There have been over one million deaths from the COVID-19 infection so far. The pandemic forced governments across the world into emergency lockdowns that pushed nearly all parts of the world economy into the deepest slump in production, investment, consumption, and employment since the 1930s. There is optimism that world economy will bounce back in 2021 in a V-shaped recovery. But that seems unlikely because global capitalism was in trouble before the pandemic hit and was already heading into a recession. The lockdown slump was just a tipping point. Also, the pandemic is not yet over and infections continue to mount. The impact of the pandemic lockdowns on employment and incomes, particularly for the poorest countries and the poorest in all countries has been devastating and will leave permanent scarring on economies and livelihoods. And there is no internationally coordinated plan to contain the pandemic and to restore livelihoods. Market-led economies and health systems have failed. Only a social economy where there is public ownership and community control of finance and industry can turn the world economy around for working people. Pandemic; Economy; Recession; Depression; Keynes; Stimulus.
Defence date: 2 March 2007 ; Examining Board: Prof. Victoria de Grazia (IUE) (Supervisor) ; Prof. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (IUE) ; Prof. Paolo Capuzzo (Università di Bologna) ; Prof. Hannes Siegrist (Universität Leipzig). ; First made available online 25 June 2015. ; II presente lavoro prende in esame il periodo storico compreso tra il 1958 fino ai primi anni '80, ed è costituito da due sezioni concettuali speculari. ' La prima mira a investigare le modalità di instaurazione, strutturazione ed estensione del dispositivo che anima il consumo reai soci ali sta del secondo dopoguerra facendo leva su fonti differenziate che hanno aperto piste e prospettive di ricerca inusuali, legate in particolar modo alla pratica discorsiva e impolitica del consumo. La seconda sezione approfondisce, invece, la costruzione del l'immaginario del consumo socialista ovvero gli elementi che appartengono alla produzione e commercializzazione deirintrattenimento e allo sviluppo di importanti settori dell'industria culturale della DDR. Entrambe le sezioni della ricerca mostrano linee di discontinuità e fratture interpretative che non impediscono, però, la determinazione di un processo storico autonomo del fenomeno del consumo, osservato in Germania Est, terreno di rappresentazione fertile nel porre al centro dell'indagine storico culturale le forme impolitiche di determinazione degli equilibri sociali e politici di una determinata società. I fenomeni sociali e le pratiche istituzionali prese in analisi nel caso della DDR, corrispondono a fratture in cui sono stati ricercati gli elementi della formazione degli strati subalterni cosi come di una particolare classe agiata del socialismo, luogo politico dove le distinzioni sociali avrebbero dovuto lentamente scomparire, a vantaggio di una omogeneità sociale costruita su paradigmi redistributivi, di equità e privi di differenziazione e stigma di classe.
The article provides a theoretical framework for the study of these concepts and an attempt at empirical measurement. The concepts of food safety and food security are framed within the theoretical debate on the global risk society, focusing on the interconnections between insecurity/safety and risks, sustainability, consumption, and participation. The first results of a survey carried out by the Department of Economics, Society, Politics (DESP) of the University of Urbino Carlo Bo, in the context of the project Sustainability and food [in]security, are then illustrated. This research makes it possible to outline the degree and dimensions of food safety and food security in the Italian adult population, study its connection with attitudes towards sustainability, and identify the factors that influence food choice. The analysis also considers the interplay between consumption and social and political commitment, in their diachronic evolution. ; L'articolo affronta il tema della sicurezza alimentare, nella sua duplice declinazione di food safety e food security, fornendone un inquadramento teorico e un tentativo di misurazione empirica. Vengono illustrati i primi risultati di una inchiesta campionaria realizzata dal Dipartimento di Economia Società Politica (DESP) dell'Università di Urbino Carlo Bo, nell'ambito del progetto Sostenibilità e [in]sicurezza alimentare. L'indagine consente di delineare l'entità e le dimensioni dell'insicurezza alimentare presso la popolazione adulta italiana, di studiarne la connessione con gli atteggiamenti in tema di sostenibilità e di individuare i fattori che entrano in gioco nella scelta alimentare. L'analisi prende inoltre in considerazione le intersezioni tra consumo e impegno sociale e politico, nella loro evoluzione temporale.
