L'obiettivo principale della tesi è lo sviluppo di un modello empirico previsivo di breve periodo che sia in grado di offrire previsioni precise ed affidabili dei consumi di energia elettrica su base oraria del mercato italiano. Questo modello riassume le conoscenze acquisite e l'esperienza fatta durante la mia attuale attività lavorativa presso il Romagna Energia S.C.p.A., uno dei maggiori player italiani del mercato energetico. Durante l'ultimo ventennio vi sono stati drastici cambiamenti alla struttura del mercato elettrico in tutto il mondo. Nella maggior parte dei paesi industrializzati il settore dell'energia elettrica ha modificato la sua originale conformazione di monopolio in mercato competitivo liberalizzato, dove i consumatori hanno la libertà di scegliere il proprio fornitore. La modellazione e la previsione della serie storica dei consumi di energia elettrica hanno quindi assunto un ruolo molto importante nel mercato, sia per i policy makers che per gli operatori. Basandosi sulla letteratura già esistente, sfruttando le conoscenze acquisite 'sul campo' ed alcune intuizioni, si è analizzata e sviluppata una struttura modellistica di tipo triangolare, del tutto innovativa in questo ambito di ricerca, suggerita proprio dal meccanismo fisico attraverso il quale l'energia elettrica viene prodotta e consumata nell'arco delle 24 ore. Questo schema triangolare può essere visto come un particolare modello VARMA e possiede una duplice utilità, dal punto di vista interpretativo del fenomeno da una parte, e previsivo dall'altra. Vengono inoltre introdotti nuovi leading indicators legati a fattori meteorologici, con l'intento di migliorare le performance previsive dello stesso. Utilizzando quindi la serie storica dei consumi di energia elettrica italiana, dall'1 Marzo 2010 al 30 Marzo 2012, sono stati stimati i parametri del modello dello schema previsivo proposto e valutati i risultati previsivi per il periodo dall'1 Aprile 2012 al 30 Aprile 2012, confrontandoli con quelli forniti da fonti ufficiali. / The subject of this thesis is forecasting daily electricity consumption in Italy, at an hourly basis. The analyses presented in this work summarize my working experience at Romagna Energia S.c.P.A. Although several approaches have been proposed in the last two decades, forecasting energy consumption is a recent research subject, especially as concerns the Italian case. Historically, the power sector was characterized by a highly vertically integrated market structure with limited competition. However, during the last two decades, revolutionary changes to the structure of the electricity business have taken place around the world. The electric power industry in many countries all over the world is moving from a centralized operational approach to a liberalized one. Italy makes not exception. Modeling and predicting electricity consumption play an important role in developed and developing countries for policy makers and related organizations. In this thesis I provide a twofold contribution. First, I examine in detail the institutional features of the Italian Energy Market and its stylized facts. Second, since electricity prices are formed at an hourly basis, I focus on daily load dynamics at hourly frequency and propose a novel time series empirical forecasting model which: • features a ‘triangular scheme’, i.e. a VARMA-type structure which is suggested by the physical mechanism through which electricity is produced and delivered over the 24 hours which allows one to exploit the possible inefficiencies that might characterize the grid; • includes new leading indicators related to weather conditions. The sample used for parameters estimation is the time series of italian electricity consumptions from March 1st, 2010 to March 31st, 2012, corresponding to 18285 observations. Finally, the forecasting models results for the load of April, 2012, are compared with the official Italian authority forecast.

The concept of competitiveness, for a long time considered as strictly connected to economic and financial performances, evolved, above all in recent years, toward new, wider interpretations disclosing its multidimensional nature. The shift to a multidimensional view of the phenomenon has excited an intense debate involving theoretical reflections on the features characterizing it, as well as methodological considerations on its assessment and measurement. The present research has a twofold objective: going in depth with the study of tangible and intangible aspect characterizing multidimensional competitive phenomena by assuming a micro-level point of view, and measuring competitiveness through a model-based approach. Specifically, we propose a non-parametric approach to Structural Equation Models techniques for the computation of multidimensional composite measures. Structural Equation Models tools will be used for the development of the empirical application on the italian case: a model based micro-level competitiveness indicator for the measurement of the phenomenon on a large sample of Italian small and medium enterprises will be constructed.

