1,603 research outputs found
Pietro Verri’s Contribution to the Economic Theory of the 18th Century: Commercial Society, Civil Society and Governance of the Economy
'Count Pietro Verri (1728-97) - Schumpeter writes (History, p. 178) - - would have to be included in any list of the greatest economists'. Within the Milanese school, he certainly stands out, alongside with Cesare Beccaria, during one of the most interesting periods from a history of analysis point of view. Luigi Cossa's famous introduction to the study of political economy rates Pietro Verri to be inferior to Beccaria in ingenuity and scientific cultivation, but greatly to be ahead of him as an economist.1 This judgement by Cossa, in particular, seems to echo the relative position of the two men in the history of ideas, particularly after Beccaria's rise to fame with a book - On crimes and punishments - which had in fact been largely inspired by Verri himself and defended by him.2 It is proposed in the present paper to revisit some of the basic tenets of Pietro Verri's political economy, with more in view than dwell on specific intuitions and theorems: namely relate those to Verri's own - quite original - conception of the economy. The scholarly work of Pietro Verri - with a special reference to his Meditazioni sulla economia politica of 1771 - provides the first systematic contribution stemming from the quarters of Lombard enlightenment in the field of political economy, especially so if one considers that Cesare Beccaria's parallel work - namely his Elementi di economia pubblica, conceived and drafted at the same time as Verri's Meditazioni - would only be published posthumously several years later. From the vantage point afforded by Verri's political economy, we gain a considerably attractive view of the most significant elements and characteristic concepts of Lombard enlightenment during the latter half of the 18th century; Verri, moreover, as we shall see, builds on a number of them in a new and original way. This paper is aimed at discussing Verri's political economy mainly along two distinct, but related, lines. In the first place the conception of commercial society is considered such as it is treated by the author particularly in his Meditazioni. In this perspective the analysis of such issues as competition and the market or money and taxation occupy a central place. Secondly it will be necessary to emphasise that Verri's approach has little to do either with forms of pure economics on one side - largely yet to be born throughout the 18th century - or, on the other side, with such conceptions of the polis - contrariwise well alive among his own contemporaries - as are founded on a sovereign authority conceived to be situated above the law. What Verri's political economy ultimately amounts to is an economic conception of civil society. The latter has natural strong connections with his own fact-mindedness - emphasised by Schumpeter - as well as with his deep practical involvement in administrative affairs and in the reforming process taking place during the latter half of the 18th century in Milan. In our view, a thorough investigation along the mentioned lines is the precondition for an understanding of the intellectual stature and of the scholarly contribution of Pietro Verri. His main ground is distinctly analytical and only by appreciating his analysis is it possible to shed light on the meaning and intellectual significance also of his practical contributions. Moreover Verri's pronouncements on the criticism of despotic government, the relevance of intermediate powers or bodies and on multiple levels of governance will be examined in a new and original light, showing how close they are to the gist of his analysis.
Beyond Time: Unveiling the Invisible Burden of Mental Load
This paper introduces a novel, scalable methodology to measure individual perceptions of gaps in mental load the cognitive and emotional burden associated with organizing household and childcare tasks within heterosexual couples. Using original data from the TIMES Observatory in Italy, the study combines time-use diaries with new survey indicators to quantify cognitive labor, emotional fatigue, and the spillover of mental load into the workplace. Results reveal systematic gender asymmetries: women are significantly more likely than men to bear organizational responsibility for domestic tasks, report lower satisfaction with this division, and experience higher emotional fatigue. These burdens are underestimated by their partners. The effects are particularly pronounced among college-educated and employed women, who also report greater spillovers of family responsibilities than men during paid work hours. The perceived responsibility for managing family activities is more strongly associated with within-couple gaps in time use than with the absolute time spent on their execution, underscoring the relational and conflictual nature of mental load
The Electoral Consequences of Large Fiscal Adjustments
The conventional wisdom regarding the political consequences of large reductions of budget deficits is that they are very costly for the governments which implement them: they are punished by voters at the following elections. In the present paper, instead, we find no evidence that governments which quickly reduce budget deficits are systematically voted out of office in a sample of 19 OECD countries from 1975 to 2008. We also take into consideration issues of reverse causality, namely the possibility that only "strong and popular" governments can implement fiscal adjustments and thus they are not voted out of office "despite" having reduced the deficits. In the end we conclude that many governments can reduce deficits avoiding an electoral defeat.
