The last two decades present a wave of deregulation and privatization of electricity industries in several nations including U.S., U.K., Spain, Norway and Italy. This process started in Italy in 1992 ended in 2007 when the Electricity Market has been created. Competition in the production and sale has become focal in political debates related to electricity (Hunt). The Italian Power Exchange was born as a consequence of Bersani's law dated 16th march 1999; starting from the following year, customers had the possibility of stipulating bilateral contracts directly with freely selected providers. Just after the year 2004 an Electricity Exchange has been created, it was committed to ``Gestore del Mercato Elettrico'' (GME). In this paper we consider time series of prices in Day-Ahead Market(MGP) for each hour of the next day in the year 2009. In this market, GME accepts Offers/Bids by Merit Order, and accepted supply offers are remunerated at the Zonal Clearing Price (one price for each zone). Accepted demand bids are remunerated at the National Single Price (PUN). Italy is divided into 18 zones. We consider cross analysis of prices, where zones have been classified according to a suitable metric based on the correlation among them. By mean of a Linkage Algorithm an interesting cluster structure is obtained; we show the presence of some very close (in terms of correlation) groups and we study the evolution of cluster structure as a function of distance. The last result suggests to reduce the zonal prices to only three main groups in order to reduce the costs of the auction mechanism since it has been shown (Grilli) that the structural problems in terms of production do not allow the Deregulated Italian Electricity Market (also supported by any kind of auction model) to be efficient and, on the contrary, it appears useless and also costly.

The present paper aims to introduce the principal definitions and proofs of fundamental properties of the so called“Way Below” relation. We introduce an alternative proof, with respect to [1], of the strong interpolation theorem. The strong interpolation theorem is the theoretical result which provides computational consistency to way below relation because it guarantees the use of successive algorithms in order to find a better and better approximation of the result.

In this paper, we study a duopoly model in which two symmetric firms exploit the same public renewable resource as an input for the production of a homogeneous good. We consider the case where the firms are provided with public incentives in order to prevent the resource exhaustion in a finite time horizon which coincides with the harvesting-license period. As a consequence, we consider a differential game in finite time horizon and compute the Open Loop and linear Feedback Nash Equilibria of the game. We study the social welfare and the optimal incentives polices derived from the solutions.

The signals coming from the real world around us are analog and, in order to treat these quantities with a computer, it is necessary to perform a conversion from analog to digital signals. In this paper we show how the analog signals can be processed digitally. In order to achieve such result we introduce the main definitions necessary for a more comfortable reading of the paper and then we present the process of signal conversion from analog to digital. The conversion of signals from analog to digital is proposed giving a qualitative interpretation of the sampling theorem in the time domain instead of, as happens more often, in the frequency domain. The reason behind the choice of presenting the qualitative analysis in the time domain, is twofold: on one side this approach does not require the introduction of the concept of Fourier Transform and spectrum of a signal and, on the other hand, it allows us to give a more intuitive interpretation of the sampling theorem. At the end of the paper we present some of the best known digital formats, both compressed and uncompressed, highlighting the necessity of compression to reduce the size of a file containing audio and digital video. Finally we present some examples of compression techniques such as the RLE (Run Length Encoding) and Huffman coding.

In this paper the authors analyse the Italian “IV Conto Energia” for the Photovoltaic in the light of the Ministerial Decree of 05th may 2011. In the first part of the paper the technical aspects of ”Conto Energia” are dealt with, highlighting the major changes with respect to the past. The second part of the paper shows a financial analysis of an investment project for a photovoltaic 2kWp plant on a building. The authors consider cash inflows and outflows and they evaluate the discounted value of these flows at the plant commissioning date. The actual return on investment is therefore calculated according to the elementary principles of financial equivalence. The analysis highlights the critical consequences of the proposed cuts to incentives that will slash the return on investment by 60% as from 2012 compared to 2011.

In this study, the Gaussian curvatures of closed parallel ruled surfaces are calculated. We consider parallel ruled surfaces from indicatrix curves associated to Frenet vectors of the curve created on the unit dual sphere.

L'esigenza di scrivere un libro dedicato esclusivamente ai numeri complessi, nasce dall'esperienza didattica maturata nei corsi di Matematica e Matematica per l'Economia e la Finanza tenuti presso il Dipartimento di Economia dell'Università di Foggia. In questo libro vengono presentate le definizioni principali e le operazioni sui numeri complessi, presentando per ogni caso numerosi esempi ed esercizi. Nella seconda parte del libro si affronta il tema delle applicazioni dei numeri complessi all'algebra dei polinomi. Il libro si chiude con un appendice che presenta spunti di riflessione per ulteriori approfondimenti sulla tema. Questo libro intende essere uno strumento di studio e di approfondimento esaustivo per chiunque intenda affrontare il tema dei numeri complessi ed in particolare è rivolto agli studenti dei corsi di laurea ad indirizzo economico.

