Search results

Insurers are competing by adopting product innovations that provide the insured with integrated coverage for actuarial and financial risks. This article compares the contract structures of blended life policies between the insurance markets in Italy and the United Kingdom within the context of asset‐liability management and welfare analysis.

Insurance liabilities are converging with capital markets products (e.g. derivatives and securitizations), thereby increasing the demand for integrated asset and liability management strategies. This article compares the value‐added by an integrative approach‐based on scenario optimization modelling‐relative to traditional risk management methods. The authors present some examples of products offered by the insurance industry in Italy, and apply the results of the analysis to the design of competitive insurance policies.

This paper aims to use a risk management approach for re-profiling of sovereign debt. It develops profiles that trade off expected cost of financing alternative debt structures against their risk. The risk profiles are particularly informative for countries facing sovereign debt crisis, as they allow us to identify, with high probability, debt unsustainability. Risk profiles for two eurozone countries with excessive debt, Cyprus and Italy, were developed. In addition, risk profiles were developed for a proposal to impose debt sanctions in the Ukrainian crisis and it was shown that the financial impact could be substantial.

Using scenario analysis, a risk measure of the sovereign’s debt – Conditional Debt-at-Risk – was developed, and an optimization model was then used to trade off expected cost of debt financing against the Conditional Debt-at-Risk. The model is applied to three diverse settings from current crises.

The methodology traces informative risk profiles to identify sustainable debt structures. Interesting, although tentative, conclusions are drawn for the countries where the methodology was applied. Cyprus’s debt sustainability hinges on current International Monetary Fund (IMF) projections about gross domestic product growth and small deviations can push debt into unsustainable territory. For Italy, our analysis provides evidence of debt unsustainability. Common assumption of debt by eurozone member states could restore sustainability for Italy. Finally, it is shown how a proposal to impose debt sanctions against Russia for the Ukrainian crisis could have significant financial impact for Ukraine.

Additional work is needed to calibrate the simulation models for each country separately. Nevertheless, the direction of the results is such that more careful calibration will most likely not alter the conclusions but make them stronger instead.

The results provide significant insights for the management of sovereign debt for Cyprus and Italy. They also show the significant positive impact on Ukrainian public finances from debt sanctions. However, the most important practical implication is to show how the proposed methodology provided a decision support tool for restructuring and rescheduling sovereign debt for crisis countries.

There is widespread acceptance that debt restructuring has been too little and too late in recent crises failing to re-establish market access in a durable way. How to develop risk profiles for alternative debt structures has been illustrated. Debt profiles that are unsustainable can be identified, with high probability, and alternative structures proposed that restore sustainability. The methodology proposed in this paper is providing a useful tool of analysis. The topic of debt relief is currently debated widely at policy circles by the IMF and the United Nations, and the analysis of this paper provides some insightful input to the debate.

The use of scenario analysis for sovereign debt modeling and the use of an optimization model developed by the authors in previous research provide empirical analysis for three current problems in sovereign debt management. Useful insights are obtained for three important real-world cases for Cyprus, Italy and Ukraine.

The purpose of this paper is to present the architectural principles and the services of the D-NET software toolkit. D-NET is a framework where designers and developers find the tools for constructing and operating aggregative infrastructures (systems for aggregating data sources with heterogeneous data models and technologies) in a cost-effective way. Designers and developers can select from a variety of D-NET data management services, can configure them to handle data according to given data models, and can construct autonomic workflows to obtain personalized aggregative infrastructures.

The paper provides a definition of aggregative infrastructures, sketching architecture, and components, as inspired by real-case examples. It then describes the limits of current solutions, which find their lacks in the realization and maintenance costs of such complex software. Finally, it proposes D-NET as an optimal solution for designers and developers willing to realize aggregative infrastructures. The D-NET architecture and services are presented, drawing a parallel with the ones of aggregative infrastructures. Finally, real-cases of D-NET are presented, to show-case the statement above.

The D-NET software toolkit is a general-purpose service-oriented framework where designers can construct customized, robust, scalable, autonomic aggregative infrastructures in a cost-effective way. D-NET is today adopted by several EC projects, national consortia and communities to create customized infrastructures under diverse application domains, and other organizations are enquiring for or are experimenting its adoption. Its customizability and extendibility make D-NET a suitable candidate for creating aggregative infrastructures mediating between different scientific domains and therefore supporting multi-disciplinary research.

D-NET is the first general-purpose framework of this kind. Other solutions are available in the literature but focus on specific use-cases and therefore suffer from the limited re-use in different contexts. Due to its maturity, D-NET can also be used by third-party organizations, not necessarily involved in the software design and maintenance.

