535 research outputs found
Technical efficiency and scale efficiency in the Italian banking sector: A non-parametric approach
No full textMeasures of technical and scale efficiencies are derived in the Italian banking industries by implementing non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis on a cross section of 174 Italian banks taken in 1991. The methodology of the parametric and non-parametric approaches to measure efficiency are discussed. The existence of both technical and allocative efficiency is established. This result is robust to modifications in the specification of inputs and outputs suggested by the Intermediation Approach and by the Asset Approach. In implementing both the Intermediation and the Asset Approach the traditional specification of inputs is modified to allow an explicit role for financial capital. In addition, regression analysis is used on a bank-specific measure of inefficiency to investigate determinants of banks' efficiency. Efficiency is best explained by productive specialization, size and, to a lesser extent, by location
Scissor bite in a young patient treated with an orthodontic-orthopedic device. A case report.
No full textEugenics in the national and international context
No full textThe articles collected in this special section of «Popolazione e Storia» take stock of the results of previous inquiries in order to explore more in depth new research directions. The first two articles focus on the main promoters of the establishment of the Italian Committee for Eugenic Studies in 1913, an event reconstructed in detail by Luca Tedesco in this volume. Both Giuseppe Sergi (1841-1936) and Alfredo Niceforo (1876-1960), here studied by Angelo Caglioti, were influenced by Cesare Lombroso and his views concerning the necessity to prevent degeneration by monitoring and managing the population. The practice of the statistical measurement of the characteristics attributed to heredity was also crucial to a large part of Italian eugenics. Manfredi Alberti proposes here an analysis on the surveys realised and published under fascism on asylum patients as a way to assess the role of quantification practices in the construction of a scientific argument in favour of eugenic measures, focusing on psychiatry as one of the disciplines that most resorted to hereditary explanations in that period. As Roser Cussò (2012) has demonstrated in a previous study, quantification was crucial since the interwar period as a tool for the legitimation not only of scientific enterprise, but also of international organisations. In the article here published, she questions the presumed “silent abstinence” of the League of Nations from any involvement in eugenic programs. This last article shifts the focus from Italy to the transnational level. Yet unexpected similarities emerge, in particular concerning the problem of the “disguised” nature of eugenics both in Italy and inside the League of Nations. The articulation of eugenics, as shown in the introductory article by Giovanni Favero, results much more complex than expected
The transmission mechanism of monetary policy in Europe : evidence from banks' balance sheets
No full textOctober, 1999July, 1999--Added t.pAdded t.p. lists two additional authors: Carlo A. Favero and Luca Flabb
Term Structure Forecasting: No-arbitrage Restrictions Versus Large Information set
No full textThis paper addresses the issue of forecasting the term structure. We provide a unified state-space modelling framework that encompasses different existing discrete-time yield curve models. Within such framework we analyze the impact of two modelling choices, namely the imposition of no-arbitrage restrictions and the size of the information set used to extract factors, on the forecasting performance. Using US yield curve data, we find that both no-arbitrage and large info help in forecasting but no model uniformly dominates the other. No-arbitrage models are more useful at shorter horizon for shorter maturities. Large information sets are more useful at longer horizons and longer maturities. We also find evidence for a significant feedback from yield curve models to macroeconomic variables that could be exploited for macroeconomic forecasting
Venezia dopo Venezia: Economia e demografia urbana nel Novecento.
No full textSubject of this paper is the relationship between the urban population, the inhabitants (many or few, young or old, male or female) who live in the Venice island, and the economic functions that the city has taken or has been assigned during the twentieth century. The author in fact believes that the answer to some crucial questions concerning the city of today, asking how Venice could become what it is today, should be researched exactely in the interplay between projects of displacement and resettlement of the population, related to an idea of the historical city that becomes unchangeable in its own structure in the mid century
Consensus-based distributed sensor calibration and least-square parameter identification in wsns.
No full textIn this paper we study the problem of estimating the channel parameters for a generic wireless sensor network (WSN) in a completely distributed manner, using consensus algorithms. Specifically, we first propose a distributed strategy to minimize the effects of unknown constant offsets in the reading of the radio strength signal indicator due to uncalibrated sensors. Then we show how the computation of the optimal wireless channels parameters, which are the solution of a global least-square optimization problem, can be obtained with a consensus-based algorithm. The proposed algorithms are general algorithms for sensor calibration and distributed least-square parameter identification, and do not require any knowledge either on the global topology of the network nor the total number of nodes. Finally, we apply these algorithms to experimental data collected from an indoor WSN
Distributed sensor calibration and least-square parameter identification in WSNs using consensus algorithms
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