​Department of Economics Management and Statistics

Datasets and codes associate wih the paper "Interpreting the oil risk premium: do oil price shocks matter?". Detailed description of the data is contained in the .zip file

Data for "Convergence of European natural gas prices"

time series of selected macroeconomic variables used as observables in our estimation exercise.

Stata data set

This dataset contains the data from the a set of laboratory experiments with human subjects run at the University of Milano Bicocca. The experiment was programmed using zTree (Fischbacher, 2007). Our experimental design involved four sessions of each of our two treatments. As we have 27 subjects per session, we have collected data from a total of 216 subjects, from October 2014 to January 2015. Subjects were recruited from the undergraduate population of the University of Milano-Bicocca, via the ORSEE software (Greiner, 2004). No subject participated in more than one session of this experiment. In December 2015 we have run two additional sessions per treatment where the order of the games played by the subject was reversed.

The above are two of the main codes written in RATS which are used to carry empirical estimates and bootstrapping analysis of the baseline regression (Table 3) used in our study.

Abstract of associated article: According to the Rockets and Feathers Hypothesis (RFH), the transmission mechanism of positive and negative changes in the price of crude oil to the price of gasoline is asymmetric. Although there have been many contributions documenting that downstream prices are more reactive to increases than to decreases in upstream prices, little is known about the forecasting performance of econometric models incorporating asymmetric price transmission from crude oil to gasoline. In this paper we fill this gap by comparing point, sign and probability forecasts from a variety of Asymmetric-ECM (A-ECM) and Threshold Autoregressive ECM (TAR-ECM) specifications against a standard ECM. Forecasts from A-ECM and TAR-ECM subsume the RFH, while the ECM implies symmetric price transmission from crude oil to gasoline. We quantify the forecast accuracy gains due to incorporating the RFH in predictive models for the prices of gasoline and diesel. We show that, as far as point forecasts are involved, the RFH does not lead to significant improvements, while it can be exploited to produce more accurate sign and probability forecasts. Finally, we highlight that the forecasting performance of the estimated models is time-varying.

Pesticides, nutrients, and ecological stressors such as competition or predation co-occur in freshwater ecosystems impacted by agricultural pollution. The extent to which combinations of these stressors affect aquatic populations and the role of nutrients availability in modulating these responses requires further understanding. In this study, we assessed how pesticides affecting different taxonomic groups and predation influence the response of Daphnia pulex populations under different trophic conditions. An outdoor experiment was designed following a factorial design, with the insecticide chlorpyrifos, the herbicide diuron, and predation by Notonecta sp. individuals as key stressors. The single impact of each of these stressors, and their binary and tertiary combinations were evaluated on D. pulex abundance and population structure under mesotrophic and eutrophic conditions for 21 days. Data were analysed using generalized linear mixed models estimated by means of a novel Bayesian shrinkage technique. Our study shows a significant influence of each of the evaluated stressors on D. pulex abundance, however, the impacts of the herbicide and predation were lower under eutrophic conditions as compared to the mesotrophic ones. We found that binary stressor interactions were generally additive in the mesotrophic scenario, except for the herbicide-predation combination, which resulted in synergistic effects. The impacts of the binary stressor combinations in the eutrophic scenario were classified as antagonistic, except for the insecticide-herbicide combination, which was additive. The tertiary interaction resulted in significant effects on several sampling dates, however, those were rather antagonistic and resembled the most important binary stressor combination in each trophic scenario. Our study shows that the impact of pesticides on freshwater populations depends on the predation pressure, and demonstrates that the combined effect of pesticides and ecological stressors is influenced by the food availability and organism fitness related to the trophic status of freshwater ecosystems.

Stata do files, and ready-for-analysis data used in the analysis published in the Final Report to 3ie on the project, "Knowledge Heterogeneity: Experimental Evidence on Information Barriers to Oilseed Adoption in Uganda" (project code TW1.1004). This project was funded as part of r Agricultural Innovation Evidence Programme

Abstract Background The Scaling Integrated Care in Context (SCIROCCO) tool has been developed to facilitate knowledge transfer and learning about the implementation and scaling-up of integrated care in European regions. To adequately test the functionality of the tool in assessing the maturity for integrated care within regions, this study evaluated its structural validity, internal consistency and convergent validity. Methods Exploratory factor analysis was used to investigate the structural validity of the 12-items of the SCIROCCO tool. Hereafter, the internal consistency was assessed by calculating Cronbach’s and ordinal alpha. The convergent validity was explored by testing 23 pre-hypothesized relationships between items of the SCIROCCO tool and items of an instrument measuring a similar construct. Results Factor analysis revealed a one-factor structure. Cronbach’s alpha of the overall instrument was 0.92, ordinal alpha was 0.94. Only 30.34% of the hypotheses for testing the convergent validity were met. Conclusion The one-factor structure is considered relevant in representing the structural validity of the SCIROCCO tool. The scale of the SCIROCCO tool shows good internal consistency. The tool (DMIC Quickscan) used to assess the convergent validity might measure a different aspect of integrated care than the SCIROCCO tool. Further research is needed to continue investigating the validity and reliability of the tool.