About twin primes and distribution of primes
This paper give us a demonstration of twin primes conjecture using approximation of function �(iupsilon) that we introduce in section 6. Section 1-5 give us introduction to terminology and a clarification on (iupsilon) terms. In particular section
5 is really important because of its Lemma. Section 7 reassume foregoing explanations and it give us two theorems and one corollary;the theorem 7.2 give us exact approximation of twin primes counting function
Trajectories of early childhood skill development and maternal mental health
We investigate the impacts of a perinatal psychosocial intervention on trajectories of maternal mental health and child skills, from birth to age 3. We find improved maternal mental health and functioning (0.17 to 0.29 SD), modest but imprecisely estimated improvements in parenting (0.07 to 0.11 SD), and transitory improvements in child socioemotional development (0.06 to 0.39 SD). The intervention had negligible influence on physical health and cognition. Estimates of a skill production function reveal the intervention attenuated the negative association between maternal depression and child outcomes, and narrowed outcome gaps between mothers who were and were not depressed in pregnancy
Challenges in studying the interplay of genes and environment. A study of childhood financial distress moderating genetic predisposition for peak smoking
Smoking is one of the leading causes of preventable disease and death in the U.S., and it is strongly influenced both by genetic predisposition and childhood adversity. Using polygenic indices (PGIs) of predisposition to smoking, we evaluate whether childhood financial distress (CFD; a composite measure of financial adversity) moderates genetic risk in explaining peak-cigarette consumption in adulthood. Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we find a substantial reduction in the relationship between genetic risk and peak smoking for those who did not suffer financial adversity in childhood. Among adult smokers who grew up in high-CFD households, a one standard deviation higher PGI is associated with 2.9 more cigarettes smoked per day at peak. By contrast, among smokers who grew up in low-CFD households, this gradient is reduced by 37 percent (or 1.1 fewer). These results are robust to controlling for a host of prime confounders. By contrast, we find no evidence of interactions between the PGI and typical measures of childhood SES such as parental education - a null result that we replicate in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) and the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSA). This suggests the role of childhood financial distress in the relationship with peak smoking is distinct from that of low childhood SES, with high CFD potentially reflecting more acute distress than do measures of low childhood SES. Our evidence also suggests low childhood SES is a weaker proxy for acute distress, providing an alternative explanation for the childhood SES null result.</p
Advantageous early-life environments cushion the genetic risk for ischemic heart disease
In one of the first papers on the impact of early-life conditions on individuals’ health in older age, Barker and Osmond [Lancet, 327, 1077–1081 (1986)] show a strong positive relationship between infant mortality rates in the 1920s and ischemic heart disease in the 1970s. We merge historical data on infant mortality rates to 370,000 individual records in the UK Biobank using information on local area and year of birth. We replicate the association between the early-life infant mortality rate and later-life ischemic heart disease in our sample. We then go “beyond Barker,” by showing considerable genetic heterogeneity in this association that is robust to within-area as well as within-family analyses. We find no association between the polygenic index and heart disease in areas with the lowest infant mortality rates, but a strong positive relationship in areas characterized by high infant mortality. These findings suggest that advantageous environments can cushion one’s genetic disease risk
Anonymus, Rezension von: Pietro Santi Bartoli, "Colonna Traiana, eretta dal Senato e Popolo Romano all'Imperatore Traiano Augusto nel suo foro in Roma. Scolpita con l'historie della guerradacica, la prima e la seconda espeditione, e vittoria contro il re Decebalo. Nuovamente disegnata et intagliata da Pietro Santi Bartoli con l'espositione latina d'Alfonso Ciaccone, compendiata nella vulgare lingua sotto ciascuna immagine. Accresciuta di medaglie, inscrittioni e trofei da Gio. Pietro Bellori" (Roma [1672]), in: Giornale de’ letterati, 27. Februar 1673, pp. 13-21 (FONTES 14)
TEN CONTEMPORARY REVIEWS OF BOOKS ON ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY BY GIOVAN PIETRO BELLORI IN THE GIORNALE DE’ LETTERATI, 1670-1680, NO. 2 A review of Pietro Santi Bartoli’s album of engravings after the spiral relief band of Trajan’s column in Rome, which includes Giovan Pietro Bellori’s translation of Alfons Chacon’s explications of the reliefs, first published in 1576. Chacon’s commentary was amended and corrected by Bellori at very many points. Engravings of relevant coins and inscriptions were added to the work. During the decade 1670-1680 ten reviews of books by Giovan Pietro Bellori that had appeared in the same years (1669-1680) were published in the Giornale de' letterati in Rome. These include Bellori's famous book of late sixteenth-seventeenth-century artists' 'Lives' (Vite de' pittori) as well as a number of significant archaeological publications treating numismatics, glyptics, sculpture, painting and Roman topography. Reviews and articles appeared in the Giornale unsigned, thus their author or authors cannot be determined with certainty. The discussions of Bellori's works are lengthy and penetrating; they underline the remarkable position he had attained in the world of seventeenth-century archaeological scholarship. The ten reviews will appear in separate instalments of FONTES (Bellori, 1-10)
Il sangue e l’oro. Venere gelosa come dramatis persona nelle Metamorfosi di Apuleio
The Venus that the reader meets in the Metamorphoses is the blending of several epic and drama characters who share a series of negative founding emotions: among others, jealousy. This work will examine these theatrical figures and the kind of jealousy – that of a goddess, of a woman, or a mother – that the author highlights each time. Furthermore, partly by analyzing the schemes of literary allusion, the paper will dwell upon the topic of repressed identity and upon the wounds that jealousy can cause within a character. Actually, among all the others, it is specifically this emotion that enables Apuleius to bring modernity and innovation into the myth of Aphrodite
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