Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe intricate relationship between Internet access, freedom, and the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic remains a crucial topic, important both for understanding what happened and for improving the response to future crises. This study investigates the impact of the share of Internet users, and its relationship with Internet freedom, on the COVID-19 transmission rate, addressing research questions regarding the interplay between these factors. Analyzing a panel dataset of 60 countries during the first wave, hybrid F-GLS models reveal that an increased number of Internet users correlates with a larger number of new daily COVID-19 cases. Conversely, the interaction between Internet users and net freedom attenuates the positive relationship between users and case counts, implying that the latter has a moderating role. These findings emphasize the multifaceted nature of the Internet's influence on pandemic dynamics, and highlight how it acts both as a facilitator and a constraint.

In this work, we aim to systematize the so-called diamond theory into a well-designed and explicated theory, that we will name "of rhombus". After introducing the problem of the number of ancestors, and offering a solution to the paradox the usual mathematical solution creates, I offer an equation that finds the number of ancestors lost for coalescence events. We discuss the main reasons for coalescence and its implications. We also apply this equation (to the best of our knowledge never before found in the relevant literature) to two specific cases: the point at which the number of theoretical ancestors becomes greater than the living population and the Toba catastrophe theory, which states that at some point the number of living human beings shrank to 6,500.

Abstract
The purpose of this article is to investigate about the differences and, if any, the similarities among the modern State and the mafia criminal organizations. In particular, starting from their definitions, I will try to find the differences between State and mafia, to then focus on the operational aspects of the functioning of these two organizations, with specific reference to the effect/impact that both these human constructs have on citizens' existences, and especially on citizen's economic lives. All this in order to understand whether it is possible to identify an objective difference – beside morals – between taxation by the modern State and extortion by criminal organizations. With this of course I do not want to argue that the mafia is in any way justifiable or absolvable, nor that it is better than the State. However, I want to investigate whether there is a real, logical reason why the State should be considered by the citizens more desirable than the criminal organizations oppressing Southern Italy, from a strictly logical point of view and not from the point of view of ethics and morality.

Abstract
Today, the concept of democracy seems inextricably linked with that of universal suffrage. But is it true? To let that anyone with a given age has the right to vote is a very good democratic practice, or would prefer to question the criteria for access to this right, perhaps to develop new systems? The current crisis of democracy in the Western world is symptomatic of a detriment of the political consciousness of the people? And yet it is very likely to be admissible and that only from the mass, the large numbers, rises the better choices? In this paper I try to answer these questions, drawing from personal opinions and thoughts, which I hope will inspire questions and curiosity in those who, like me, believes that any system is always perfectible, and that its aim should be to that perfection, without fear of asking uncomfortable questions. Personally, in fact, I can accept democracy as "the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried", to quote a famous statement by Winston Churchill. But not for that I give up, and I try other ways. Ways that are more satisfying, more fair and keep us away from the horrors that only an angry mob can do.

AbstractThis study examines the impact that historical colonial legacies have on supraordinate behavior towards subordinates with whom a colonial past is shared. Analyzing data from the FIFA World Cup, we investigate the referee bias exhibited towards teams from formerly colonized countries and teams from countries that were formerly colonizers. Our findings reveal that referees from countries with colonial histories tend to take a stricter approach with players from their nation's former colonies. This intriguing effect is not reciprocated, as referees from former colonized countries do not exhibit a similar bias towards their former colonizers. This result does not h old for shorter periods of colonization, nor is it explained by a common language. These results highlight the complex interplay between historical colonial dynamics and contemporary interactions and shed light on the lasting influence of colonial legacies. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of postcolonial attitudes and emphasizes the need for awareness, training, and dialogue to ensure fair treatment in sports and beyond.

AbstractThe last two years have been characterized by a considerable increase in the number of national and local regulations to contain and fight the spread of the COVID-19 contagion. The literature suggests that poor readability of regulations comes with a significant cost in terms of public compliance, in various contexts. Does the readability of COVID-19 regulations impact their effectiveness? We study the matter in Italy, a country severely affected by the first wave of COVID-19, and one that has seen many local regulations that have tried to halt the virus. Our empirical evidence, obtained from a corpus built on the basis of all 640 regional COVID-19 regulations that have been published, was collected from the Italian Conference of Regions and Autonomous Provinces between 21 February and 14 June 2020. Our results, obtained through F-GLS estimations with fixed, hybrid, and random effects, suggest that the readability of the regulations affected the spread of the pandemic, and that an improvement in readability would lead to more efficient outcomes.

Applications of econometrics and statistics are widely used as tools in many disciplines as a means to provide quantitative analysis to investigate hypotheses. Examples include economics, sociology, and cliometrics. While so far in a genealogy such an approach has not been attempted, in this exploratory work we suggest some possibilities for the application of such quantitative tools to the subject. In doing so, we introduce and discuss the Forecasting and Inference Tool, an application of this framework, and a tool that can help genealogists to be more productive in their fieldwork by estimating years of death, marriage, and birth.

This article aims to provide some descriptive statistics about the deaths in Chioggia, between 1629 and 1631. Many details regarding the nature and socio-demographic characteristics of the deaths are provided, as well as the life expectancy for a three-year period. Results suggest that casualties were most severe in 1629 and 1630, rather than in 1631, that the death rate among women was worse than that among men, even if the former had a longer life expectancy, and that married women had an edge over widows in terms of survival probability. A list of the most common surnames is also provided.

In order to control the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, during the first wave of the pandemic numerous countries decided to adopt lockdown policies. It had been a considerable time since such measures were last introduced, and the first time that they were implemented on such a global scale in a contemporary, information intensive society. The effectiveness of such measures may depend on how citizens perceive the capacity of government to set up and implement sound policies. Indeed, lockdown and confinement policies in general are binding measures that people are not used to, and which raise serious concerns among the population. For this reason governance quality could affect the perception of the benefits related to the government's choice to impose lockdown, making citizens more inclined to accept it and restrict their movements. In the present paper we empirically investigate the relation between the efficacy of lockdown and governance quality (measured through World Governance Indicators). Our results suggest that countries with higher levels of government effectiveness, rule of law and regulatory quality reach better results in adopting lockdown measures. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11205-021-02742-3.

Public pensions are a 'social technology' at the heart of most welfare states. The basic goal pursued by a public pension system is to make sure that individuals do not outlive their savings. An increasing number of states have recently moved to a system that matches individuals' contributions over their working lives to a specific stream of revenue during their retirement years (i.e. defining contributions rather than benefits). As a result, intragenerational fairness concerns have started to become more relevant. In this article, we shall claim that, irrespective of how one conceptualises the welfare state, most public pension systems violate actuarial fairness and any plausible account of distributive justice, and that they do so for structural reasons. Studying the Italian case, we offer insights on this regressive redistributive effect, based on regional data, and offer an implicit policy solution to obviate this problem.

Abstract
We attempt to test the importance of rules and cultural sedimentation on performance by analyzing what occurs in a niche sport, table soccer and inferring by extension the weight of habit formation in a more general productivity setting. This matters since firms increasingly employ workers of different cultural backgrounds, whose interplay may have an impact on performance. Our idea is to examine the differences that exist between local and international rules in a country such as Italy and find out whether athletes' performance is affected when they compete at international level. Adapting models adopted by the literature to forecast the success in soccer and Olympic games, we study the performances of Italians and Non-Italians athletes in the International Table Soccer World Cup. We also apply an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition to account for explained and un-explained gaps in mean values. The results seem to confirm that globalization does not affect cultural sedimentation: local habits persist and hamper the performance of top players. Local habits matter, and habits do not die easily, even in the twenty-first century.