The organised crime industry on a whole generates an estimated gross criminal product of $800 billion USD annually generated from traditional crime industries like money laundering, cigarette and narcotics trafficking and prostitution. As a result of the new, globalised world, organised crime is diversifying its activities, penetrating legal sectors and further corrupting political systems. In general, it has been quick to adjust to the new economic opportunities and new technologies that this global village has to offer, and has been far more efficient in exploiting every available opportunity than its police and justice counterparts in preventing it from doing so. The face of international organised crime has changed to include new, sometimes smaller, often more dangerous actors, and has seen the traditional crime families metamorphose to keep up with the new environment. Diversification, penetration, legitimisation are the new guiding motto. The Sicilian Cosa Nostra has sought alternative ways to generate additional profits whilst reducing the risk factor. In order to branch-out, escape prosecution and yet remain within a pivotal and strategic position, the Cosa Nostra has chosen, amongst other havens, the French Riviera. Today, political and popular mobilisation and interest in combating organised crime is minimal, largely relegated to folklore status, crime annals, and the cinema industry. However, no judicial tool or innovation can have concrete and effective applications if the political will is not predominant and if concerted international co-operation is not enforced. The risk, should this trend continue, is that organised crime will become a dominant and decisive actor in State affairs, may continue to take over unstable micro-states and pervert the democratic process and the rule of law around the world. The threat is not so much to stand by and wait as crime develops further, but how long this lack of reaction can continue before it becomes irreversible.

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The relationship between patent protection, incentives to innovate, the generation of innovations, and the accrual of benefits from innovation was investigated. The study was based on an analysis of research and development, patenting, productivity and output data for Italy. In 1979, Italy made significant changes in its patent law to conform with European Economic Community standards. Previously, the Italian law had provided weak protection of intellectual property, which includes product or process innovations, publications, and art. Economic theory predicts that, under certain conditions, such a change should increase the amount of resources devoted to innovation. Furthermore, an increase in successful innovative activity is expected to lead to increases in the growth of per capita gross domestic product. / Master of Arts

This thesis aims to reconstruct the history, building phases, original appearance and role in mediaeval Rome of the church of S. Maria in Aracoeli, from its origins to c. 1400. The introduction describes the topographical setting of the church and traces its historiography . The first chapter investigates previous churches, their documentary sources, archaeological evidence and surviving components of church furniture. Patronage, date and original appearance of the so-called ‘ara coeli’, the extant main altar of the former church, are discussed. The second chapter concerns the present church, constructed by the Franciscans after their arrival on the hill in the mid-thirteenth century. The first section covers the building history from a documentary point of view, while the second provides a formal analysis, dedicating a subsection to each surviving part (nave and aisles, transept and adjacent chapel, facade). Archaeological research, together with graphic, epigraphic, literary and documentary sources, establishes the transformations of the building as well as the original plan and elevation of its lost parts (apse and eastern chapels). The third section critically reconsiders the lost decoration of the original apse, its iconography and the reasons for its success. The fourth section focuses on the workshop: analysis of the building technique is combined with the information on the architect gathered from his surviving sepulchral epitaph; the use of spolia and the adoption of gothic window-tracery are also discussed. The final chapter places Aracoeli in its context: the first section examines the civic role of the church as a setting for communal assemblies and a privileged site for judgement, the second considers its role as a favourite site for burial chapels of important Roman families. This thesis clarifies the history and appearance of the Christian site before the Franciscans, and provides a reconstruction of the building stages and original aspect of the present church (as well as of the function of some annexed structures) which differs radically from previous hypotheses, thus situating Aracoeli in a different architectural and cultural framework.

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