Experiment In Italy Research Articles

Voters' Preferences and Electoral Systems: The EuroVotePlus Experiment in Italy

Motivated by the need of understanding voting behavior under different electoral rules, Laslier et al. (2015) have conducted an online experiment in several European countries during the three weeks before the 2014 elections for the European Parliament, the EuroVotePlus experiment. This paper focuses on the Italian data. We first show that the behavior of Italian respondents is consistent with the empirical findings at the European level. Then, we exploit the change from open list to closed list elections implemented in Italy in 1993 to investigate whether and how preferences over institutions are affected by experience. We find that respondents who voted using the open list system in Italy are more likely to prefer closed list systems, and that the effect is stronger the higher the number of open list elections that the respondents have faced.

Willing to Pay? The Politics of Trapping Down Faith in the Tax System in Post-Communist Romania

Despite the fact that Romania has the lowest tax revenues as GDP percentage in the EU, the highest levels of tax evasion, and one of the worst performing tax collection systems, a recent experimental study on the willingness of subjects to comply with their tax obligations under various incentive structures found that, on average, Romanian subjects were highly cooperative and less likely to cheat, above the level identified in similar experiments in Italy and UK. This chapter explains these puzzling findings by investigating the process of post-communist de nuovo creation of an extensive and comprehensive tax systems, and its failure to motivate its citizens to actually pay their taxes. I argue that the structure of incentives’ created for both those paying mainly personal income taxes and entrepreneurs paying corporate income taxes made it very rational to avoid paying taxes: the instability and low quality of the legal framework in combination with the absence of political debate on fiscal issues, the high level of taxation combined with an widespread tax evasion, high tolerance for debts of SOEs (State Owned Enterprises) to state budget and constant erasing their debts, high level of corruption, low spending on infrastructure, low provision of public service and dismal social expenditures except the area of pensions – area with a broken connection between contribution and pension benefits – gave the impression that the average citizen does not receive too much from the state for his taxes, in a even and moral manner. Thus, the constant failure to create an adequate legitimacy for the tax system slowly decreased its capacity to directly tax citizens and companies and continuously increased its reliance on indirect taxes.

Changing a ‘culture’ of corruption: Evidence from an economic experiment in Italy

Empirical evidence demonstrates that bribery, extortion and graft are often the outgrowths of a deeper ‘culture of corruption’ which has proved disconcertingly resilient in the face of public sector reforms. This article investigates whether changing collective beliefs about how ‘most people in society’ will behave can reform prevailing cultural practices. Employing an economic experiment involving northern and southern Italian university students, this study shows that (costly) honest behavior can be sustained by conditional beliefs about the honesty of others. I also hypothesize that, given southern Italians’ reputation for corruption, informing participants that they are interacting with southerners should increase the level of bribery in the experiment. However, surprisingly, I find the opposite effect: when exposed to information about the identity of their fellow participants, southern Italians are not only less corrupt, but they are also more likely to believe that their counterparts are less corrupt. I discuss several explanations which may account for these unexpected findings. Overall, the paper provides theoretical foundations and experimental support for how new cultural practices might emerge.