International audience ; The essay aims to analyze the phenomenon of corporate social responsibility, which originated in the United States in the fifties but became a reality widespread in recent decades, from a philosophical-economic point of view and as the Socratic question "how to live ? ", Reproposed by the Nobel Prize winner for economics Amartya Sen, as well as his reflections on the ethical origins of the economy, lead us to reflect on new ways through which the company influences social values. From crowdfunding to the experiences of free-form enterprises, where time and space are decentralized. The phenomenon is interesting from an economic point of view: in fact, new forms of competitiveness are sought in the knowledge that the ultimate goal of the company remains profit, but also and above all ethical and social where new ways of doing business are changing society , while society itself requires innovative models in the way of doing business in its liquid and globalized variability. The need to find new measures of quality of life is also linked to these reflections. In 2008, a commission set up by the then President Nicolas Sarkozy and composed of some Nobel prizes including Amartya Sen, Jean Paul Fitoussi and Joseph Stigltiz, despite not having had a large following, began studying alternative measures to GDP that took into account happiness and of the welfare of the population. The order of economic indices so far known is therefore to be confronted with the disorder of a society that is reorganizing according to renewed models and desperately seeking new certainty, in the economic and political fields; starting from the crisis of homo oeconomicus, of overcoming the mere rationality about human choices in the economic field, if the request of society is that of a greater attention to ethics, to the responsibility in the consumption of resources and in respect of human rights, the governments that in the future will have the objective of guiding the economy and, in turn, not being guided, will ...
International audience ; Poverty of peoples is a crucial concern in development as in research questions. Measures of poverty represent a key issue in implementing politics towards resolution of deprivation conditions. In the last 40 years we assisted at two main approaches. The traditional income-consumption based studies (one-dimensional) and the Sen's capabilities-functionings approach (multidimensional) have mostly characterised deprivation and development analysis. An open debate grows on the evaluation of indigence and on method choice, mainly by a multidimensional view. Important implications on aggregation systems emerge, especially on weights and choice arbitrariness. Involvement of all stakeholders is considered as capital. This paper aims to turn a light on past and recent discussions on measuring poverty and development to further promote the conceptual and methodological debate on economical and social issues at a global, regional and national scale. ; La povertà umana è una tematica centrale nei programmi di sviluppo e nella ricerca. La misura della povertà rappresenta un fattore chiave nelle politiche finalizzate alla soluzione delle deprivazioni. Negli ultimi 40 anni lo studio si è basato su due approcci: il metodo classico del reddito-consumo (unidimensionale) e l'approccio capacità-funzionamenti di Sen (multidimensionale) hanno caratterizzato l'analisi dello sviluppo e della povertà. Il dibattito scientifico sulle modalità di stima delle condizioni di indigenza e sulla scelta del metodo da applicare evolve in chiave multidimensionale. Infatti, importanti sviluppi emergono dall'aggregazione dei dati, dai sistemi di ponderazione e dall'arbitrarietà delle scelte dove il coinvolgimento di tutti gli stakeholders è considerato essenziale. Il presente lavoro vuole porre l'attenzione sulle precedenti ed attuali riflessioni riguardo la misurazione della povertà, al fine di aprire ulteriormente il dibattito concettuale e metodologico sulle tematiche economico-sociali al livello globale e nazionale.
International audience ; Poverty of peoples is a crucial concern in development as in research questions. Measures of poverty represent a key issue in implementing politics towards resolution of deprivation conditions. In the last 40 years we assisted at two main approaches. The traditional income-consumption based studies (one-dimensional) and the Sen's capabilities-functionings approach (multidimensional) have mostly characterised deprivation and development analysis. An open debate grows on the evaluation of indigence and on method choice, mainly by a multidimensional view. Important implications on aggregation systems emerge, especially on weights and choice arbitrariness. Involvement of all stakeholders is considered as capital. This paper aims to turn a light on past and recent discussions on measuring poverty and development to further promote the conceptual and methodological debate on economical and social issues at a global, regional and national scale. ; La povertà umana è una tematica centrale nei programmi di sviluppo e nella ricerca. La misura della povertà rappresenta un fattore chiave nelle politiche finalizzate alla soluzione delle deprivazioni. Negli ultimi 40 anni lo studio si è basato su due approcci: il metodo classico del reddito-consumo (unidimensionale) e l'approccio capacità-funzionamenti di Sen (multidimensionale) hanno caratterizzato l'analisi dello sviluppo e della povertà. Il dibattito scientifico sulle modalità di stima delle condizioni di indigenza e sulla scelta del metodo da applicare evolve in chiave multidimensionale. Infatti, importanti sviluppi emergono dall'aggregazione dei dati, dai sistemi di ponderazione e dall'arbitrarietà delle scelte dove il coinvolgimento di tutti gli stakeholders è considerato essenziale. Il presente lavoro vuole porre l'attenzione sulle precedenti ed attuali riflessioni riguardo la misurazione della povertà, al fine di aprire ulteriormente il dibattito concettuale e metodologico sulle tematiche economico-sociali al livello globale e nazionale.