A model is developed to represent the activity of a farm using the method of linear programming. Two are the main components of the model, the balance of soil fertility and the livestock nutrition. According to the first, the farm is supposed to have a total requirement of nitrogen, which is to be accomplished either through internal sources (manure) or through external sources (fertilisers). The second component describes the animal husbandry as having a nutritional requirement which must be satisfied through the internal production of arable crops or the acquisition of feed from the market. The farmer is supposed to maximise total net income from the agricultural and the zoo-technical activities by choosing one rotation among those available for climate and acclivity. The perspective of the analysis is one of a short period: the structure of the farm is supposed to be fixed without possibility to change the allocation of permanent crops and the amount of animal husbandry. The model is integrated with an environmental module that describes the role of the farm within the carbon-nitrogen cycle. On the one hand the farm allows storing carbon through the photosynthesis of the plants and the accumulation of carbon in the soil; on the other some activities of the farm emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The model is tested for some representative farms of the Emilia-Romagna region, showing to be capable to give different results for conventional and organic farming and providing first results concerning the different atmospheric impact. Relevant data about the representative farms and the feasible rotations are extracted from the FADN database, with an integration of the coefficients from the literature.

Obiettivo del lavoro è migliorare la lettura della ruralità europea. A fronte delle profonde trasformazioni avvenute, oggi non è più possibile analizzare i territori rurali adottando un mero approccio dicotomico che semplicemente li distingua dalle città. Al contrario, il lavoro integra l’analisi degli aspetti socio-economici con quella degli elementi territoriali, esaltando le principali dimensioni che caratterizzano le tante tipologie di ruralità oggi presenti in Europa. Muovendo dal dibattito sulla classificazione delle aree rurali, si propone dapprima un indicatore sintetico di ruralità che, adottando la logica fuzzy, considera congiuntamente aspetti demografici (densità), settoriali (rilevanza dell’attività agricola), territoriali e geografici (accessibilità e uso del suolo). Tale tecnica permette di ricostruire un continuum di gradi di ruralità, distinguendo così, all’interno dell’Unione Europea (circa 1.300 osservazioni), le aree più centrali da quelle progressivamente più rurali e periferiche. Successivamente, attraverso un’analisi cluster vengono individuate tipologie di aree omogenee in termini di struttura economica, paesaggio, diversificazione dell’attività agricola. Tali cluster risentono anche della distribuzione geografica delle aree stesse: vengono infatti distinti gruppi di regioni centrali da gruppi di regioni più periferiche. Tale analisi evidenzia soprattutto come il binomio ruralità-arretratezza risulti ormai superato: alcune aree rurali, infatti, hanno tratto vantaggio dalle trasformazioni che hanno interessato l’Unione Europea negli ultimi decenni (diffusione dell’ICT o sviluppo della manifattura). L’ultima parte del lavoro offre strumenti di analisi a supporto dell’azione politica comunitaria, analizzando la diversa capacità delle regioni europee di rispondere alle sfide lanciate dalla Strategia Europa 2020. Un’analisi in componenti principali sintetizza le principali dimensioni di tale performance regionale: i risultati sono poi riletti alla luce delle caratteristiche strutturali dei territori europei. Infine, una più diretta analisi spaziale dei dati permette di evidenziare come la geografia influenzi ancora profondamente la capacità dei territori di rispondere alle nuove sfide del decennio. / This work is aimed at providing a better analysis about EU rural areas. Lately, those regions have widely changed: thus, a dichotomous approach, simply distinguishing rural areas from cities, cannot take into account the increasing complexity affecting EU regions. Actually, the research is based on a multidimensional approach, by including within the analysis both socio-economic and geographical characteristics. Moving from the wide debate on the classification of rural areas, a comprehensive rurality index is computed by applying fuzzy logic to the whole set of EU regions (about 1,300 observations). This continuous index highlights the different extents of rurality, according to demographic aspects (e.g., density), economic features (e.g., relevance of the agricultural sector) and geographical characteristics (e.g., accessibility and remoteness). Then, a cluster analysis is applied. According to the regional economic structure, the diversification of the agricultural activities and the land use characteristics, homogeneous clusters are identified. They are also geographically defined. Actually, some groups of more central rural regions have taken advantage from the major transformations having affected the EU (e.g., the improvement in the ICT, the diffusion of manufacturing activities across rural areas,…). Thus, the link between rurality and underdevelopment can be considered almost outdated. Lastly, some tools for the analysis of the EU political actions are provided. The regional performance in achieving Europe 2020 Strategy targets is analysed. First, this performance at the regional level is summed up by adopting a principal component analysis. Then, the main results are linked with the comprehensive rurality index and the main evidences from the cluster analysis. Moreover, this performance is also analysed according to an exploratory spatial data analysis approach. Actually, geography still affects the way each region faces the new challenges for the next decade.

