Archivio istituzionale della Ricerca - Bocconi
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Conclusion : une Constitution ouverte à l’avenir
No full textIl contributo descrive i cambiamenti occorsi alla Costituzione italiana dal 2017 in poi, in particolare soffermandosi sulle sfide poste dall'emergenza pandemica. Si occupa dei rapporti tra i poteri dello stato durante la pandemia, del rapporti stato-regioni, degli obblighi di vaccinazione e delle altre misure dell'emergenza. Analizza le ultime riforme costituzionali e le trasformazioni delle prassi costituzionali in materia di decreti-legge e di funzionamento del bicameralismo
Domestic primary dealers’ disclosure and peer banks’ asset allocation decisions: Evidence from sovereign debt classification
No full textPrimary dealers are sophisticated investors appointed by sovereign issuers to buy, promote, and distribute sovereign debt. They develop a deep knowledge of sovereign debt markets. This study examines domestic primary dealers' sovereign debt classification, which is presumed to reflect their superior information sets on expected sovereign yields. We hypothesize that when this classification is disclosed in financial statements, peer banks adjust their asset allocation accordingly. We first document the predictive ability of domestic primary dealers' sovereign debt classification for future sovereign yields. Next, using a sample of 6,437 bank-year observations over the 2012-2019 period and after controlling for publicly available information and other determinants of banks' asset allocation decisions, we show that peer banks divest financial instruments and increase loans when domestic primary dealers disclose more sovereign debt at amortised cost. These effects are more pronounced among peer banks facing greater informational disadvantages
Science under the yoke of value : a phenomenological inquiry into the evaluation machinery
No full textClinical and functional outcomes after endolaparoscopic stapled repair of rectus abdominis diastasis combined with midline defects: A multicentric prospective observational cohort study
No full textBackground: Surgical repair of abdominal wall midline defects combined with rectus abdominis diastasis is still controversial. Studies conducted with scientific rigor reporting clinical and functional outcomes are few and mostly based on small series. This study aims to analyze the clinical and functional outcomes of a stapled endolaparoscopic technique (Trentino Hernia Team technique) for midline reconstruction in a cohort of patients affected by abdominal wall midline defects (primary and incisional) and diastasis recti.
Methods: Prospective multicenter observational cohort study of 259 consecutive patients treated with endolaparoscopic reconstruction of the abdominal wall using linear staplers. Clinical and radiological follow-up data were collected on morbidity and relapse rates at 1, 6, 12, and 24 months after the operation. Data related to the patient's quality of life, urinary stress incontinence, and chronic low back pain were collected preoperatively and at 1 and 6 months after surgery.
Results: After a mean follow-up of 20.9 months, the total morbidity rate was 14.3%, with only 2.3% Clavien-Dindo >IIIa complications. Nine posterior rectus sheath disruptions (3.5%) and 1 recurrence (0.4%) were recorded, with no differences between the 2 subgroups treated with synthetic or biosynthetic meshes. The mean inter-recti distance 2 years after surgery was 0.8 cm. Six months after surgery, EuraHSQol, Oswestry Disability Index, and Incontinence Severity Index scores significantly improved.
Conclusion: The Trentino Hernia Team technique was proven to be a safe and effective alternative for corrective surgery of primary midline hernias associated with rectus diastasis, significantly improving patients' perceived quality of life
Fast Protocols for Secret-Key Private Information Retrieval
No full textPrivate information retrieval (PIR) allows to privately read a chosen bit from an N -bit database x with o(N ) bits of communication. Lin, Mook, and Wichs (STOC 2023) showed that by preprocessing x into an encoded database bx, it suffices to access only polylog(N ) bits of bx per query. This requires |bx| ≥ N · polylog(N ), and even larger server circuit size.
In Chapter 2, we consider an alternative preprocessing model (Boyle et al. and Canetti et al., TCC 2017), where the encoding bx depends on a client’s short secret key. In this secret-key PIR (sk-PIR) model, we construct a protocol with O(N ε) communication, for any constant ε > 0, under the Learning Parity with Noise assumption in a parameter regime not known to imply public-key encryption. This is evidence against public-key encryption being necessary for sk-PIR.
Under conjectures related to the hardness of learning a hidden linear subspace of F^n_2 with noise, we construct sk-PIR with similar communication and encoding size |bx| = (1 + ε) ·N in which the server is implemented by a Boolean circuit of size (4 + ε) · N . This is the first candidate PIR scheme with such a circuit complexity.
