Paolo Liberati

The World Distribution of Income And Its Inequality, 1970–2009

This paper provides a full decomposition of world inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, in the period 1970–2009. In particular, using the Analysis of Gini (ANOGI), the paper describes the evolution of between inequality, within inequality, and the impact of overlapping on both factors. While there is evidence that between inequality in the last decade significantly declined due to the rapid Chinese growth, within inequality and overlapping went in the opposite direction. Furthermore, with the exception of some Asian countries, the rest of the world has not moved significantly. As a result, world inequality remains high by any standard.

A Decomposition of the Personal Income Tax Changes in Italy: 1995-2000

The effects of personal income tax changes are usually analyzed by comparing the inequality of income distributions before and after the tax policy change on a fixed pretax income distribution. This constant-population methodology aims at isolating the pure redistributive effect of the tax legislation. On the basis of the OECDs 1987 analysis, this paper proposes a methodology to disentangle the pure effect of tax changes from the influence of other nontax factors when the pretax income distribution is not fixed. For the Italian case, it is shown that the additional redistributive outcome displayed by changes of tax laws between 1995 and 2000 is only one-fourth of the total change of the redistributive impact in the same period and is outweighed by the effect of inflationary fiscal drag.

UK Privatization and Household Welfare

This paper investigates the effects of the UK privatization process by estimating changes in household welfare on the basis of real relative price changes. As measured on the basis of price changes at the consumer level, privatization has generated aggregate welfare gains for households. When exogenous input costs in the production process are controlled for, it is noted that the role of privatization is more limited, being between 15% and 50% of the total welfare change obtained after privatization has taken place.

Evaluation of sensors for poplar cutting detection to be used in intra-row weed control machine

In Short Rotation Coppice (SRC) of poplar, the weeds within the row have a detrimental effect.A photoelectric and capacitive sensors was used for detecting the poplar cuttings along the row.The detection system has proved able to recognize the poplar cuttings.The system appears suitable for a future evaluation on the intra-row weeding machines. For Short Rotation Coppice (SRC) cultivation, it is common practice to use herbicides during the first year, even if mechanical weeding is becoming an alternative practice for environmental and agronomic reasons. Much attention was paid to non-chemical weeding within the rows, but the low level of efficiency of available machinery has led to the development of automatic systems that are capable of weeding the spaces in the row and avoiding the plants.In the framework of this study, a photoelectric and a capacitive sensor (the latter specifically developed for identifying poplar cuttings), was tested. A small platform pulling the sensors was moved along a monorail in order to assess the capability of the sensors for localizing cuttings along the row. The study was conducted on one-year old poplar cuttings. At this stage the plants have little mechanical strength and are unable to withstand the impact of traditional mechanical probes situated on the retractable elements of weed control machinery (hoes, cultivators). Each sensor identified the plant according to its own functional parameters. The divergence between the response of the sensors and the actual position of the cuttings allowed for the accuracy assessment of detection.The capacitive sensor showed a higher amplitude of response in presence of a poplar cutting than the photoelectric sensor. No significant differences were observed for the various distances (0.15, 0.20 and 0.25m) of the detection system from the row and for the different speeds (1.0 and 1.5kmh-1) of the rail.The first results showed that the testing apparatus accurately detected poplar cuttings at the same speed used by common mechanical weed control machines. The sensors tested proved to be suitable to be included in intra-row weeding machines. This will be the main goal of future activities, an interesting prospect for firms producing agricultural machinery for biomass crops.

Relative Price Changes and Households' Welfare in Italy

The entrance of Italy in the Euro area in 2001 has given rise to a wide debate about the perception of inflation on households well‐being. However, most of the debate has involved the measurement of the “correct” consumer price index at the national level. Much less analysis has been carried out on the distributional consequences of inflation on every household. The paper addresses this issue by performing a microsimulation analysis of the impact of inflation on Italian households in the period 1997–2007. It is shown that the impact of inflation has an ambiguous path over the period, with a large concentration of welfare losses around the introduction of the Euro currency. In particular, it is found that poorer and larger households are severely hurt by inflation and that the prices of gas and gasoline are largely responsible for determining the living conditions of Italian households.

A Dairy Cattle Loose Housing Simulation Model, to Evaluate the Performance of an Automatic Milking System

Abstract The purpose of this work was to create a simulation model of an automatic milking system installed in a dairy cow open housing with controlled access to the feeding area, subdivided into two sectors. The model manages lactating and dry cows in the same spaces. The behaviour of the cows was achieved by individually simulating their activity inside the different functional areas of the dairy barn (rest times, time spent in the feeding area for every meal, and so on). The model enabling assessment of AMS performances. The number of milkings per head for a 79 cows herd (59 lactating cows) was 2.68 milking cows-1 d-1 and 76.8% use of AMS.

Creation of a Monitoring System of Technological Fermentative Processes for the Development of On-Line Neural Networks

Abstract The availability of pH forecasting systems in the technological phases in which fermentation occurs makes it possible to guide the productive process towards guaranteed qualitative objectives, modifying the technological parameters as necessary. To this end, an automatic experimental system has been developed for the on-line monitoring of the electrical conductivity, its phase shift, pH and temperature as parameters. ANNs are used to predict pH from temperature and electric conductivity measurements. The work highlights the importance of the phase shift parameter to characterise fermentation processes. The error is lower than 0.05 pH for the 60% of the ANNs predictions.