, the variability in surgical procedures, and the potential difficulties in accurately distinguishing unilateral from bilateral lesions may have influenced the magnitude of the estimated difference. However, the large patient cohorts, geographical diversity, and consistent asymmetry across lesion types strengthen the results' validity and generalizability. Wider implications of the findings: The pattern of endometriotic lesion distribution, including the opposite asymmetry observed in the pelvis and upper abdomen/thorax, can be explained by factors influencing dissemination and implantation of refluxed endometrial cells. However, it cannot be explained as well by the coelomic metaplasia or embryonic cell remnant theories. This may have important clinical implications, providing a pathogenic basis for secondary prevention strategies. Study funding/competing interests: The open access facility of this paper was funded by the Italian Ministry of Health, Current research IRCCS Ca' Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico. P.V. is a member of the Editorial Board of Human Reproduction Open, Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada, and International Editorial Board of Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica; has received royalties from Wolters Kluwer for chapters in UpToDate. All other authors declare no conflicts of interest. Registration number: CRD42024511356 (PROSPERO)
La riforma dell'accertamento e della tutela della disabilità. Revisione analitica delle criticità dell’attuale fase di “sperimentazione”. Focus sulla valutazione medico-legale del Diabete Mellito di tipo 2
No full textLa riforma della disabilità, introdotta in Italia con la Legge Delega 22.12.2021, n. 227 e con il D. Lgs. 03.05.2024, n. 62, è stata avviata solo da pochissimi mesi: il 12.07.2025 con il D. M. della Salute del 10.04.2025, n. 94.
Il Legislatore vuole attuare una trasformazione profonda in favore dei cittadini che per infermità si trovino a vivere situazioni di svantaggio, visto lo spostamento del nucleo della valutazione medico-legale dalla patologia, con conseguente menomazione e disfunzione, alla capacità funzionale residua e, di conseguenza, il cambiamento del sistema di accertamento e presa in carico delle persone con disabilità.
L’impostazione innovativa della procedura di accertamento della disabilità, mira quindi a superare la frammentazione dei procedimenti per le diverse categorie di invalidi (invalidità civile, sordità, cecità, ecc.) e a raccordare in un unico perimetro gli accertamenti sanitari, le valutazioni sociali e, infine, l’accesso ai sostegni graduati, con quanto ne consegue in termini di recupero, integrazione e valorizzazione delle capacità residue.
Tuttavia, diverse inadeguatezze balzano evidenti già con la fase di iniziale sperimentazione nelle province individuate. Nel caso della riforma della disabilità la sperimentazione altro non appare se non il mero ‘rodaggio’ di un meccanismo procedurale-valutativo che è considerato come non modificabile e non migliorabile, prescindendo cioè dai riscontri pratici.
Il Legislatore, oltre ad avviare la sperimentazione solo su parte del territorio nazionale e con dotazioni ancora inadeguate, non ha esplicitato un effettivo meccanismo di verifica-modifica delle procedure e delle modalità valutative in base ai risultati dei primi accertamenti; anzi, ne ha dato per scontata la bontà, estendendoli progressivamente a più ampie parti del territorio, prevedendone l’applicazione in tutta la nazione per gennaio 2027 nonostante la mancanza di feedback.
Sarebbe sembrato più corretto procedere ad una doppia valutazione, con la vecchia e con la nuova modalità valutativa: la prima con conservata effettività giuridica e la seconda come utile ed imprescindibile confronto, onde comprendere al meglio cosa migliorare e rendere maggiormente efficace rispetto alle indicazioni pregresse. Ma così non è stato e non è in essere e tutto ciò assume chiari profili sperequativi e solleva anche dubbi di incostituzionalità.
Pure le modalità operative relative alla valutazione della disabilità nei pazienti affetti dalle tre patologie individuate per la sperimentazione col citato D.M. Salute 94/2025 (“... disturbi dello spettro autistico, diabete di tipo 2 e sclerosi multipla...”) sollevano perplessità di ordine giuridico, ma soprattutto a livello di dottrina e metodologia medico-legale.
Su tali basi, ci è parso utile procedere – mediante il presente approfondimento teorico-pratico, fondato sull’analisi normativa e sulle sue primissime applicazioni, con particolare riferimento al Diabete Mellito di tipo2 – ad una disamina degli aspetti critici della complessiva riforma della disabilità, al fine di recare un concreto contributo in termini dottrinari medico-legali ma anche in ottica di pratica metodologia operativa e valutativa.
Si è cercato quindi di offrire soluzioni relativamente agli ostacoli applicativi che si vogliono prevenire ed evitare onde dare piena attuazione al dettato dell’art. 38 della Costituzione.