Dealing with latent constructs (loaded by reflective and congeneric measures) cross-culturally compared means studying how these unobserved variables vary, and/or covary each other, after controlling for possibly disturbing cultural forces. This yields to the so-called ‘measurement invariance’ matter that refers to the extent to which data collected by the same multi-item measurement instrument (i.e., self-reported questionnaire of items underlying common latent constructs) are comparable across different cultural environments. As a matter of fact, it would be unthinkable exploring latent variables heterogeneity (e.g., latent means; latent levels of deviations from the means (i.e., latent variances), latent levels of shared variation from the respective means (i.e., latent covariances), levels of magnitude of structural path coefficients with regard to causal relations among latent variables) across different populations without controlling for cultural bias in the underlying measures. Furthermore, it would be unrealistic to assess this latter correction without using a framework that is able to take into account all these potential cultural biases across populations simultaneously. Since the real world ‘acts’ in a simultaneous way as well. As a consequence, I, as researcher, may want to control for cultural forces hypothesizing they are all acting at the same time throughout groups of comparison and therefore examining if they are inflating or suppressing my new estimations with hierarchical nested constraints on the original estimated parameters. Multi Sample Structural Equation Modeling-based Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MS-SEM-based CFA) still represents a dominant and flexible statistical framework to work out this potential cultural bias in a simultaneous way. With this dissertation I wanted to make an attempt to introduce new viewpoints on measurement invariance handled under covariance-based SEM framework by means of a consumer behavior modeling application on functional food choices.

Nell'ambito delle teorie dello sviluppo, un filone di studi, originato dai lavori di North (1973) e consolidatosi negli ultimi anni, individua nelle istituzioni, definite come le regole del gioco o i vincoli disegnati dagli uomini per disciplinare i loro rapporti, i fattori fondamentali dello sviluppo economico. Le istituzioni, nel modello elaborato da Acemoglu, Johnson e Robinson (2004), sono il frutto di interazioni dinamiche tra potere politico de jure, determinato dalle istituzioni politiche, e potere politico de facto, determinato dalla distribuzione delle risorse economiche. Sulla base di questa prospettiva teorica, questa tesi propone uno studio di carattere quantitativo sulla qualità istituzionale, la traduzione operativa del concetto di istituzioni, composta dalle tre fondamentali dimensioni di democrazia, efficienza ed efficacia del governo e assenza di corruzione. La prima parte, che analizza sistematicamente pro e contro di ciascuna tipologia di indicatori, è dedicata alla revisione delle misure quantitative di qualità istituzionale, e individua nei Worldwide Governance Indicators la misura più solida e consistente. Questi indici sono quindi utilizzati nella seconda parte, dove si propone un'analisi empirica sulle determinanti della qualità istituzionale. Le stime del modello di regressione cross-country evidenziano che la qualità istituzionale è influenzata da alcuni fattori prevalentemente esogeni come la geografia, la disponibilità di risorse naturali e altre caratteristiche storiche e culturali, insieme ad altri fattori di carattere più endogeno. In quest'ultima categoria, i risultati evidenziano un effetto positivo del livello di sviluppo economico, mentre la disuguaglianza economica mostra un impatto negativo su ciascuna delle tre dimensioni di qualità istituzionale, in particolare sulla corruzione. Questi risultati supportano la prospettiva teorica e suggeriscono che azioni di policy orientate alla riduzione delle disparità sono capaci di generare sviluppo rafforzando la democrazia, migliorando l'efficienza complessiva del sistema economico e riducendo i livelli di corruzione. / Amongst development theories, following the work of D. North (1973), a branch of studies has recently developed which sees institutions, defined as the rules of the game or humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction, as the fundamental cause of long-run growth. The model constructed by Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson (2004) emphasizes the interaction between de jure political power, influenced by political institutions, and de facto political power, shaped by distribution of resources, in the evolution of institutional paths. Based on this theoretical framework, this thesis adopts a quantitative perspective to investigate institutional quality, which is composed by three main dimensions: democracy, government efficiency and effectiveness and corruption. A survey of available measures of institutional quality is conducted in order to evaluate pro and cons of each kind of indicators. The analysis finds the World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators as the most reliable measures of institutional quality, both in terms of internal and external consistency. These indexes are then used for an empirical analysis over the determinants of institutional quality. The estimates of the cross-country regression model show that institutional quality is affected by some exogenous factors, like geography, natural resources endowments and other historic and cultural traits, and more endogenous factors. Amongst the latter, economic development exerts a positive effect on institutional quality, while a negative association, particularly on the corruption side, is shown by economic inequality. Results confirm our hypothesis and suggest that policies aiming at reducing inequality can foster development by strengthening democracy, by improving the overall efficiency of the economic system and by reducing corruption levels.

