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The aim of this paper is to suggest a new approach to the problem of sales forecasting for improving forecast accuracy. The proposed method is capable of combining, by means of appropriate weights, both the responses supplied by the best-performing conventional algorithms, which base their output on historical data, and the insights of company’s forecasters which should take account future events that are impossible to predict with traditional mathematical methods.

The authors propose a six-step methodology using multiple forecasting sources. Each of these forecasts, to consider the uncertainty of the variables involved, is expressed in the form of suitable probability density function. A proper use of the Monte Carlo Simulation allows obtaining the best fit among these different sources and to obtain a value of forecast accompanied by a probability of error known a priori.

The proposed approach allows the company’s demand forecasters to provide timely response to market dynamics and make a choice of weights, gradually ever more accurate, triggering a continuous process of forecast improvement. The application on a real business case proves the validity and the practical utilization of the methodology.

Forecast definition is normally entrusted to the company’s demand forecasters who often may radically modify the information suggested by the conventional prediction algorithms or, contrarily, can be too influenced by their output. This issue is the origin of the methodological approach proposed that aims to improve the forecast accuracy merging, with appropriate weights and taking into account the stochasticity involved, the outputs of sales forecast algorithms with the contributions of the company’s forecasters.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of unemployment on coronary heart diseases (CHD) in Italy on a sample of male manual workers in the private sector.

The authors investigate the association between CHD and different unemployment experiences (ever unemployed; short, mid and long cumulative unemployment), exploiting a large Italian administrative database on careers and health. The study design is based on the balancing of individuals' characteristics during a 12-year pre-treatment period; the measurement of unemployment occurrence during a seven-year treatment period; the observation of CHD occurrence during a five-year follow up. The workers characteristics and the probability of receiving the treatment are balanced by means of propensity score matching. Standard diagnostics on the balancing assumption are discussed and satisfied, while the robustness to violations of the unconfoundedness assumption is evaluated by a simulation-based sensitivity analysis.

The authors find a significant increase of CHD probability was found among workers who experience more than three years of unemployment (relative risks (RR)=1.91, p<0.1), and among those who exit unemployment starting a self-employment activity (RR=1.70, p<0.1). Using different selections of the study population, a clear pattern emerges: the healthier and more labour market attached are workers during pre-treatment, the greater is the negative impact of long-term unemployment on health (RR=2.79, p<0.01).

The very large representative sample (n=69,937) and the deep longitudinal dimension of the data (1985-2008) allowed the authors to minimize the risks of health selection and unemployment misclassification. Moreover, the adopted definition of unemployment corrected some undercoverage and misclassification issues that affect studies based on a purely administrative definition and that treat unemployment as a unique career event disregarding the duration of the experience.

In this chapter, we review the historical development of elite theory, and then we propose a way forward beyond it. Elite theory emerged as a critique of democracy in the late 19th century. Although it used historical materials illustratively, it tended to be ahistorical theoretically because its primary aim was to demonstrate the perdurance of elites even in conditions of mass suffrage. Lachmann was the first scholar to develop elite theory as a truly historical and explanatory framework by combining it with elements of Marxism. Even Lachmann's theory, however, remained inadequate because it did not rest on a fully articulated theory of power. In this introduction, we suggest a “relational power theory” as a remedy to this situation, and we use it to formulate a general heuristic for the study of elites, nonelites, and their interrelationships. To illustrate its utility, we show how it can illuminate the chapters in this volume (though they were not necessarily written for these purposes).

This paper aims to describe an effort to provide for a robust and secure software development paradigm intended to support DevSecOps in a naval aviation enterprise (NAE) software support activity (SSA), with said paradigm supporting strong traceability and provability concerning the SSA’s output product, known as an operational flight program (OFP). Through a secure development environment (SDE), each critical software development function performed on said OFP during its development has a corresponding record represented on a blockchain.

An SDE is implemented as a virtual machine or container incorporating software development tools that are modified to support blockchain transactions. Each critical software development function, e.g. editing, compiling, linking, generates a blockchain transaction message with associated information embedded in the output of a said function that, together, can be used to prove integrity and support traceability. An attestation process is used to provide proof that the toolchain containing SDE is not subject to unauthorized modification at the time said critical function is performed.