Il risultato del presente lavoro, in definitiva, indica chiaramente che la riforma della disabilità, pur animata da giusti e del tutto condivisibili principi, rischia di restare incompiuta se non accompagnata da attuazione coerente, uniforme (e adeguatamente finanziata) e da un sistema valutativo equo, scientificamente solido e costituzionalmente rispettoso, così come esige una tutela effettiva dei diritti della persona con disabilità
Drosophila melanogaster as model organism to assess brake dust toxicity by a multi-platform approach
No full textExposure to brake dust, a component of non-exhaust contribution by vehicular traffic, poses a significant global health threat due to its high content of potentially toxic elements (PTEs). This study employed an innovative approach using untargeted metabolomics on the model organism Drosophila melanogaster adults following larval exposure to brake dust. We exposed or not (control) D. melanogaster larvae in laboratory conditions to brake dust in the food medium at two concentrations: 75 and 750 mg/L. In adult individuals, we assessed both elemental accumulation via ICP-MS analysis (25 elements) as an exposure marker and metabolomic alterations via NMR analysis as an effect marker. Larval brake dust exposure resulted in the significant accumulation of several PTEs (i.e. Bi, Cu, Fe, Sb, Sn, W) in adults and induced a developmental delay at the highest dose (750 mg/L). Metabolomic analysis revealed a distinct stress signature: a generalized decrease in free amino acids (suggesting hyperactive protein synthesis for detoxification/damage repair, including metallothioneins) and a contrasting increase in Glutamine (bolstering glutathione-mediated antioxidant defence). Further signs of metabolic distress included Krebs Cycle disruption and suggested gut microbiota alterations. Overall, our findings demonstrate that larval brake dust exposure causes persistent, system-wide metabolic shifts in adults. The proposed metallomics-metabolomics multi-platform approach using D. melanogaster may represent a powerful tool for advancing toxicological science related to particulate matter health assessment
Essays in causal inference methods designed for financial economics
No full textIn this paper, we propose a novel method for causal inference within the counterfactual and synthetic control framework, called the Covariate-projected Principal Component Analysis (CSC-CPCA) method. Our approach accommodates the Generalized Synthetic Control (GSC) method as a special case, thereby inheriting its key advantage of relaxing critical assumptions such as the parallel trends requirement in difference-in-differences designs. Beyond this, CSC-CPCA offers several improvements over GSC. By projecting covariates onto factor loadings through a projection matrix , the method performs natural dimension reduction, enabling effective handling of high-dimensional datasets while keeping the model parsimonious. This covariate-projection also reduces exposure to model misspecification and improves predictive accuracy. In simulation studies, CSC-CPCA method demonstrates lower bias in the presence of unobserved covariates compared to mainstream alternatives. In an empirical application, we employ CSC-CPCA to evaluate the effect of Brexit on foreign direct investment in the United Kingdom, where the results highlight both the robustness and practical value of the method.In the field of empirical asset pricing, the challenges of high dimensionality, non-linear relationships, and interaction effects have led to the increasing popularity of machine learning (ML) methods. This study investigates the performance of ML methods when predicting different measures of stock returns from various factor models and investigates the feature importance and interaction effects among firm-specific variables and macroeconomic factors in this context. Our findings reveal that neural network models exhibit consistent performance across different stock return measures when they rely solely on firm-specific characteristic variables. However, the inclusion of macroeconomic factors from the financial market, real economic activities, and investor sentiment leads to substantial improvements in the model performance. Notably, the degree of improvement varies with the specific measures of stock returns under consideration. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that, after the inclusion of macroeconomic factors, there is a dissimilarity in model performance, variable importance, and interaction effects among macroeconomic and firm-specific variables, particularly concerning abnormal returns derived from the Fama–French three- and five-factor models compared with excess returns. This divergence is primarily attributed to the extent to which these factor models remove the variance associated with the macroeconomic variables. These findings collectively offer valuable insights into the efficacy of neural network models for stock return predictions and contribute to a deeper understanding of the intricate relationship between factor models, stock returns, and macroeconomic conditions in the domain of empirical asset pricing.In recent years, the surge in unanticipated climate change risk has led to green assets outperforming their brown counterparts, a trend that contradicts the theoretical expectation that brown assets, exposed to higher risk associated with climate change, should achieve higher return compensations. This paper presents empirical evidence from the U.S. stock market, utilizing both portfolio and individual stock analyses, to elucidate this discrepancy. Our findings reveal that, from 2002 to 2021, green portfolios, characterized by lower carbon emissions, consistently outperform brown portfolios. Similar patterns are observed at the firm level. We propose that unexpected concerns about climate change have shifted market preferences, leading to a differential demand shock for green and brown assets. This shift in preference is a key factor driving the superior performance of green assets over their brown counterparts
La competenza sulla convalida del trattenimento del richiedente protezione internazionale. Brevi note a margine dell'ordinanza di rimessione della Corte d'appello di Lecce in attesa della pronuncia della Corte costituzionale
No full textIl presente contributo si propone di analizzare le questioni di legittimità costituzionale su cui si fonda
l’ordinanza di rimessione della Corte d’appello di Lecce tesa a ottenere una declaratoria di incostituzionalità delle disposizioni con cui il decreto flussi, come convertito, ha provveduto a spostare la
competenza giurisdizionale per la convalida del trattenimento presso i CPR dei richiedenti protezione internazionale, dalle Sezioni specializzate in materia alle Corti d’appell
Storyline of an event of marine litter input and windrow formation in the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea
No full textHigh-resolution satellites now enable the detection of submesoscale aggregations of floating litter, known as
litter windrows, creating new opportunities for studying marine litter pollution. Here, we combine satellite
observations with temporal modeling to examine how rainstorms influence the magnitude and timing of plastic
release from land to sea. Windrow detections in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea during spring 2018 were
used to adjust a daily-scale model driven by surface runoff and river water discharges. Plastic inputs peaked
simultaneously with rainfall and the rising phase of river levels. During the 90-day study period, half of the total
plastic inputs occurred in a single three-day pulse linked to an intense rainstorm in April 2018. Although high
river water discharges persisted for nearly a month afterward, subsequent litter inputs were relatively small,
suggesting extensive watershed wash-off during the initial surge. The maximum plastic load on the sea surface
(8.4 t) occurred on the third day after peak rainfall, while windrowed plastic peaked on the ninth day (1.2 t).
Overall, 15 % of floating inputs aggregated into windrows. Wind direction and speed strongly influenced both
windrow formation and the persistence of litter at the sea surface. During the study period, 68 % of marine
floating litter was advected back to shore and 31 % sank to the seafloor. Our results demonstrate that stormdriven pulses play a key role in shaping marine litter dynamics, a process often overlooked in studies based
on low-frequency sampling, highlighting the importance of integrating such events and satellite observations into
monitoring and early-warning systems