This study aims to analyze the effects of the type of agency contract on the relationship between agency workers' organizational commitment and perceived organizational support.

The authors extend a previously developed model considering organizational support and affective commitment by including also continuance commitment in the Italian employment agency industry. The authors use a probabilistic stratified sampling method on a sample of 8,283 agency workers. Data were analyzed with structural equation modelling (SEM) and multiple group analyses.

The findings confirm the positive relationship between perceived organizational support from both the agency and the client organization and agency workers' affective commitment to them. The authors also find that agency workers develop a mutually related dual commitment in response to the support they receive from both organizations.

The paper contributes to the literature on agency workers and suggests useful managerial and policy makers interventions for both temporary work agencies and client organizations for the development of the agency industry as well as the well-being of workers.

A prototype gas prover was constructed to serve as the Italian primary standard for gas flow rates in the range 0.1 ml/min to 2 l/min. The new prover is used to calibrate high‐quality industrial standards, as well as the MFCs used in microelectronic fabrications and preparation of reference gas mixtures.Design/methodology/approach – The prover measures gas volume transfers caused by displacements of a 120 mm dia. motor‐operated piston, which is introduced into a temperature‐controlled chamber containing up to 3 l of the required working gas at near ambient conditions. Gas delivery is made at constant rate, whereas possibly variable incoming flows are measured at constant pressure. Displacements of the piston are measured by an optical interferometer.Findings – The analysis shows that standard uncertainty ranges between 0.013 and 0.03 percent. Owing to the very accurate control and measurement of both pressures and temperatures, these figures refer equally to volume and mass flowrate. Experimental comparisons with similar national standards at LNE‐France and NIST‐USA confirmed the consistency of measurement results in the three Nations.Research limitations/implications – The gas prover should be used with inert gases only.Practical implications – The national industrial gas standards and the best flow transducers can now be calibrated accurately down to unprecedented flowrate values.Originality/value – The need for measurement of extremely low gas flows is quite recent, therefore possibly less than ten primary national standards are available today worldwide. Several completely different principles and designs have been developed; description of design and performance of each instrument is important to assess their respective merits. The described apparatus is innovative as regards measurement range, accuracy and control techniques.

The literature on corruption and whistleblowing is increasing over the past years. However, the authors contend that individual reactions to a corrupt proposal could differ from the mentioned behaviours. On these grounds, the authors contend that a “grey zone” between accepting corruption and whistleblowing does exist. This paper aims to explore what are the behaviours defining this “grey zone” as nuanced behaviours adopted to react to a corrupt proposal.

The authors draw from Miceli and Near’s process of whistleblowing to open the scope for the comprehension of grey behaviours in the decision-making process following to a triggering event. The authors adopted a qualitative and explorative approach by interviewing 27 Italian public servants through open questions and storytelling to explore what kind of behaviours could define the grey zone.

The findings unveil nuanced behaviours in the grey zone configuring neither as corruption nor whistleblowing, ranging from ignoring the corrupt proposal to explicit contraposition. Also, they reveal different social and individual outcomes affecting future relationships in organizations. The findings allow to extend Miceli and Near’s process of whistleblowing to the wider spectrum of response behaviours to triggering events such as receiving or assisting to a corrupt proposal.

Limitations might be recognized in that the situations detected could be only a part of a possible wider “grey zone”. However, the authors believe that the findings could encourage future research to continue exploring the grey zone to enrich its comprehension. Also, the paper offers useful and interesting insights on an undebated issue that has a prominent value under the theoretical, practical, social and policymaking perspectives.

From the practical and policymaking perspective, the advancement of a debate contending the existence of a grey zone made of nuanced behaviours between corruption and whistleblowing could provide support both for organizations and policymakers to a better understanding of individual behaviours and improving actions and policies to prevent corruption and encourage whistleblowing.

As the authors are at least unaware of studies debating on the grey zone with specific reference to corruption and whistleblowing, the paper advances a discussion on the grey zone between corruption and whistleblowing as a continuum of nuanced behaviours that could provide a starting point for further fine-grained analyses.

This paper aims to describe Tourpedia, a website about tourism, built on open data provided by official government agencies. Tourpedia provides data under a public license.

Tourpedia is built upon a modular architecture, which allows a developer to add a new source of data easily. This is achieved through a simple mapping language, namely, Tourpedia mapping language, which maps the original open data set model to the Tourpedia data model.

