Suchergebnisse

Conoscere la concentrazione batterica di un campione biologico è di primaria importanza per molti segmenti di mercato come l'industria biomedicale, militare , ma anche l'industria alimentare e per il controllo ambientale. L'obiettivo della tesi è lo sviluppo di un dispositivo per il monitoraggio della concentrazione batterica basato sulla variazione di conducibilità della soluzione nel tempo, dovuto all'accumulo di ioni nella soluzione in cui sono presenti i batteri. Questa tecnica prende il nome di Impedance Microbiology e presenta una serie di vantaggi rispetto alle tecniche tradizionali in termini di tempo e di denaro. La tecnica di Impedance Microbiology promette di essere più veloce della SPC, portando il tempo di analisi da 24-72 ore ad approssimativamente 12 ore. Questa tecnica inoltre ha il vantaggio di poter essere automatizzata e di non necessitare di personale qualificato, riducendo sensibilmente i costi di analisi. In questa tesi verrà quindi sviluppato il dispositivo che permetterà di svolgere le analisi di Impedance Microbiology e verrà testato in laboratorio per valutarne il funzionamento.

Governments both in developed and developing countries are facing the problem of value added tax (VAT) and retail sales tax (RST) evasion. This explains a growing interest in policies alternative to the traditional methods of deterrence. This paper describes the achievements resulting from a zero cost policy against VAT and RST evasion based on rewards. Customers are encouraged to request an invoice by changing the invoice into a lottery ticket, thereby making VAT and RST fraud and evasion more difficult for suppliers. Such a policy has, for example, been introduced in some Asian countries. After having characterized VAT and RST evasion as a special kind of public good situation, a theoretical explanation based on behavioral Economics models of the success empirically registered by this policy will be discussed. Given this theoretical framework, we then introduce an empirical test in order to verify the ex-ante applicability of the policy described in different socio-economic contexts. Finally we discuss the possible countervailing effects as well as the positive long-term side-effects of the introduction of the policy.

AbstractIn all legal systems, possession and property are inextricably linked. Game theory captures this relationship in the Hawk–Dove game: players competing for an asset are better off when the possessor plays Hawk and the intruder plays Dove (the bourgeois strategy) so that property can emerge as a spontaneous convention. This theory has been supported by large experimental evidence with animals. This paper presents a lab experiment where possession is manipulated to study the emergence of the property convention with human subjects. We show that the highest coordination emerges when possession is achieved meritoriously and that possession induces only bourgeois coordination (never antibourgeois).

We designed a natural-field experiment in the context of local public transportation to test whether rewards in the form of lottery prizes coupled with traditional sanctions efficiently reduce free-riding. We organized a lottery in a medium-size Italian city the participation in which is linked to purchasing an on-board bus ticket. The lottery was then implemented in half of otherwise identical buses operating in the municipality. Our theoretical model shows that the introduction of the lottery generates an increase in the number of tickets sold and that it is possible to design a self-financing lottery. To estimate the effect of the lottery's introduction on the amount of tickets sold, we matched and compared treated and control buses operating on the same day on the exact same route. The results show that buses participating in the lottery sold significantly more tickets than the control buses. The increase in revenue from the tickets sold was more than the lottery prize amount.