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La valutazione delle politiche pubbliche è un ambito di ricerca nel quale si è sviluppata una metodologia ben definita nel tempo. La tecnica della differenza nelle differenze, il propensity score matching e altre strategie valutative più e più complesse dal punto di vista econometrico compongono complessivamente un supporto metodologico atto a ottenere il miglior controfattuale possibile in qualsiasi tipo (o quasi) di situazione. Allo stesso modo, nello studio della povertà e delle politiche di contrasto di questo fenomeno si è consolidato nel tempo un comune approccio che coincide con quello definito dall'Eurostat a livello europeo oppure dall'Istat in Italia. La presente tesi di dottorato muove dall'applicazione di alcuni dei metodi tradizionali appena descritti e tenta di introdurre dei nuovi approcci da attuare sia nella valutazione delle politiche pubbliche sia nell'analisi della povertà. La tesi si sviluppa in quattro capitoli. Nel primo capitolo, seguendo un approccio più "tradizionale", viene valutata la capacità dei trasferimenti monetari dei diversi sistemi europei di welfare di raggiungere i soggetti in condizioni di povertà transitoria o persistente. Tramite l'applicazione di un modello probit bivariato su dati EU-SILC, emerge che al 2014 permangono in Europa delle forti differenze nei tassi di inclusione dei poveri nei trasferimenti sociali tra i sistemi di welfare, ma si rileva una comune tendenza ad escludere certe categorie di poveri (stranieri, lavoratori autonomi, occupati) rispetto ad altre (disabili, minori). Nel secondo capitolo viene usato un modello di analisi cognitiva, denominato Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), per spiegare quanto consciamente i lavoratori italiani del settore privato abbiano scelto, a seguito della riforma del sistema pensionistico complementare del 2007, di trasferire i contributi futuri del proprio TFR in un fondo pensione. Basato sui dati dell'Indagine della Banca d'Italia sui bilanci delle famiglie, lo studio rileva che solo una piccola parte dei lavoratori ha deciso in maniera pienamente consapevole. Inoltre, si osserva che non solo la cultura finanziaria ha giocato un ruolo rilevante nel processo decisionale, ma anche e soprattutto le abilità cognitive individuali e taluni elementi contestuali, quali i sindacati e i datori di lavoro. L'analisi ad oggetto del terzo capitolo vuole mettere in discussione il presupposto, comune nelle politiche pubbliche di contrasto alla povertà, secondo il quale aiutare le persone in difficoltà finanziaria a transitare fuori dallo stato di povertà sia sufficiente a risolvere il problema sociale. Infatti, abbandonare la condizione di scarsità di reddito spesso non si traduce automaticamente in un cambiamento della propria percezione di povertà. L'obiettivo dello studio è quindi testare se e con quale intensità l'esperienza di una condizione di scarsità reddituale nel passato incide sulla valutazione personale della fragilità finanziaria nel tempo. In base alle elaborazioni svolte sui dati panel EU-SILC, sembra che le persone con esperienze di povertà tendano a percepirsi finanziariamente più fragili rispetto a chi non ha vissuto momenti di scarsità in passato, anche a parità di reddito familiare. Infine nel quarto capitolo, attraverso dei recenti modelli econometrici (c.d. Recentered Influence Function (RIF) regressions), viene valutato l'impatto dello schema di panel ruotato adottato da Eurostat nell'indagine EU-SILC nella stima dei principali indicatori di povertà e disuguaglianza. L'analisi sui dati trasversali EU-SILC 2014 mostra che lo schema di costruzione del campione ha un effetto significativo su tutti gli indicatori, anche tenendo conto delle caratteristiche socio-demografiche delle famiglie e delle principali caratteristiche del campionamento.

Urban parks play an important role in preserving and promoting the health of citizens who are often exposed to noise pollution and the stress of daily life. The present study describes the main results obtained from a survey performed in five urban parks in Milan. Measurements of the acoustic environment were carried out in 29 sites together with interviews with 231 users on certain aspects of the parks not limited to merely sound. Acoustic data show that the surveyed parks mostly do not comply with the noise limit issued by the Italian legislation on protected areas. The unweighted 1/3-octave spectrum centre of gravity G and LA50 perform satisfactorily in discriminating among the acoustic environments. Such clear distinction was not observed in the subjective ratings on the perceived quality of the soundscape, likely due to the influence by non-acoustic factors that act as mediators in the assessment. This hypothesis is supported by the collected data on the perceived quality of quietness, which was rated worse than that of the soundscape. Comparing acoustic data with ratings, the perceived quality of the total environment was found to be less dependent on LAeq than soundscape and quietness.

Using a static microsimulation model based on a link between survey and administrative data, this article investigates the effects of the pandemic on income distribution in Italy in 2020. The analysis focuses on both individuals and households by simulating through nowcasting techniques changes in labour income and in equivalized income, respectively. For both units of observations, we compare changes before and after social policy interventions, that is, automatic stabilizers and benefits introduced by the government to address the effects of the COVID-19 emergency. We find that the pandemic has led to a relatively greater drop in labour income for those lying in the poorest quantiles, which, however, benefited more from the income support benefits. As a result, compared with the 'No-COVID scenario', income poverty and inequality indices grow considerably when these benefits are not considered, whereas the poverty increase greatly narrows and inequality slightly decreases once social policy interventions are taken into account. This evidence signals the crucial role played by cash social transfers to contrast with the most serious economic consequences of the pandemic.

"This edition presents the most prominent topics and applications of digital image processing, analysis, and computer graphics in the field of cultural heritage preservation. The text assumes prior knowledge of digital image processing and computer graphics fundamentals. Each chapter contains a table of contents, illustrations, and figures that elucidate the presented concepts in detail, as well as a chapter summary and a bibliography for further reading. Well-known experts cover a wide range of topics and related applications, including spectral imaging, automated restoration, computational reconstruction, digital reproduction, and 3D models"--Provided by publisher.