L’elaborato finale presentato per la tesi di Dottorato analizza e riconduce a unitarietà, per quanto possibile, alcune delle attività di ricerca da me svolte durante questi tre anni, il cui filo conduttore è l'impatto ambientale delle attività umane e la promozione dello sviluppo sostenibile. Il mio filone di ricerca è stato improntato, dal punto di vista di politica economica, sull'analisi storica dello sviluppo del settore agricolo dall'Unità d'Italia ai giorni nostri e dei cambiamenti avvenuti in contemporanea nel contesto socio-economico e territoriale nazionale, facendo particolare riferimento alle tematiche legate ai consumi e alla dipendenza energetica ed all'impatto ambientale. Parte della mia ricerca è stata, infatti, incentrata sull'analisi dello sviluppo della Green Economy, in particolare per quanto riguarda il settore agroalimentare e la produzione di fonti di energia rinnovabile. Enfasi viene posta sia sulle politiche implementate a livello comunitario e nazionale, sia sul cambiamento dei consumi, in particolare per quanto riguarda gli acquisti di prodotti biologici. La Green Economy è vista come fattore di sviluppo e opportunità per uscire dall'attuale contesto di crisi economico-finanziaria. Crisi, che è strutturale e di carattere duraturo, affiancata da una crescente problematica ambientale dovuta all'attuale modello produttivo, fortemente dipendente dai combustibili fossili. Difatti la necessità di cambiare paradigma produttivo promuovendo la sostenibilità è visto anche in ottica di mitigazione del cambiamento climatico e dei suoi impatti socio-economici particolare dal punto di vista dei disastri ambientali. Questo punto è analizzato anche in termini di sicurezza internazionale e di emergenza umanitaria, con riferimento al possibile utilizzo da parte delle organizzazioni di intervento nei contesti di emergenza di tecnologie alimentate da energia rinnovabile. Dando così una risposta Green ad una problematica esacerbata dall'impatto dello sviluppo delle attività umane. / My PhD thesis is the final output of my research activities carried out during these three years. The main objectives that I have analyzed, and tried to merge as much as possible here, is the promotion of sustainable development and the environmental impact of human activities. My research line has been characterized on the analysis of the historical development of the Italian agricultural sector and the changes simultaneously occurring in the social and economic structure. Particular focus has been put on energy consumption and dependence from importation, territorial aspects and environmental impacts. Part of my analysis focused on the recent development of the Green Economy, in particular concerning the agro-food sector and the production of renewable energy sources. Emphasis is placed both on policies for promoting sustainability implemented at EU and national level and on consumption's changes in particular with regard to organic products. Green Economy is seen as a factor of development and as an opportunity to overcome the current context of economic and financial crisis. Crisis that is lasting and structural, moreover it has been worsened by growing environmental problems given by human activities and actual production model that is strongly dependent from fossil fuels. In fact, the necessity of changing production paradigm and promoting sustainability is also seen from a perspective of mitigating social and economic impact of climate change, particularly from environmental disasters point of view and related to humanitarian crisis. This point has been also analyzed in terms of international security and humanitarian emergency, with reference to possible application of green technologies by the side of emergency organizations during disaster relief and therefore giving a further green answer to such problem linked to global warming exacerbated by human activities.