PandaX-I result sets a stringent limit for low-mass dark matter particles

Astrophysical and cosmological observations show that about 27% of the energy in our universe comes from dark matter (DM). What is DM is an outstanding puzzle in science in the 21st century. The weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) have been by far the favored candidate for DM, although they cannot be accommodated in the standard model of strong and electroweak interactions. DM theory asserts that our solar system is bathed in the DM halo of the MilkyWay,withmillions ofWIMPs passing throughour body every second. Interactions of DM with ordinary matter are exceedinglyweak andmay be detected by sensitive equipment through the energy deposited in a detector by elastic scattering of WIMPs with the nuclei of ordinary matter. There are many such directsearch experiments around the world, trying to catch the faint signals released in the form of photons, electrons or heat using different technologies. Several experiments, such as the Dark Matter/Large Sodium Iodide Bulk for Rare Processes experiment in Italy, theCoherentGermanium Neutrino Technology and Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) experiments in the USA and the Germanled Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers experiment, have in recent years reported positive signals, which could be interpreted as light WIMPs. The first results published in Sci China Phys Mech Astron this year by the PandaX collaboration, however, downgrade these claims [1]. The PandaX (Particle AND Astrophysical Xenon Detector) collaboration is an international team of about 40 scientists led by Professor Xiangdong Ji from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (also affiliated with the University of Maryland). This is the first large-scale xenon DM search experiment carried out in the newly established China Jinping Underground Laboratory (CJPL) in Sichuan, China. CJPL is among the deepest underground laboratories in the world, and being well shielded from the cosmic ray background. Xenon is a noble gas, which becomes liquid at about 110◦ below zero Celsius. The current experiment uses about 120 kg of liquid xenon as the active target for WIMPs. The detector employs a technology called the dual-phase xenon time-projection chamber (TPC), enabling a 3D reconstruction of the events. This technology was shown to be one of the more promising technologies based on the similar 100 kg XENON DM project (XENON100) and the Large Underground Xenon experiments. It now offers improved detection sensitivity over a wide range of DM mass by two orders of magnitude compared with other experiments. The first stage of PandaX operations, the PandaX-I, intends to examine the curious signals of WIMPs in the low-mass region reported by previous experiments. Its detector is a pancake-shaped TPC designed for high photon-collection efficiency. PandaX-I’s first results are based on the data collected in 17.4 live days, with more than 4 million raw events recorded. After removing the low-quality events and narrowing the energy search window to the regions of interest, 46 events are seen in the central fiducial volume with 37 kg of liquid xenon. These events are consistent with signals from the background radiation, the paper reports. Without candidate WIMP DM events, PandaX-I sets a stringent limit for low-mass DM particles and effectively rules out the interpretation of positive experimental results previously reported. Together with the results reported by the China Dark matter Experiment led by scientists at Tsinghua University (also at CJPL) and the SuperCDMS experiments in the USA, PandaX has set one of the best limits for WIMP DM with low mass, as can be seen from the Fig. 1. PandaX’s first result demonstrates that China has become a competitive player in the search for DM, a Science News article commented. ‘It is very exciting to see that our detector has such a capability’, said Jianglai Liu, who led the data analysis and also contributed significantly to the detector construction. Indeed, the PandaX collaboration has since collected more than 75 days of data, which will have five times better detection sensitivity. The PandaX experiment is also upgrading its detector mass to 500 kg, and will commence operations in 2015. Meanwhile, XENON1T, a similar experiment but with a 1.5-ton detector mass, developed by a US-Europe collaboration

SALTMED Model as an Integrated Management Tool for Water, Crop, Soil and N‐Fertilizer Water Management Strategies and Productivity: Field and Simulation Study

AbstractThis paper is a follow‐up from a paper which described the SALTMED model. In this paper the focus is on the model application, using data of tomato and potato from field experiments in Italy, Greece (Crete) and Serbia. Drip full irrigation, drip deficit irrigation, drip as partial root drying (PRD), sprinkler and furrow irrigation were used in the 3‐yr experiment between 2006 and 2008. In drip‐irrigated experiments, the drip line was 10–12 cm below the surface. Dry matter, final yield, soil moisture and soil nitrogen were successfully simulated. The study showed that there is a great potential for saving water when using subsurface drip, PRD or drip deficit irrigation compared with sprinkler and furrow irrigation. Depending on the crop and irrigation system, the amount of fresh water that can be saved could vary between 14 and 44%. PRD and deficit drip irrigation have proved to be the most efficient water application strategies with the highest water productivity. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Gender Effects, Culture and Social Influence in the Dictator Game: An Italian Study