International audience ; The essay aims to analyze the phenomenon of corporate social responsibility, which originated in the United States in the fifties but became a reality widespread in recent decades, from a philosophical-economic point of view and as the Socratic question "how to live ? ", Reproposed by the Nobel Prize winner for economics Amartya Sen, as well as his reflections on the ethical origins of the economy, lead us to reflect on new ways through which the company influences social values. From crowdfunding to the experiences of free-form enterprises, where time and space are decentralized. The phenomenon is interesting from an economic point of view: in fact, new forms of competitiveness are sought in the knowledge that the ultimate goal of the company remains profit, but also and above all ethical and social where new ways of doing business are changing society , while society itself requires innovative models in the way of doing business in its liquid and globalized variability. The need to find new measures of quality of life is also linked to these reflections. In 2008, a commission set up by the then President Nicolas Sarkozy and composed of some Nobel prizes including Amartya Sen, Jean Paul Fitoussi and Joseph Stigltiz, despite not having had a large following, began studying alternative measures to GDP that took into account happiness and of the welfare of the population. The order of economic indices so far known is therefore to be confronted with the disorder of a society that is reorganizing according to renewed models and desperately seeking new certainty, in the economic and political fields; starting from the crisis of homo oeconomicus, of overcoming the mere rationality about human choices in the economic field, if the request of society is that of a greater attention to ethics, to the responsibility in the consumption of resources and in respect of human rights, the governments that in the future will have the objective of guiding the economy and, in turn, not being guided, will have to take it into account and identify new answers to these questions, in order to put the economy back to the full service of man. ; Il saggio mira ad analizzare il fenomeno della responsabilità sociale d'impresa, che ha avuto origine negli Stati Uniti negli anni Cinquanta ma divenuta una realtà diffusa negli ultimi decenni, da un punto di vista filosofico-economico e come la domanda socratica «come bisogna vivere?», riproposta dal premio Nobel per l'economia Amartya Sen, nonché le sue riflessioni sulle origini etiche dell'economia, ci inducano a riflettere su nuove modalità attraverso cui l'impresa influenza i valori sociali. Dal crowdfunding alle esperienze della free-form enterprises, in cui il tempo e lo spazio sono decentrati. Il fenomeno è interessante da un punto di vista economico: si cercano infatti nuove forme di competitività pur nella consapevolezza che il fine ultimo dell'impresa resta il profitto, ma anche e soprattutto etico-sociale laddove i nuovi modi di fare impresa stanno cambiando la società, mentre la società stessa richiede, nella sua variabilità liquida e globalizzata, modelli innovativi nel modo di fare impresa. A queste riflessioni si collega anche la necessità di trovare nuove misure della qualità della vita. Nel 2008, una Commissione istituita dall'allora Presidente Nicolas Sarkozy e composta da alcuni premi Nobel tra cui Amartya Sen, Jean Paul Fitoussi e Joseph Stigltiz, malgrado non abbia avuto grande seguito, iniziò a studiare misure alternative al PIL che tenessero conto della felicità e del benessere della popolazione. L'ordine degli indici economici fino ad ora conosciuti si trova quindi a doversi confrontare con il disordine di una società che si sta riorganizzando secondo modelli rinnovati e che cerca disperatamente nuove certezze, in campo economico e politico; a partire dalla crisi dell'homo oeconomicus, del superamento della mera razionalità circa le scelte umane in ambito economico, se la richiesta della società è quella di una maggiore attenzione all'etica, alla responsabilità nel consumo delle risorse e nel rispetto dei diritti umani, i governi che in futuro avranno come obiettivo quello di guidare l'economia e, non esserne a loro volta guidati, dovranno tenerne conto e individuare nuove risposte a queste domande, al fine di porre di nuovo l'economia al pieno servizio dell'uomo.