Blockchain methods are shown to be a viable approach for supporting exhaustive traceability and strong provability of development system integrity for mission-critical software produced by an NAE SSA for NAE embedded systems software.

A blockchain-based authentication approach that could be implemented at the OFP point-of-load would provide for fine-grain authentication of all OFP software components, with each component or module having its own proof-of-integrity (including the integrity of the used development tools) over its entire development history.

Many SSAs have established control procedures for development such as check-out/check-in. This does not prove the SSA output software is secure. For one thing, a build system does not necessarily enforce procedures in a way that is determinable from the output. Furthermore, the SSA toolchain itself could be attacked. The approach described in this paper enforces security policy and embeds information into the output of every development function that can be cross-referenced to blockchain transaction records for provability and traceability that only trusted tools, free from unauthorized modifications, are used in software development. A key original concept of this approach is that it treats assigned developer time as a transferable digital currency.

Lange's rejection of bureaucratic socialism can be traced throughout his works, from the very beginning to the end. Planners and economic agents have to act under mandatory rules provided by economic theory to avoid the risk of an autocratic regime detached from the people's needs. Drawing upon this premise, Walrasian theory played a pivotal role to introduce rules to tie the hands of socialist bureaucrats based on scientific, economic theory. In this sense, Lange's anti-bureaucratism and Walrasianism descended from a similar political premise. However, the coexistence of conflicting views into the same theory (such as Marxian and Walrasian theories) also implied potential risks, mainly when socialist democracy is conceived in technocratic terms and Marxian theory assimilates to natural sciences.

This paper aims to conceptualize the digital behavior of startups and investigate the emerging behaviors about digital strategies of the Italian startup firms enrolled in the Startup Act policy initiative. Digital technologies were divided into intra- and inter-organizational digital infrastructures, and this categorization offers startups the opportunity to identify a set of enabling technologies that could be used to improve their digital strategies.

An empirical analysis has been conducted to investigate the degree of adoption of digital intra- and inter-organizational digital infrastructures in the entire population of 6,178 Italian firms listed in the Register of Innovative Startups.

The paper proposes a taxonomy bringing together four startup behaviors for adopting digital technologies: digital follower, technical influencer, social influencer and digital leader. From the perspective of policy makers, considering the financial efforts that public authorities are supporting in the last decade, implications are mainly concerned with policy measures aimed both to reinforce the overall adoption of digital technologies and to develop a balanced adoption of intra- and inter-organizational digital infrastructures.

Measures addressed to support female and foreign entrepreneurship could be useful to support a more dynamic and well-balanced cultural and racial contamination, thus improving the adoption of digital tools.

Paul Samuelson was attracted to the irregular economic development pattern of some South American countries because of the links between economic performance and political factors. He discussed the influence of “populist democracy” on Argentina’s relative economic stagnation, which, he argued in the 1970s and early 1980s, served as a dangerous paradigm for the American economy under stagflation. Stagflation phenomena marked the end of Samuelson’s “neoclassical synthesis.” Moreover, he applied his concept of “capitalist fascism” to deal with military dictatorships in Brazil and (especially) in Chile. The Brazilian translation of his Economics in 1973 brought about a correspondence with Brazilian economists about the “fascist” features of the regime. The main variable behind the South American economic and politically unstable processes discussed by Samuelson was economic inequality, which became also a conspicuous feature of the American economy since the adoption of market-based policies in the 1980s and after.

Can we do business with strangers? A major handicap to any promotion is ignorance of the market and its members. In order to understand Latin Americans, says Albert Hirschman, we must first understand how Latin Americans understand each other. We see the “facts” one way, but their perception of these same facts is often very different. This is my purpose in reporting on Peru's attitude and internal discussions on international trade. Why Peru? A U S. State Department official told me that they consider Peru as a sort of bell wether in South America. Abraham Lowenthal of the Inter‐American Dialog says Peru has an international significance greater than would be expected, considering the size of its economy, and E. V. K. Fitzgerald of Cambridge says the Peruvian experience is significant in judgimg prospects in South America.