Paolo Rosasco

A Mass Appraisal Model Based on Multi-criteria Evaluation: An Application to the Property Portfolio of the Bank of Italy

This paper presents an application of multicriteria evaluation to select the property characteristics in order to estimate the most probable market value of a large public property portfolio. The methodology proposed, based on the involvement of key actors of the decision process, aim to support the decision process of value judgment in a more flexible way overcoming the difficulty presented by econometric models due to the scarcity of a large sample data; it is referred to a multi-parameter estimated model and tested on a large property portfolio owned by the Bank of Italy. The application has shown that this type of procedures can be a reliable tool to analyse the real estate values and solve estimation problems concerning consistent real estate assets on which analytical methods and regression models are hardly applicable due to the scarcity of data.

The Mass Appraisal Tool: Application of a Pluri-Parametric Model for the Appraisal of Real Properties

Over the past few years, mass appraisals have been the center of attention within the national and international real-estate valuation context. The reason for this growing interest is mainly due to the increasing relevance of real estate within the global economy and the need for assessment tools that can support asset management and enhancement strategies at a decision-making level. Many owners have expressed a need for such valuation tools: lending institutions, real estate funds, insurance companies, and managers of public assets (municipalities, etc.). Because of those new valuation needs and the difficulty involved in applying existing models, a new appraisal model is proposed here; a pluri-parametric one that would allow rapid assessment of a large real-estate portfolio in various real-estate market segments. The model was tested on three large real-estate portfolios: TQP property assets (Pension benefits of the staff of Bank of Italy): the Bank of Italy’s district in L’Aquila (Italy); and a portion of Piedmont’s ASL/ASO’s assets.

True, Fair and Beautiful: Evaluative Paradigms Between the Encyclical Letter Laudato Sì and Keynes

Friedrich Schumacher, a pioneer of so-called “sustainable development”, called for an evolution of economic thinking and a departure from laissez-faire’s materialism (Friedrich Schumacher (1911–1977) was a philosopher and an economist who strongly criticized materialism, capitalism and agnosticism. Religions fascinated him, in particular, Buddhism, although also Catholicism had considerably influenced his thoughts. He highlighted the similarities between his economic thinking and the papal encyclicals that have deal with economic issues, such as Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum and Pope John XXIII’s Mater et Magistra. Keynes himself was fascinated by his theories, enough to recommend him for a position at the University of Oxford). According to these assumptions, a man, in order to achieve self-affirmation, must aim at satisfying his own needs through the fair use of resources. He has to shift the goal from the maximization of consumption and profit, typical of the traditional economy, to the achievement of people’s well-being. This theory shares many similarities with the introduction, in Bhutan, of the Gross National Happiness Index, which integrates the traditional Gross Domestic Product in the assessment of the country. When Bhutan is ranked only in accordance to the Gross Domestic Product, it underachieves; but when the Gross National Happiness Index is used, it reaches the highest positions on a global scale. Several institutional researches proposed other alternative indexes that assess the “well-being” of a nation, such as the UN’s Human Development Index (1990), the New Economic Foundation’s Happy Planet Index (2006) and the more recent Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report, drawn up in 2009 (AAVV in Human development report 2015—Work for human development, United Nations Development Programme, New York, 2015). Along with this willingness to change, this contribution starts with the acceptance of the inadequacy of the GPD index for the appraisal of “fairness”, in consistency with the famous quote stated by Kennedy in (Speech at Kansas University, 8 May 1968) “Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile”; then it investigates the relationship that occurs between economics and religion, focusing on the content of Pope Francis’s encyclical “Laudato Si”. Finally, it proposes a resemantization of the paradigm of sustainability based on Pope Francis’ thought expressed in his encyclical “Laudato Si” for the valuation of interventions on buildings, infrastructures, cities and territories. This latter aims at reducing the large number of techniques developed by the scientific community to a more structured vision and, mostly, at translating them into a common language, in consistency with the content of the encyclical.