Starting from the pioneering papers by Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes (CCR model) and Banker, Charnes and Cooper (BCC model), a large number of papers concerning Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) with outputs uncertainty appeared in the literature. In particular, chance-constrained programming is the most used technique to include noise variations in data and to solve data envelopment analysis problems with uncertainty in data. Chance-constrained programming admits random data variations and permits constraint violations up to specified probability limits, allowing linear deterministic equivalent formulations in case a normal distribution of the data uncertainty is assumed. The standard DEA models rely on the assumption that inputs are minimized and outputs are maximized. However, both desirable and undesirable (e.g., pollutants or wastes) output factors may be present. The undesirable and desirable outputs should be treated differently when we evaluate the production performance: if inefficiency exists in the production, the undesirable pollutants should be reduced to improve efficiency. In order to include undesirable factors in DEA models, according to the literature, two different approaches can be used to model undesirable factors: one group of DEA models treats them as inputs, whereas a second group considers them as undesirable outputs. DEA models with undesirable factors are particularly suitable for models where several production inputs and desirable and undesirable outputs are taken into account, in order to provide an eco-efficiency measure. In this Ph.D thesis alternative DEA models, which consider both uncertain and undesirable outputs, are proposed and studied. In particular, in the first part of this thesis two different models with uncertain outputs and deterministic inputs are proposed with the aim to move away the classical chance-constrained method and to obtain a more accurate DMU ranking whatever situation occurs. Specifically speaking, the proposed models remove the hypothesis of normal data distribution and use a scenario generation approach to include data perturbations. For the sake of completeness, these models are compared with two further ones based on an expected value approach, where uncertainty is managed by means of the expected values of random factors both in the objective function and in the constraints. Deeply speaking, the main difference between the two proposed models and the expected value approaches lies in their mathematical formulation. In the new models, based on the scenario generation approach, the constraints concerning efficiency level are expressed for each scenario. On the other hand, in the expected value models the constraints are satisfied in expected value. As a consequence, the models proposed in the thesis result to be more selective in finding a ranking of efficiency, thus becoming useful strategic management tools aimed to determine a restrictive efficiency score ranking. In the second part of this study, we focus on environmental policy and eco-efficiency. Nowadays, one of the most intensively discussed concepts in the international political debate is, in fact, the concept of sustainability and the need for eco-efficient solutions that enable the production of goods and services with less energy and resources and with less waste and emissions (eco-efficiency). In particular, we consider the environmental impact of CO2 in cement and clinker production processes. Cement industry is, in fact, responsible for approximately 5% of the current worldwide CO2 emissions. DEA models can provide an appropriate methodological approach for developing eco-efficiency indicators. A cross-country comparison of the eco-efficiency level of the worldwide cement industry is presented by applying both a data envelopment analysis and a directional distance function approach. These tools result to be particularly suitable for models where several production inputs and desirable and undesirable outputs are taken into account. Strong and weak disposability assumptions are analyzed in order to evaluate the impact of environmental regulations interpreted as the cost of regulation. The few papers appeared in the literature of eco-efficiency in cement production analyze the emission performance trends only from an interstate point of view. In this thesis a worldwide study has been carried on, covering 90% of the world's cement production by means of 21 countries, European (EU) and non-European (non-EU) ones. The obtained results show that the efficiency level mainly depends on decisions to invest in alternative raw materials and alternative fuels, both in the case of regulated countries and in the case of voluntary emission-trading schemes. This study highlights, both at national and international levels, the possibility of reducing CO2 emissions and expanding cement production. The use of alternative raw materials, alternative fuels and the possibility of producing blended cements, which require less energy consumption and reduce pollutant emissions, seem to be appropriate means. Environmental regulations can provide incentives in terms of tax exemption benefits or more restrictive pollutant limits. Finally, we try to answer to the following questions: do undesirable factors modify the efficiency levels of cement industry? Is it reasonable to omit CO2 emissions in evaluating the performances of the cement sector in different countries? In order to answer to these questions, alternative formulations of standard data envelopment analysis model and directional distance function are compared both in presence and in absence of undesirable factors. This analysis shows that the presence of undesirable factors greatly affects efficiency levels. Efficiency levels are influenced by investments in best available technologies and by the utilization of alternative fuels and raw materials in cement and clinker production processes. The original results of this Ph.D. thesis have been collected in the following research papers: • Riccardi R. and R. Toninelli. Data Envelopment Analysis with outputs uncertainty. Journal of Information & Optimization Sciences, to appear. • Riccardi R., Oggioni G. and R. Toninelli. The cement industry: eco-efficiency country comparison using Data Envelopment Analysis. Journal of Statistics & Management Systems, accepted for publication. • Riccardi R., Oggioni G. and R. Toninelli. Eco-efficiency of the world cement industry: A Data Envelopment Analysis. Energy Policy, Vol. 39, Issue 5, p. 2842-2854, 2011, available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2011.02.057 • Riccardi R., Oggioni G. and R. Toninelli. Evaluating the efficiency of the cement sector in presence of undesirable output: a world based Data Envelopment Analysis. Technical Report n. 344, Department of Statistics and Applied Mathematics, University of Pisa, 2011, submitted to Resource and Energy Economics. The research topic considered in this thesis shows many different lines for future developments. In particular, from a theoretical point of view, starting from the models proposed in Riccardi and Toninelli (2011), we are studying for a bi-objective like DEA formulation where both uncertainty desirable and undesirable factor are taken into account. As regards the applicative aspects, we are also studying and applying bootstrap techniques to manage uncertainty and generate empirical distributions of efficiency scores, in order to capture and analyze the sensitivity of samples with respect to changes in the estimated frontier.