AbstractOver the last two decades, involuntary part-time (IPT) employment has become a more and more pressing issue in Europe, especially in the southern countries, where IPT today constitutes most part-time employment. Using INAPP-PLUS data and different discrete choice model estimations, this paper aims to shed light on the factors that explain the IPT growth in Italy, focusing on what influences the IPT status at the individual, household and labour market levels. The main hypothesis is that what influences the IPT work derive from a combination of workers' individual, household, and job characteristics which may engender limited power during the bargaining process. The empirical results, based on gender-specific models, highlight that characteristics associated with the IPT status significantly changed over time, reporting a convergent path between the gender profiles of IPT employment. However, IPT employment for women still appears to be mainly originated from the gendered division of domestic and care tasks, while this phenomenon seems to be mainly driven by the labour demand side for men.

PurposeThe Covid-19 pandemic appears to have engendered heterogeneous effects on individuals' labour market prospects. This paper focuses on two possible sources of a heterogeneous exposition to labour market risks associated with the pandemic outbreak: the routine task content of the job and the teleworkability. To evaluate whether these dimensions played a crucial role in amplifying employment and wage gaps among workers, we focus on the case of Italy, the first EU country hit by Covid-19.Design/methodology/approachInvestigating the actual effect of the pandemic on workers employed in jobs with a different degree of teleworkability and routinization, using real microdata, is currently unfeasible. This is because longitudinal datasets collecting annual earnings and the detailed information about occupations needed to capture a job's routine task content and teleworkability are not presently available. To simulate changes in the wage distribution for the year 2020, we have employed a static microsimulation model. This model is built on data from the Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (IT-SILC) survey, which has been enriched with administrative data and aligned with monthly observed labour market dynamics by industries and regions.FindingsWe measure the degree of job teleworkability and routinization with the teleworkability index (TWA) built by Sostero et al. (2020) and the routine-task-intensity index (RTI) developed by Cirillo et al. (2021), respectively. We find that RTI and TWA are negatively and positively associated with wages, respectively, and they are correlated with higher (respectively lower) risks of a large labour income drop due to the pandemic. Our evidence suggests that labour market risks related to the pandemic – and the associated new types of earnings inequality that may derive – are shaped by various factors (including TWA and RTI) instead of by a single dimension. However, differences in income drop risks for workers in jobs with varying degrees of teleworkability and routinization largely reduce when income support measures are considered, thus suggesting that the redistributive effect of the emergency measures implemented by the Italian government was rather effective.Originality/valueNo studies have so far investigated the effect of the pandemic on workers employed in jobs with a different degree of routinization and teleworkability in Italy. We thus investigate whether income drop risks in Italy in 2020 – before and after income support measures – differed among workers whose jobs are characterized by a different degree of RTI and TWA.

AbstractThis paper argues that public policies, including minimum income schemes (MIS), should devote specific attention to large families, in terms of both benefits' generosity and targeting, to avoid unfair penalizations. Adopting a child‐centered approach to the definition of family size, and using a unique administrative‐survey linked database, this study provides two main contributions for the Italian case. First, it documents the consumption‐based absolute poverty outcomes according to sibling size, highlighting that large families are overexposed to this specific type of economic deprivation. Second, it investigates to what extent the household size and the number of children tend to be a penalizing factor for social benefit receipt. A key finding is that large families in absolute poverty are penalized in terms of both entitlement and generosity of MIS with the peculiar equivalence scale adopted by the scheme playing a crucial role.

This study aims to identify the main determinants of student performance in reading and maths across eight European Union countries (Austria, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, and Slovenia). Based on student-level data from the OECD's PISA 2018 survey and by means of the application of efficient algorithms, we highlight that the number of books at home and a variable combining the type and location of their school represent the most important predictors of student performance in all of the analysed countries, while other school characteristics are rarely relevant. Econometric results show that students attending vocational schools perform significantly worse than those in general schools, except in Portugal. Considering only general school students, the differences between big and small cities are not statistically significant, while among students in vocational schools, those in a small city tend to perform better than those in a big city. Through the Gelbach decomposition method, which allows measuring the relative importance of observable characteristics in explaining a gap, we show that the differences in test scores between big and small cities depend on school characteristics, while the differences between general and vocational schools are mainly explained by family social status.

The recent global COVID-19 pandemic forced most of governments in developed countries to introduce severe measures limiting people mobility freedom in order to contain the infection spread. Consequently, working from home (WFH) procedures became of great importance for a large part of employees, since they represent the only option to both continue working and keep staying home. Based on influence function regression methods, our paper explores the role of WFH attitude across labour income distribution in Italy. Results show that increasing WFH attitudes of occupations would lead to a rise of wage inequality among Italian employees. Specifically, a change from low to high WFH attitude would determine a 10% wage premium on average and even higher premiums (+17%) in top deciles of wage distribution. A possible improvement of occupations WFH attitude tends to benefit male, older and high-paid employees, as well as those living in provinces more affected by the novel coronavirus.

Il lavoro, fondato sull'analisi di dati derivanti da un modello di microsimulazione che utilizza congiuntamente fonti amministrative e indagini socio-economiche, discute i problemi dell'accesso per gli stranieri al Reddito di cittadinanza dovuti in particolare al requisito di durata della permanenza e alla scala di equivalenza adottata. Per limitare la penalizzazione della popolazione straniera, che già sconta una maggiore diffusione e intensità della povertà, si illustrano gli effetti di una possibile riforma di questi due aspetti della misura sui beneficiari e sulla spesa pubblica.