91 research outputs found
A Florentine family in crisis: the Strozzi in the fifteenth century.
No full textPhDIn 1434 the Strozzi lineage had held a leading position in
Florentine society and government for at least one hundred and fifty
years, and was one of the largest and wealthiest of the city's
patrician lineages. The records of the catasto of 1427 and of the
scrutiny of 1433 are used to give a profile of the dominant social,
economic and political position of the Strozzi before the advent of
Medicean dominance. Their record of electoral success, and the
political and cultural leadership of influential and respected men
such as Palla di Nofri and Matteo di Simone, with other factors, put
the Strozzi amongst the greatest enemies of the victorious Medicean
regime of late 1434. The effects of political opposition and exile
on the lineage are examined both directly, through records of office-holding,
and indirectly through such indicators as marriage alliances
and household wealth. The two most prominent lines of the Strozzi
were exiled after 1434. Palla di Nofri's life and preoccupations in
his Paduan exile are examined, together with the lives of his sons;
none of these Strozzi ever returned to Florence, pursued as they were
by the enmity of the Medicean regime. The very different careers of
Filippo di Matteo and his brother Lorenzo are also examined: how they
succeeded in founding a lucrative bank in Naples, and in returning to
Florence to 'rebuild' (rifare) the position of the Strozzi lineage
there. The final decades of the century saw the Strozzi in an
economically more secure position, due substantially to the efforts
of Filippo. Except for a very small number of its members admitted
into the regime, most of the lineage is here shown to have remained
excluded from significant political office until after the fall of
the Medici regime in 1494
I Quantify, Therefore I Am: Quantified Self Between Hermeneutics of Self and Transparency
No full textThis chapter explores to what extent the Quantified Self, and in general the
self-tracking culture, could be considered as a ‘technology of the self ’: hermeneutical
apparatuses generating new processes of subjectivation. Quantified
Self, described by Wolf as a ‘self-consciousness through numbers’
(Wolf, 2010), refers both to the cultural phenomenon of self-tracking with
devices and to a community of creators and users of self-tracking technologies.
In this context, the author considers mainly the first aspect of this
phenomenon and examines how its uses are diffused throughout the social
mainstream. The author begins with the author’s own personal experience
using self-tracking devices, then the author considers the phenomenon of
self-tracking in relation to its historical context described by Floridi as the
era of the ‘4th Revolution’ (Floridi, 2014). The second part of the chapter
deals with the theoretical framework. The author discusses the Quantified
Self from the perspective of the Material Engagement Theory (Malafouris,
2013) in order to outline the genealogical and anthropological perspectives
of the relationship between man and technology. The author concludes
that man and technology have always had a biunivocal relation;
man shapes technologies that shape man, both materially and cognitively.
In the final part of the essay and through the lens of Foucault’s and Agamben’s
theories, the author discusses the Quantified Self as a ‘technology of
self ’ to underline the ambiguous nature of the phenomenon and its social
and biopolitical implication in the age of transparency (Han, 2015) and
surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2019)
Uncertainty and the Disappearance of International Credit
No full textWe show that increased uncertainty about the size of an emerging market's external debt has a nonlinear and potentially large adverse effect on the supply of international credit offered to them. We also show that if international creditors are first- order risk averse, attaching greater weight to utility derived from bad outcomes than from good ones, a moderate increase in uncertainty about debt overhang or about other relevant factors affecting repayment prospects-- can cause the supply of credit to dry up completely. We therefore offer one possible explanation for why emerging markets may find themselves suddenly cut off from international capital markets.
Co-Drive: Experiencing Social Virtual Travel on a Car Trip
No full textThe Co-Drive interactive experience at CHI2021 gives conference attendees the possibility
to experience social virtual travelling by car either as the driver or the remote
passenger. Through the dislocation of two prototypes in two different parts of the
world, Co-Drive trips will be available in two different locations, one of which crowdsourced
among prospective CHI attendees. After experiencing the Co-Drive trip, participants
will be able to share their experience in a collective way through a virtual meeting
held during the conference and subsequently in an individual way through a phone call
or video/audio recording from their car to the main author
Soil management shapes ecosystem service provision and trade-offs in agricultural landscapes
No full textAgroecosystems are principally managed to maximize food provisioning even if they receive a large array of supporting and regulating ecosystem services (ESs). Hence, comprehensive studies investigating the effects of local management and landscape composition on the provision of and trade-offs between multiple ESs are urgently needed. We explored the effects of conservation tillage, nitrogen fertilization and landscape composition on six ESs (crop production, disease control, soil fertility, water quality regulation, weed and pest control) in winter cereals. Conservation tillage enhanced soil fertility and pest control, decreased water quality regulation and weed control, without affecting crop production and disease control. Fertilization only influenced crop production by increasing grain yield. Landscape intensification reduced the provision of disease and pest control. We also found tillage and landscape composition to interactively affect water quality regulation and weed control. Under N fertilization, conventional tillage resulted in more trade-offs between ESs than conservation tillage. Our results demonstrate that soil management and landscape composition affect the provision of several ESs and that soil management potentially shapes the trade-offs between them. © 2016 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved
The Italian Labour Market and the Crisis