There is little consensus on whether women are more generous than men, since some research results indicate a higher propensity to giving of female dictators, whilst some others indicate the opposite. Two explanations have been put forward. According to the first one, women are more generous than men and the conflicting results are due to the way preferences are elicited (Eckel and Grossman, 2002), since women are more sensitive to “social cues” and their preferences are more “malleable” (Croson and Gneezy, 2009). According to the second one, the institutional culture and the role women have in society are key elements in shaping gender differences in preferences. In fact, in matrilineal societies (Gong et al.; 2014; Gneezy et al.; 2009), women are self-oriented, more competitive and less generous than men, since they have an important role as economic decision makers in the family and the society. We test these alternative hypotheses running Dictators experiments in Italy, a western country with a matrilineal culture, introducing – at the same time- social influence in the design. We find more support to the hypothesis on the cultural role in shaping preferences, rather than the effects of social influence.

GNSS navigation and positioning for the GEOHALO experiment in Italy

GEOHALO is a joint experiment of several German institutes for atmospheric research and earth observation where exploring airborne gravimetry over Italy using the High Altitude and LOng Range (HALO) aircraft data is one of the major goals. The kinematic positioning of the aircraft, on which all remote sensing instruments are located, by Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is affected by the characteristics of long-distance, long-time duration, and high-platform dynamics which are a key factor for the success of the GEOHALO project. We outline the strategy and method of GNSS data processing which takes into account multiple GNSS systems (GPS and GLONASS), multiple static reference stations including stations from the International GNSS Service (IGS) and the EUropean REFerence network (EUREF), multiple GNSS-receiving equipments mounted on the kinematic platform, geometric relations between multiple antennas, and assumptions of similar characteristic of atmospheric effects within a small area above the aircraft. From this precondition, various data processing methods for kinematic positioning have been developed, applied and compared. It is shown that the proposed method based on multiple reference stations and multiple kinematic stations with a common atmospheric delay parameter can effectively improve the reliability and accuracy of GNSS kinematic positioning.

Diradamenti e fuoco prescritto per la prevenzione degli incendi boschivi in rimboschimenti di pino d'Aleppo

This paper reports the results of the first fire hazard reduction experiment in Italy which integrates thinning and prescribed burning. The study was conducted in Aleppo pine stands in a high fir-risk area in the Calabrian Region. Two stands with a different stem density were selected. The experiment design included: i) prescribed burning followed by selective thinning from below in the stand with lower tree density; ii) selected thinning from below followed by prescribed burning in the stand with higher tree density. Light/moderate thinning intensity treatments were applied at both sites in June-July 2013. Prescribed burning treatments were conducted in May 2013 and March 2014. Data on fuel characteristics were collected before and after treatments. A working time study was also carried out during thinning operations. During burn operations, fireline intensity never exceeded 100 kW/m. Maximum temperature in the organic soil layer was 130°C, and on average temperatures above 60°C lasted less than 4 minutes. The organic soil layer was not consumed, and no damages to adult trees were observed. The results highlight the positive effect of prescribed burning and thinning on the reduction of fuel load and continuity, and then on potential fire behaviour, thus reducing the susceptibility and vulnerability of Aleppo pine stands to summer wildfires. The integrated approach of the study shows how thinning and prescribed burning, the latter a prevention practice surprisingly not very common in a fire-prone environment like Southern Italy, could be a sustainable practice to be included in the ordinary forest management planning.

Does the Month of Birth Influence the Timing of Life Course Decisions? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Italy

Social scientists have observed for a long time a negative relationship between the time spent on education and the timing of family formation. Using data from the I.D.E.A. survey (2003), a birth-month experiment on a sample of 3000 young Italian adults is employed in order to explore whether a different month of birth leads to regular differences in life course decisions of young Italians. The results suggest that the “social” age, as determined by the school cohort, rather than the biological age, is an important determinant of the timing of demographic events during the transition to adulthood.