Tourpedia contains more than 70.000 accommodations, downloaded from open data provided by Italian, French and Spanish regions.

Tourpedia presents some limitations. First, extracted data are not homogeneous and often they are incomplete or wrong. Second, Tourpedia contains only accommodations. Finally, at the moment Tourpedia covers only some Italian, French and Spanish regions.

The most important implication of Tourpedia concerns the construction of a single access point for all Italian, French and Spanish open data about accommodations. In addition, a simple mechanism for the integration of new sources of open data is defined.

The current version of Tourpedia opens also the road to three new possible social scenarios. First, Tourpedia could be transformed into an open source of updated information about tourism. Second, Tourpedia could be empowered to support tours, which include some tourist attractions and/or events and suggest the nearest accommodations. Finally, Tourpedia may help tourists to discover unknown places.

Tourpedia constitutes an access point for data sets providers, application developers and tourists because it provides a unique website.

本论文介绍了Tourpedia, 一种以政府提供的开放数据为基础建立的旅游网站。Tourpedia通过公共执照来提供数据。

Tourpedia采用模块型结构建设而成, 方便开放商增加新数据源。这种设计通过简单映射语言, 即Tourpedia Mapping Language（TML）, 使得原开放数据模型映射到Tourpedia Data Model（TDM）。

Tourpedia包含70,000多家住宿服务, 可从意大利、法国、和西班牙国家区域提供的开放数据中下载。

Tourpedia有一些限制。首先, 其数据并非均质而且很多情况下不完整或者错误。第二, Tourpedia只包含住宿业数据。最后, 目前Tourpedia只包含一些意大利、法国、和西班牙国家区域的数据。

Tourpedia最重要的实践启示就是其通过单一信息渠道以涵盖所有意大利、法国、和西班牙国家区域关于住宿业的开放数据。此外, 新源开放数据的整合机制简单。

当前Tourpedia版本展开了三种社会场景的可能。首先, Tourpedia可以被改造成更新版的旅游信息开放数据源。第二, Tourpedia可以被用来支撑旅游活动, 包括提供一些游客景点和/或活动和就近住宿信息等。最后, Tourpedia可以帮助游客探索未知旅游目的地。

Tourpedia是一个独特的网站, 作为数据源, 为数据提供者、应用程序开发者、和游客提供便利。

This paper aims to explore how accountants manage the processes of identity (re)construction after identity crisis, resulting from increasing pressures and regulatory requirements, considering both introspective and the extrospective issues.

The study drew on an integrated framework drawing on Luigi Pirandello’s views about identity crises and the search for individual coherence and possible representation strategies. It used an ethnographic approach based on photo-elicitation, conversations and documentary sources to explore the identity reconstruction processes of Italian Commercialisti.

Several conditions caused an identity crisis among Commercialisti, including regulatory requirements, public administration demands and increasing power of IT providers. Commercialisti reacted to these circumstances by re-constructing their image through strategies designed to impress both themselves and others.

The paper has implications for the accounting profession in general and in Italy, suggesting that further pressure may result in rapid change efforts among accountants. It provides a broader and more systematic understanding of the threats to the role of accountants and suggests how they can manage complexity to create new opportunities. It also encourages accountants to focus on alternative roles as a possible new strategy that few have tried.

The paper provides a novel contribution to the understanding of identity crisis issues and related representation strategies in the accounting profession. Unlike past contributions, it made a full assessment of both the dynamics of an identity crisis and the micro-level responses to it, in a new, non-Anglo-Saxon context.

This paper aims to propose a structured threat information expression (STIX)-based data representation for privacy-preserving data analysis to report format and semantics of specific data types and to represent sticky policies in the format of embedded human-readable data sharing agreements (DSAs). More specifically, the authors exploit and extend the STIX standard to represent in a structured way analysis-ready pieces of data and the attached privacy policies.

The whole scheme is designed to be completely compatible with the STIX 2.0 standard for cyber-threat intelligence (CTI) representation. The proposed scheme will be implemented in this work by defining the complete scheme for representing an email, which is more expressive than the standard one defined for STIX, designed specifically for spam email analysis.

Moreover, the paper provides a new scheme for general DSA representation that has been practically applied for the process of encoding specific attributes in different CTI reports.

Because of the chosen approach, the research results may have limitations. Specifically, current practice for entity recognition has the limitation that was discovered during the research. However, its effect on process time was minimized and the way for improvement was proposed.

This paper has covered the existing gap including the lack of generality in DSA representation for privacy-preserving analysis of structured CTI. Therefore, the new model for DSA representation was introduced, as well as its practical implementation.