No full textThe aim of this paper is to analyse the effects of the crisis on the Italian labour market. The Italian labour market is characterized by deep gender differences and regional variability. The data show that the crisis lead to an increase in the gap of female employment rates and women?s inactivity rates with respect to Europe. The North of Italy experienced a higher increase in unemployment than the South, where many people withdrew from the labour market because of poor employment prospects. Moreover, in Italy, the increase in unemployment has been mitigated by the increase in the number of workers having access to the wage supplementation fund who are not computed within the unemployed. However, the heterogeneity in the system of unemployment benefits increased inequalities amongst the unemployed. Using a micro simulation techniques, we estimate the effect of the crisis on income distribution and poverty and find that at the national level, the population showed a reduction in equivalised household income by about 1 percent. The limited impact on household?s equivalent income can be connected to the relatively high share of unemployed who are young with relatively low income and sustained by other members of the householdlabour market, poverty, economic crisis
China’s New Demographic Challenge: From Unlimited Supply of Labour to Structural Lack of Labour Supply. Labour market and demographic scenarios: 2008-2048
No full textThe paper focuses on the demographic and labour market consequences of the dramatic decline in fertility that has characterized China starting at the beginning of the ‘50s. It is shared opinion that a sustained decline in fertility below replacement level will provoke a decline in Total population, an even more pronounced decline in Working age population and very relevant ageing phenomena. I have recently shown that, on the contrary and coherently with empirical evidence, a decline in fertility provokes a structural lack of labour supply that determines positive migration balances and, finally, positive demographic trends. The paper applies the same approach to China with similar results. The decline in fertility, determined by the process of economic development and its impact on education and urbanization, but promoted also trough the one-child policy, will provoke a relevant and growing structural lack of labour supply, even in the hypothesis that Chinese employment growth should sharply decline. The implication is that in order to continue its road to economic growth and social development, China will have to rely on large and growing migration flows that will determine a demographic expansion. In conclusion, the decline in fertility, actively pursued to set a ceiling to population growth, will end up provoking the opposite result. The uncertainty about the age structure of the Chinese population makes it impossible to determine in which year China will start to be affected by serious labour shortages. Our scenarios do however clearly show that China will reach the Lewis turning point in the next few years and before the middle of the century will become the world largest importer of labour. Our analysis does therefore clearly suggest that any legal restriction to fertility and territorial mobility is totally unwarranted, and that China should start to consider educational and labour policies aimed to mitigate labour shortages. It also indicates the necessity to start an in depth discussion of which immigration and social integration policies could better serve the interests of China, on the light both of the experiences of other countries, and of the role that China wants to play in the international arena.Demography; Labour market; Demographic and labour market scenarios; Migrations; Lewis turning point; China
Income distribution and the effect of the financial crisis on the Italian and Spanish labour markets
No full textThis paper aims at estimating the costs of the current crisis in terms of income distribution and poverty taking into account by means of microsimulation techniques - the change in employment status in Spain and Italy. We construct a micro simulation analysis on the impact of the crisis on unemployment, household income, and inequality using the European Statistics on Income and Living Conditions Surveys, and Labour Force Surveys data for Italy and Spain with reference to different types of households. We consider the effect of joblessness on household income and well-being and the impact of different systems of unemployment benefit on unemployment sustainability. Our focus is not only on the pecuniary dimension of well-being, but also in terms of the costs of limited access to medical and dental treatment and analyses
Beloved rivals: power, paragone, and the Petrarchan beloved portrait in Renaissance Italy
No full textThis dissertation focuses on a genre of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century painted portraits and accompanying sonnets inspired by Francesco Petrarch's fourteenth-century book of love sonnets called Il Canzoniere. Petrarch's poetic description of his beloved Laura and his commemoration of a portrait he commissioned of her from Simone Martini inspired the Renaissance tradition of commissioning portraits of a female beloved and writing Petrarchan poems in honor of both the sitter and the painter. I present evidence that these Beloved Portraits were commissioned and produced by a small elite circle of artists, patrons, and poets beginning with Lorenzo de' Medici. Central to the tradition was a spirit of rivalry and competition between one another, Petrarch, Simone Martini, classical examples, and the paragone of the arts. I also provide an in-depth analysis of the relationship between specific portraits and contemporary illuminated manuscripts of Petrarch's Canzoniere and identify never before recognized visual and iconographic similarities found in both mediums. Furthermore, I consider regional variations in Florence, Venice, Milan, and Rome and I introduce a new category of Petrarchan portraits reflective of changing interpretations of Petrarch in the Counter-Reformation.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Mary Shay-Mille
Quantum Optimal Transport: Quantum Channels and Qubits
No full textThese notes are based on the lectures given by the second author at the School on Optimal Transport on Quantum Structures at Erdös Center in September 2022. The focus of the exposition is on two recently introduced approaches on quantum optimal transport: one based on quantum channels as generalized transport plans, the other based on the notion of Hamming-Wasserstein distance of order 1 on multiple-qubit systems. The material is presented in an elementary manner with a focus on the finite-dimensional setting
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