Analysis of Italian Earthquake catalogs in the context of intermediate-term prediction problem

We perform a comparative analysis of regional and global earthquake catalogs currently available for the territory of Italy. We consider: (a) instrumental seismic catalogs provided by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Roma (INGV) for earthquake forecasting experiment in Italy within the Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP); (b) Global Hypocenters’ Data provided by the USGS/NEIC, which is currently used in the real-time earthquake prediction experiment by CN and M8S algorithms in Italy, and (c) seismological Bulletin provided by the International Seismological Centre (ISC). We discuss advantages and shortcomings of these catalogs in the context of intermediate-term middle-range earthquake prediction problem in Italy, including the possibility of the catalog’s combined or integrated use. Magnitude errors in the catalog can distort statistics of success-to-failure scoring and eventually falsify testing results. Therefore, the analysis of systematic and random errors in magnitude presented in Appendixes can be of significance in its own right.

Performance Related Pay and Firm Productivity: New Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in Italy

This paper investigates the causal effect of a switch from fixed wages to collective performance-related pay on firm productivity, exploiting an exogenous variation in the institutional environment regulating collective bargaining. We find that the introduction of collective performance related pay significantly increases productivity by around 3-5 per cent, but such effect varies greatly by firm size, industry and union density. We show that the design of the PRP scheme – in terms of number and type of parameters used – is also relevant for firm productivity.

Does the Month of Birth Influence the Timing of Life Course Decisions? Evidence from a Natural Experiment In Italy

Social scientists have for a long time observed a strong negative relationship between time spent in education and the timing of family formation. However, individual unobserved characteristics influence the two processes simultaneously: ignoring these characteristics means overestimating the effect exit from education has on union formation and first birth. Using data from the I.D.E.A. (Inizio dell’Eta Adulta) survey (2003), which provides information on Italians aged 23-28 and 33-38, I employ a birth-month experiment on a sample of 3,000 young adults in order to explore whether a different month of birth leads to regular and relevant differences in life course decisions among young Italians. I investigate the timing of marriage and fertility as a function of educational attainment in Italy that leads to exogenous variation in the age of school completion. The results suggest that women born in the last month of the year are less likely to have lower secondary schooling as their highest educational attainment, and they are more likely to have achieved more advanced education. This result influences the timing of first marriage and subsequently the timing of first birth. The analysis suggests that social age, as determined by the school cohort, rather than biological age, is an important determinant of the timing of demographic events during the transition to adulthood.

Setting up an earthquake forecast experiment in Italy

We describe here the setting up of the first earthquake forecasting experiment for Italy within the Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP). The CSEP conducts rigorous and actual prospective forecast experiments for different tectonic environments in several forecast-testing centers around the globe. These forecasts are issued for future periods, and are tested only against future observations, to avoid any possible bias. As such, the experiments need to be completely defined. This includes exact definitions of the testing area, of the learning data for the forecast models, and of the observation data against which the forecasts will be tested to evaluate their performance. We present the rules that were taken from the Regional Earthquake Likelihood Models experiments and extended and modified for the Italian experiment. We also present the characterizations of the learning and observational catalogs that describe the completeness of these catalogs, and reveal inhomogeneities in the magnitudes between these catalogs. A particular focus lies on the stability of the earthquake recordings of the observational network. These catalog investigations provide guidance for CSEP modelers for the development of earthquakes forecasts for submission to the forecast experiments in Italy.

Retrospective evaluation of the five-year and ten-year CSEP-Italy earthquake forecasts

On August 1, 2009, the global Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP) launched a prospective and comparative earthquake predictability experiment in Italy. The goal of this CSEP-Italy experiment is to test earthquake occurrence hypotheses that have been formalized as probabilistic earthquake forecasts over temporal scales that range from days to years. In the first round of forecast submissions, members of the CSEP-Italy Working Group presented 18 five-year and ten-year earthquake forecasts to the European CSEP Testing Center at ETH Zurich. We have considered here the twelve time-independent earthquake forecasts among this set, and evaluated them with respect to past seismicity data from two Italian earthquake catalogs. We present the results of the tests that measure the consistencies of the forecasts according to past observations. As well as being an evaluation of the time-independent forecasts submitted, this exercise provides insight into a number of important issues in predictability experiments with regard to the specification of the forecasts, the performance of the tests, and the trade-off between robustness of results and experiment duration. We conclude with suggestions for the design of future earthquake predictability experiments.