Depending on the regulatory regime they are subject to, governments may or may not be allowed to hand out state aid to private firms. The economic justification for state aid can address several issues present in the competition for capital and the competition for transfers from the state. First, there are principal-agent problems involved at several stages. Self-interested politicians might enter state aid deals that are the result of extensive rent-seeking activities of organized interest groups. Thus the institutional design of political systems will have an effect on the propensity of a jurisdiction to award state aid. Secondly, fierce competition for firm locations can lead to over-spending. This effect is stronger if the politicians do not take into account the entirety of the costs created by their participation in the firm location race. Thirdly, state aid deals can be incomplete and not in the interest of the citizens. This applies if there are no sanctions if firms do not meet their obligations from receiving aid, such as creating a certain number of jobs or not relocating again for a certain amount of time. The separation of ownership and control in modern corporations leads to principal-agent problems on the side of the aid recipient as well. Managers might receive personal benefits from subsidies, the use of which is sometimes less monitored than private finance. This can eventually be to the detriment of the shareholders. Overall, it can be concluded that state aid control should also serve the purpose of regulating the contracting between governments and firms. An extended mandate for supervision by the European Commission could include requirements to disincentive the misuse of state aid. The Commission should also focus on the corporate governance regime in place in the jurisdiction that awards the aid as well as in the recipient firm.

China is a large country characterized by remarkable growth and distinct regional diversity. Spatial disparity has always been a hot issue since China has been struggling to follow a balanced growth path but still confronting with unprecedented pressures and challenges. To better understand the inequality level benchmarking spatial distributions of Chinese provinces and municipalities and estimate dynamic trajectory of sustainable development in China, I constructed the Composite Index of Regional Development (CIRD) with five sub pillars/dimensions involving Macroeconomic Index (MEI), Science and Innovation Index (SCI), Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI), Human Capital Index (HCI) and Public Facilities Index (PFI), endeavoring to cover various fields of regional socioeconomic development. Ranking reports on the five sub dimensions and aggregated CIRD were provided in order to better measure the developmental degrees of 31 or 30 Chinese provinces and municipalities over 13 years from 1998 to 2010 as the time interval of three “Five-year Plans”. Further empirical applications of this CIRD focused on clustering and convergence estimation, attempting to fill up the gap in quantifying the developmental levels of regional comprehensive socioeconomics and estimating the dynamic convergence trajectory of regional sustainable development in a long run. Four clusters were benchmarked geographically-oriented in the map on the basis of cluster analysis, and club-convergence was observed in the Chinese provinces and municipalities based on stochastic kernel density estimation.

This collection of essays examines various aspects of regional development and the issues of internationalization. The first essay investigates the implications of the impressive growth of China from a rural-urban perspective and addresses the topic of convergence in China by employing a non-parametrical approach to study the distribution dynamics of per capita income at province, rural and urban levels. To better understand the degree of inequality characterizing China and the long-term predictions of convergence or divergence of its different territorial aggregations, the second essay formulates a composite indicator of Regional Development (RDI) to benchmark development at province and sub-province level. The RDI goes beyond the uni-dimensional concept of development, generally proxied by the GDP per capita, and gives attention to the rural-urban dimension. The third essay “Internationalization and Trade Specialization in Italy. The role of China in the international intra-firm trade of the Italian regions” - deals with another aspect of regional economic development: the progressive de-industrialisation and de-localization of the local production. This essay looks at the trade specialization of selected Italian regions (those regions specialized in manufacturing) and the fragmentation of the local production on a global scale. China represents in this context an important stakeholder and the paper documents the importance of this country in the regional intra-firm trade.