Annali del Dipartimento di metodi e modelli per l'economia, il territorio e la finanza

Corruption and market competition. From macro to micro: a critical review

Saverio Di Giorno — 2025-01-27

This study critically reviews the relationship between corruption and competition, offering a unique perspective compared to previous reviews by examining theoretical assumptions, observation units, and data over different periods. The research identifies four major periods, beginning with the 1960s and development theory when corruption is “grease in the wheel”. The second period, starting in the 1990s, adopts an institutionalist approach, viewing corruption as rent-seeking. The third period focuses on objective measures at the regional level and the last on microlevel analysis. The review highlights differences in findings based on space scale and lack of research on time trends with respect to differences in levels. The study emphasizes the importance of extendible measures and definitions, especially at the local level. Ultimately, it suggests critical tools and open research questions for future analysis aimed at identifying and combating corruption more effectively.

Enhancing risk parity models: a two-stage approach using mean-variance and expected shortfall for optimal asset selection

Denis Veliu — 2025-06-26

In a progressively complex and volatile financial scenery, the need for robust investment strategies has never been greater. Portfolio optimization seeks to balance risk and return for superior performance. Traditional approaches, such as the Mean-Variance model by Markowitz [1952], laid the groundwork for diversification and risk management. Risk Parity models offer a compelling alternative by equalizing risk contributions across assets, but often lack an optimal mechanism for asset selection, leading to suboptimal results, especially with large and diverse asset universes. This paper proposes a novel two-stage approach. First, we use the Mean-Variance model and
Expected Shortfall (ES) to select a refined subset of assets, minimizing risk without imposing return constraints. Second, we apply Risk Parity techniques—standard deviation for the Mean-Variance subset, ES for the ES-selected subset—to balance risk contributions. Tested on both Nikkei 225 equities and a mixed portfolio of stocks, bonds, and cryptocurrencies, our method enhances resilience while preserving returns.

Geography and law: a method for analysing legal cases in geographical research

Ettore Asoni — 2025-07-01

The article provides a comprehensive methodology for reading and analyzing legal cases from a legal-geographic perspective. Despite increasing international recognition and growth of legal geography, the analysis of legal texts and cases remains foreign to the skillset and methods of most geographers. However, such a skill may be highly useful and desirable in the context of legal-geographic research, as it enables engagement with the work of jurists and courts, thus increasing the interdisciplinary exchanges between geography and law. The article provides a methodology that may allow geographers this interaction, focusing specifically on case-law analysis. The method is explained through practice, by reading and analyzing two decisions by the European Court of Human Rights. This article directs attention to how geographers approaching legal cases must first be able to read them within their context, thus understanding the fundamental rules, parameters, and concerns that drive a court’s decision.

The hotel industry in AOI: a case of suffocation of private initiative

Matteo Nardozi — 2025-07-21

The article intends to contribute to the debate on the development of the hospitality industry in the contemporary age, identifying the period between the 1930s and 1940s in Italian East Africa as an ideal case study. Among the six key roles played in history by hotel structures that were theorized by Sara Fregonese and Adam Ramadan in 2015,
several correspondences are identified with the situation that occurred in Italian East Africa between the 1930s and 1940s. In this work, therefore, we want to make a preliminary estimate of the hotel and hospitality endowment of the imperial territories, understanding first of all whether it is possible to speak of a tourism industry for the empire or whether it was not possible to overcome the emergency phase following the outbreak of the war against Ethiopia.

Gravitational Fields and Spatial Autocorrelation as Methods for Economic Analysis: An Application to Wages in the United States

Luigi Capoani — 2025-10-27

The primary goal of this paper is to compare and combine different spatial analysis tools, Moran’s global and local Index, the Getis-Ord Index with the gravitational model. These techniques were applied to a sample of wages from the manufacturing and financial sectors across counties in the United States. The method identifies and investigates patterns of spatial concentration through a cross-analysis that integrates gravitational fields. It also expands the study of trade and market dynamics beyond conventional theories, and highlights the significance of spatial analysis in improving the understanding of how economic forces shape such spatial patterns.

Augmented outdoor education in high schools. Audio guides on the cultural heritage of the Parioli neighbourhood in Rome

Francesca Sabatini — 2025-10-27

The paper offers an overview of theories, practices, and methods in outdoor geography education, highlighting the pedagogical foundations from which they emerge and focusing on enhanced fieldwork supported by digital technologies. It then presents a PCTO (Pathway for Transversal Skills and Orientation) project conducted in 2019 with students partecipants from the Liceo Scientifico Manfredi Azzarita in Rome. Drawing on multiple methods, the project developed an experiential, outdoor, collaborative, and augmented approach to geography education, leading to the production of itineraries and audio guides on the cultural heritage of the Parioli neighbourhood in Rome, available on APPasseggio–a platform that promotes cultural heritage through walking and storytelling. The project is presented as a case study in outdoor and augmented geography education, emphasizing the methods tested, the results achieved, and the educational goals attained. By analyzing this experience, the article contributes to debates in geography education – while also engaging with heritage studies – by arguing for the need to move towards outdoor and augmented practices that interconnect territorial, socio-cultural, and informational resources.

Automatic translation and corpus analysis in the generation of academic abstracts

Patrizia Giampieri — 2025-10-27

Machine translation (MT) has made huge strides in the last decades and it is increasingly applied in the ESL classroom, both for language learning and translation purposes. This paper wishes to explore whether and to what extent automatic translations performed by an MT platform and a Language Model (LM) tool can be effectively
integrated and/or post-edited by corpus evidence. The language pair considered for the analysis is Italian/English, and the source text is an abstract focusing on academic Italian as an L2. The corpus consulted is the ARC (Anthology Reference Corpus), available on Sketch Engine. In this case, the Italian abstract is accompanied by an official translation into English. Therefore, this paper compares MT- and LM-driven output with the official target text. Additionally, it investigates to what extent corpus consultation can be integrated into the post-editing process to produce a qualitatively acceptable text in the target language. The paper’s findings indicate the high reliability of corpus-driven post-editing, revealing alternative translation options. It also brings collocations to the fore, thereby foregrounding language patterns. In addition, corpus analysis helps address MT- and LM-driven shortcomings. The paper discusses how corpus-driven post-editing can be seamlessly incorporated into the translation process and into translation and language education.

Daniele Vignoli e Anna Paterno (a cura di), Rapporto sulla popolazione. Verso una demografia positiva, Il Mulino UPM, Bologna, 2025, pp. 276

Maria Rita Sebastiani — 2025-06-30

Venere Stefania Sanna, Cristina Capineri, Giacomo-Maria Salerno, Michela Teobaldi, Citizen Science, territorio e comunità: prospettive geografiche per la ricerca e azione, Firenze, Firenze University Press, Siena, USiena Press, 2025, pp. 196

Gozde Yildiz — 2025-09-15

Gemmiti Roberta, Prisco Maria Rosaria, Festa Daniela (a cura di), La giustizia ambientale in Italia. Diario di una giornata, per parole e immagini, Società Geografica Italiana, Roma, 2024, pp. 254

Lidia Scarpelli — 2025-09-30

Ophelie Colheo, Géopolitique du numérique. L’impérialisme à pas de géants, Les Editions de l’Atelier, Ivry-sur-Seine, 2023, pp. 261.

Antonella Leoncini Bartoli — 2025-12-18