Simple smoothed seismicity earthquake forecasts for Italy

Several earthquake forecast experiments in Italy have been initiated within the European testing center of the global Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability. In preparation for these experiments, we developed space-rate-magnitude forecasts based on a simple model that incorporates the spatial clustering of the seismicity. This model, which we call the simple smoothed seismicity model (TripleS), has a minimal number of free parameters and is based on very few assumptions; therefore, it can be considered as a model of «least information» with which others can be compared. The fundamental TripleS parameter controls the spatial extent of the smoothing, and we selected its value based on an optimization procedure that was applied to retrospective forecast experiments. In this report, we present the motivation for developing TripleS, and describe the construction of forecasts for Italian seismicity. We also discuss the research questions that remain to be answered with respect to TripleS, and more generally, the smoothed seismicity approach to earthquake forecasting.

The Biochar Option to Improve Plant Yields: First Results From Some Field and Pot Experiments in Italy

The pyrolysis conversion of agricultural residues into biochar and its incorporation in agricultural soil, avoids CO2 emissions providing a safe long-term soil carbon sequestration. Furthermore, biochar application to soil seems to increase nutrient stocks in the rooting zone, to reduce nutrient leaching and to improve crop yields. This study reports some preliminary results obtained using biochar in two typical Italian agricultural crops. Two field experiments were made on durum wheat (Triticum durum L.) in Central Italy and maize (Zea mays L.) in Northern Italy. In both the field experiments, an increase in yields (+ 10% and + 6% in terms of grain production, respectively) was detected after a biochar application of 10 t ha-1. A further increase in grain production (+24%) was detected when biochar was added with maize residues. The biochar dose-effect curve was studied on perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne L.) in a pot experiment. The highest increase of dry matter (+120%) was obtained at a biochar rate of 60 t ha-1 and above this threshold, a general reduction of biomass was observed. Results demonstrate the potential of biochar applications to improve in terms of dry matter production, while pointing out the needs for long-term field studies to better understand the effects of biochar on soil.

Co-payments and the demand for pharmaceuticals: Evidence from Italy

This study exploits a natural experiment in Italy to estimate how the demand for pharmaceuticals responds to variations in co-payment levels. After a period where co-payments were set to zero by a national law, the decision over co-payments was devolved to the Italian regions. While some regions re-introduced the co-payment, others did not. Using a difference-in-difference approach on regional monthly data for years 2001 and 2003, we find that an increase in the co-payment by one Euro reduces the per capita number of prescriptions by 4% and per capita public pharmaceutical expenditure by 3.4%. We also find evidence that when in 2006 some regions reduced (but not removed) the co-payment, a reduction in the co-payment by one Euro increased the per capita number of prescriptions by 3.4%, and per capita public pharmaceutical expenditure by 4.9%.

Has the dark energy particle been spotted?

A “chameleon” particle may have been seen by the PVLAS experiment in Italy, supporting claims for a type of dark energy that changes according to its surroundings

Prediction of fade durations due to rain in satellite communication systems

The paper discusses the prediction of long‐term fade duration statistics in slant paths, obtained from rain attenuation time series simulated with the synthetic storm technique (with input from 1‐min rain rate time series). The results of the prediction were tested against the experimental fade duration statistics collected at three sites of the Sirio experiment in Italy at 11.6 GHz. Predicted and measured statistics are very similar for fade durations longer than about 64–128 s, which represent a fundamental lower limit to fade duration prediction using 1‐min rain rate time series. The short durations have not been reproduced because they are mainly caused by tropospheric turbulence, not by the space‐time structure of rain, well described statistically by the synthetic storm technique. The prediction is not sensitive to rainstorm speed.

Ozone countergradients over wheat

The gradient method for measuring dry deposition of ozone on short vegetation was employed in a field experiment in Italy's Po Valley. Ozone countergradients involving time periods of about two hours were measured in the morning.