0000000000037974
AUTHOR
Giuseppe Maggio
Cecal trap: CT findings of isolated cecal necrosis
Learning objectives Background Findings and procedure details Conclusion Personal information References
Adapting to High Temperatures: Effect of Farm Practices and Their Adoption Duration on Total Value of Crop Production in Uganda
In this article, we use spatially granular climate data merged with four waves of household survey data in Uganda to examine empirically the relationships among high temperatures, total value of crop production, and the adoption and adoption duration of two sustainable agricultural practices (organic fertilizer adoption and maize–legume intercropping). We do this using a fixed-effect model with instrumental variables to address potential endogeneity issues. Our findings indicate that the adoption of these practices has a positive effect on the total value of crop production, and such effect increases monotonically as temperatures increase from long-term averages. Moreover, the number of yea…
Volcano seismicity and ground deformation unveil the gravity-driven magma discharge dynamics of a volcanic eruption.
Effusive eruptions are explained as the mechanism by which volcanoes restore the equilibrium perturbed by magma rising in a chamber deep in the crust. Seismic, ground deformation and topographic measurements are compared with effusion rate during the 2007 Stromboli eruption, drawing an eruptive scenario that shifts our attention from the interior of the crust to the surface. The eruption is modelled as a gravity-driven drainage of magma stored in the volcanic edifice with a minor contribution of magma supplied at a steady rate from a deep reservoir. Here we show that the discharge rate can be predicted by the contraction of the volcano edifice and that the very-long-period seismicity migrat…
The value of local climate and weather information: an economic valuation of the decentralised meteorological provision in Kenya
The development of Sub-Saharan Africa will become increasingly constrained by the acute climate sensitivity of livelihood practices. Weather and climate services can improve climate risks to development by informing plans and decisions that ultimately reduce losses/maximize beneficial opportunities from climate variability and change. Yet, such services are typically highly aggregated, and notoriously difficult to communicate, especially to smallholder farmers and pastoralists where the need is greatest. Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) are decentralizing service provision, and in so doing, offering disaggregated, contextualized, and more easily understandable localized weather and sea…
Progress towards sustainable agriculture – Drivers of change
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 calls for global action to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture”. Meeting this challenge requires global partnerships to support more productive, nutritious and equitable food systems, while helping to conserve environmental resources and reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions responsible for global climate change. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) offers a global vision for a more sustainable agriculture that encompasses economic, social and environmental dimensions of food and agriculture systems. This technical study examines the key factors driving changes in…
Diversification is in the Detail: Accounting for Crop System Heterogeneity to Inform Diversification Policies in Malawi and Zambia
Crop diversification is a common agricultural policy objective. However, the determinants and impacts of crop diversification are heterogeneous and depend on a range of crop-specific characteristics. Index-based measurements of crop diversification, common in the agriculture economics literature, are unable to account for this heterogeneity. Using two national panel surveys from Malawi and Zambia, we develop a multinomial treatment effects model to examine the determinants of adopting seven discreet cropping systems and their impacts on maize productivity and crop income stability. The results of this approach are compared to those obtained when using a Gini–Simpsons index. Differences betw…
Splenic Graulomatosis
Learning objectives Background Findings and procedure details Conclusion Personal information References
Down and out in Italian towns: Measuring the impact of economic downturns on crime
The paper investigates the effect of local economic conditions on crime. The study focuses on Italy’s local labor markets and analyzes the response of crime to the severe slump of 2007-2011. It shows that the downturn led to a significant increase in economic-related offenses that do not require particular criminal skills or tools (namely, thefts).