In Chapter 3, observing that the fine-grained security setting, where the adversary’s runtime is bounded by a fixed polynomial in the input size, enables meaningful efficiency gains in our context, we design and implement the first practical doubly efficient secret-key PIR scheme based on the protocol proposed by Boyle et al. and Canetti et al. (TCC 2017). In addition, we propose several optimizations that significantly improve the cost of the original approach. Setting for relaxed security, our implementation offers a stateless client, a lightweight online phase, near optimal download rate, and scalability to large databases, outperforming recent works on practical PIR with preprocessing
When You Have to Assign Work No One Wants to Do
No full textManagers often try to generate buy-in for unwanted assignments by persuading, incentivizing, or softening the message—but these tactics can backfire. Research shows that what matters more than choice is acceptance: when employees see an assignment as settled, fair, and partly within their control, they are more likely to commit and perform well. By offering some element of choice, signaling finality, and ensuring a legitimate decision process, leaders can foster genuine buy-in even when people wouldn't have chosen the work themselves
Governing Reproduction: Institutional Determinants of Abortion Access and Reproductive Health
No full textThis dissertation investigates how institutional and societal structures shape reproductive rights and reproductive health outcomes, with a focus on abortion access and maternal and infant health. Grounded in the reproductive justice framework, it integrates political science, political psychology, public health policy, and representation theory to move beyond individualistic or biomedical explanations and instead foreground the role of institutional arrangements, public opinion, and political representation.
The dissertation comprises four independent yet thematically connected studies. The first two studies examine the U.S. context in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, which removed abortion from the constitutionally protected rights. Drawing on original survey experiment data, the first study tests whether the Supreme Court ruling has influenced the perception of the orientation of public opinion and personal attitudes on the acceptability of abortion access. The Dobbs decision is arguably well positioned to study meaningful public opinion change because it is one of the few instances in mature democracies where a ruling went against prevailing public opinion and restricted rights. I show that priming respondents with information about the Dobbs decision did not alter either their perception of public opinion or their personal attitudes on the acceptability of abortion access. This finding goes against both the argument that restrictions to abortion access can foster “cultural change” (as has been historically advanced by anti-abortion access activists) and the claim that the Dobbs decision triggered some form of perception of backlash against the Supreme Court and the “pro-life” movement. The second study highlights the presence of a systematic underestimation of public support for abortion access (i.e., an instance of "conservative bias"), underscoring dynamics of pluralistic ignorance that may explain policy misalignment with majority preferences.
The third study analyzes the diffusion of medical abortion in Italy using microlevel administrative data. The focus on medical abortion is motivated by its emphasis on the pregnant person's bodily autonomy in the process of terminating a pregnancy. This feature is particularly relevant in the Italian context, where abortion has been legal since 1978 but access remains contested in practice, especially because of the high prevalence of gynecologists opting out abortion service. Drawing on the comprehensive database of all certificates of first-trimester induced abortions performed in the Italian national healthcare system (N > 900,000 records), this study shows that access is stratified along socio-economic lines and shaped by systemic factors, especially at the healthcare provider level. It also highlights that medical abortion is significantly associated with lower waiting times but not with abortion-seeking out-of-region mobility. Finally, it documents the crucial effect of the Covid-19-related confinements measures on the diffusion of medical abortion in clinical practice.
The fourth study adopts a comparative, global perspective to assess how the institutional context moderates the relationship between women's parliamentary representation and reproductive health outcomes, particular maternal and infant mortality. Using panel data from 164 countries (1990-2020) analyzed through two-way fixed effects models, it finds that representation is more impactful in centralized and civil law systems, while its effect is attenuated in decentralized and common law systems. In sum, it highlights that central state reach is a crucial scope condition for the effective translation of descriptive representation into substantive representation.
Together, these studies contribute empirically to the advancements in the adoption of the reproductive justice framework in the study of reproductive choices and health outcomes
Essays on Asymmetric Information
No full textThis thesis comprises three chapters that examine strategic behavior under asymmetric information in auctions and bilateral trade.
Chapter 1 studies bidding behavior in concurrent auctions for heterogeneous goods when bidders can participate in only one auction. The analysis highlights how endogenous market entry generates a stochastic number of competitors and a self-selection effect that shapes bidding strategies, which collectively determine the equilibrium market-entry pattern and bidding behavior upon entry. Under independent private values, bidders always bid for their favorite good, while with affiliated values, bidders may enter a less-preferred market to avoid competition.
Chapters 2 and 3 both investigate bilateral trade environments with two-sided private information, but with different economic motivations. Chapter 2, which is a joint work with Nenad Kos, analyzes expert markets in which an informed expert sells services to a consumer who privately knows the difficulty (and value) of his problem. Prices serve as signals of expertise. The chapter characterizes the equilibria and evaluates welfare across different outcomes. It shows that the expert can sometimes increase her profit by grouping her types to segment demand more effectively, while full separation yields the highest welfare by revealing information and lowering prices.
Chapter 3 studies a product market in which a seller privately knows a horizontal product attribute, while the consumer privately knows his taste. The seller chooses whether to disclose this attribute before setting a price. The analysis uncovers how disclosure incentives depend on the transport cost specifications and characterizes when partial pooling or full disclosure emerges in equilibrium. It also shows that mandatory disclosure can harm both the seller and the consumer when the market is not fully covered.
Together, these chapters demonstrate how asymmetric information shapes market entry, price signaling, and disclosure decisions, and provide new insights into how private information interacts with market structure in both auction and bilateral-trade environments
Homo Entrepreneuricus
No full textThis is the second chapter of the book, laying down the foundations of entrepreneurs behavior and thinkin