The impact of WTI futures on Shanghai crude futures: identifying spillover effects on crude oil prices using the multiplicative error model

How does institutional quality affect the efficiency of local government? An assessment of Italian municipalities

This study investigates the role of institutional quality in the cost efficiency of social services provided by local governments in Italy. Using a newly developed panel stochastic frontier approach, we address the issue of endogeneity, which can lead to biased estimates in efficiency analyses. By analysing a large dataset of social services expenditures in Italian municipalities from 2015 to 2018, we assess the impact of provincial institutional quality, measured by the Institutional Quality...

Diffeomorphism invariance of the effective gravitational action

We investigate on the diffeomorphism invariance of the effective gravitational action, focusing in particular on the path integral measure. In the literature, two different measures are mainly considered, the Fradkin-Vilkovisky and the Fujikawa one. With the help of detailed calculations, we show that, despite claims to the contrary, the Fradkin-Vilkovisky measure is diffeomorphism invariant, while the Fujikawa measure is not. In particular, we see that, contrary to naïve expectations, the pr...

Guest Editorial: Electromagnetic Nanonetworks: From On-Chip Communication to Wearable and Implantable Networks

Nanotechnology is enabling the development of devices on a scale ranging from one to a few hundred nanometers. At this scale, a nanomachine is defined as the most basic functional unit, integrated by nano-components which can carry out sensing and actuation. Coordination and information communication among several nanomachines expand the potential applications of individual devices both in terms of complexity and range of operation. The resulting nanonetworks can cover wide areas, to reach un...