Schools opening and Covid-19 diffusion: Evidence from geolocalized microdata
Are schools triggering the diffusion of the Covid-19? This question is at the core of an extensive debate about the social and long-run costs of stopping the economic activity and human capital accumulation from reducing the contagion. In principle, many confounding factors, such as climate, health system treatment, and other forms of restrictions, may impede disentangling the link between schooling and Covid-19 cases when focusing on a country or regional-level data. This work sheds light on the potential impact of school opening on the upsurge of contagion by combining a weekly panel of geocoded Covid-19 cases in Sicilian census areas with a unique set of school data. The identification o…
Shooting down the price: Evidence from Mafia homicides and housing prices
In this paper, we estimate the effect of the homicides by the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia, on housing prices in Naples. The study develops on a unique panel data set at the administrative district level for the period 2002–2018 of geo-localized homicides involving innocent victims (denoted as IVH), which are treated as exogenous shocks that negatively affect housing demand. We find that the occurrence of such homicides causes a decrease in housing prices in the range of 2.5–3.8 percentage points. This effect decreases with the distance from an IVH and over time. These results are robust to the utilization of different econometric specifications and to the considerations of possible confou…
School-age vaccination, school openings and Covid-19 diffusion
This article investigates the relationship between school openings and Covid-19 diffusion when school-age vaccination becomes available. The analysis relies on a unique geo-referenced high frequency database on age of vaccination, Covid-19 cases and hospitalization indicators from the Italian region of Sicily. The study focuses on the change of Covid-19 diffusion after school opening in a homogeneous geographical territory (i.e., with the same control measures and surveillance systems, centrally coordinated by the Regional Government). The identification of causal effects derives from a comparison of the change in cases before and after school opening in the school year 2020/21, when vaccin…
Heterogeneous effects of sustainable agriculture practices: micro-evidence from Malawi
Abstract Are the effects of sustainable agricultural practices heterogeneous across agro-ecology and wealth in Malawi? Would a wealth-enhancing policy be associated with increased effectiveness of these practices? Focusing on a nationally representative set of Malawian agricultural households, the article answers the above questions by employing plot-level panel data matched with a set of geo-referenced rainfall and temperature records. The findings suggest a positive correlation between aggregate yield and the adoption of organic fertilizer. A similar result holds for legume intercropping and for hybrid seeds, which are associated to reductions in yield volatility between the two waves. Ne…
Lithiasis and Spontaneous Hemobilia
Learning objectives Background Findings and procedure details Conclusion Personal information References
The legal origin of income inequality
The legal origin movement is implicitly functionalist, while it explicitly prioritizes economic dimensions of development. From this perspective, the empirical findings presented in this paper seem to uncover the existence of a paradox. On the one hand, common law countries are apparently characterized by countless advantages, yet they do not grow faster than civil law countries. On the other hand, common law countries present a more unequal distribution of income, thus suggesting that also from a static perspective there is no a priori reason to prefer a common law system. To further investigate this paradox, we analyze if common law countries are at least characterized by a better kind (e…
Elderly dysphagia: our 10-year experience in Presbyesophagus and Primary Presbyphagia.
Learning objectives Background Findings and procedure details Conclusion Personal information References
Gender, Weather Shocks and Welfare: Evidence from Malawi
This paper explores the gender-differentiated effects of weather shocks on households’ welfare in Malawi using panel data aligned with climatic records. Results show that temperature shocks severely affect household welfare, reducing consumption, food consumption and daily caloric intake. The negative welfare effects are more severe for households where land is solely managed by women, a finding that sheds light on the gender-unequal impact of temperature shocks. Our evidence also suggests that women’s vulnerability to temperature shocks is linked to women’s land tenure security, as temperature shocks impact significantly women’s welfare only in patrilineal districts, where statistics show …
Will the last be the first? School closures and educational outcomes
Governments have implemented school closures and online learning as one of the main tools to reduce the spread of Covid-19. Despite the potential benefits in terms of containment of virus diffusion, the educational costs of these policies may be dramatic. This work identifies these costs, expressed as decrease in test scores, for the whole universe of Italian students attending the 5th, 8th and 13th grade of the school cycle during the 2021/22 school year. The analysis is based on a difference-in-difference model in relative time, where the control group is the closest generation before the Covid-19 pandemic. Results suggest a national average loss between 1.8-4.0% in Mathematics and Italia…
Knowing is half the battle: Seasonal forecasts, adaptive cropping systems, and the mediating role of private markets in Zambia
Abstract This paper examines how smallholders living in regions where a drought is forecasted adapt their farm practices in response to receiving seasonal forecast information. The article draws on a unique longitudinal dataset in Zambia, which collected information from farm households before and after a significant drought caused by the 2015/2016 El-Nino Southern Oscillation. It finds that farmers residing in areas forecasted to be drought-affected and receiving seasonal forecast information are significantly more likely to integrate drought tolerant crops into their cropping systems compared to similar households not receiving this information. Moreover, the probability that a farmer imp…
Aggressive Angiomyxoma: unusual pelvic mass
Learning objectives Background Findings and procedure details Conclusion Personal information References