Il presente manuale di Informatica di base è rivolto agli studenti dei Corsi di Laurea di Facoltà o Dipartimenti non scientifici che prevedono la verifica di competenze informatiche. Esso cerca di rispondere all'esigenza, maturata negli ultimi anni, di estendere le competenze informatiche anche al di fuori dei Corsi di Laurea ad orientamento spiccatamente scientifico-tecnologico, come, ad esempio, i Corsi di Laurea in Economia. Il testo si pone come obiettivo primario l'alfabetizzazione informatica e si basa sui contenuti dei principali programmi di certificazione informatica di base.

In recent years many technological innovations have been introduced into the olive oil sector, both into the farming system (high and super high density olive orchard) and into oil extraction techniques. As a result players in the sector have to consider different scenarios and have to evaluate many alternatives considering a number of economical, environmental and social criteria. In this paper we present a multicriteria approach in a fuzzy contest in which decision makers provide the assessment of alternatives and the evaluations of weights for criteria having recourse to linguistic variables. We consider a Triple Bottom Line model in a Multicriteria Fuzzy contest making use of the Triangular Fuzzy Theory in order to represent the decision makers’ linguistic evaluations of criteria and alternatives. Starting from the decision makers’ evaluations we compute the ranking of alternatives using the Fuzzy TOPSIS technique and we present a sensitivity analysis of the results. Results show that though there is no aggreement tor evaluate the best solution concerning cultivation systems, on the other hand, as to extraction processes, it is a common opinion to consider de-pitting as the best solution from an environmental, economic and social point of view. Anyhow, analisyng the final ranking, the combination of centuries-old olive orchard and de-pitting oil extraction is the best solution in absolute terms. This study highlights as innovations in olive oil sector, often developed only in an economic perspective, should be well investigated also in an environmental and social point of view. Despite the fact that it is not trivial to determine the best solution in absolute, sustainability should be taken in consideration in decision-making processes, especially in public policies both from a global and local point of view.

Questo volume presenta i principali strumenti matematici necessari nelle applicazioni economiche e finanziarie. In particolare vengono trattati elementi di algebra lineare, calcolo in più variabili e ottimizzazione libera e vincolata. Ogni capitolo è corredato da appendici che illustrano le principali applicazioni economiche e finanziarie degli argomenti proposti e presentano approfondimenti di alcuni temi di particolare interesse. Il volume contiene esercizi svolti per ogni argomento e proposte di esercizi da svolgere per condurre lo studente alla formulazione autonoma delle soluzioni. Gli argomenti sono presentati con rigore metodologico e nello stesso tempo utilizzando un linguaggio chiaro e diretto corredato da esempi e figure per semplificare la comprensione. Il volume si rivolge prevalentemente a studenti di corsi di laurea ad indirizzo economico e richiede la conoscenza preliminare degli elementi fondamentali del calcolo in una variabile, del calcolo matriciale e dei numeri complessi.

In this paper the authors provide a possible mathematical explanation to some philosophical theories on the evolution of human history. In particular the cyclical theories of Gian Battista Vico, Robert Jacques Turgot and Niccolò Machiavelli are considered, relating the features of some mathematical functions to the philosophical implications of the theories studied. In this paper we face the short period problem for which we also provide an example related to some historical events really occurred to highlight the theoretical connections presented in this paper. The paper is concluded with the long period analysis.

In the complex frame of the EU agriculture politics, a particular relevant aspect is given by the new regulation on durum wheat production and diffusion incentives. These subsidies are assigned according to a particular indicator (Quality Global Index - QGI), built up through a weighted mean of four qualitative parameters. However, as we are going to show, the actual method used to evaluate QGI could not be statistically correct. In this work we propose, both from a theoretical and an empirical point of view, a comparison between the actual method and a series of alternative ones. A particular emphasis is given to a normalisation criterion, modified in order to properly take into account the asymmetry level observed on the four parameters empiric distributions.

In this paper we propose a possible solution to a very complex issue that is related to optimal human resources' allocation in the frame of the emergency ambulance service. We consider an example taken from real life but we present it as a general case in order both to preserve privacy reasons and to generalize this methodology to a wider area of applications. The main issue of the paper is to develop a methodology in order to allocate human resources that are involved in an emergency service in an optimal way. In our framework we consider the case, that is very common in real life, in which a public or private company manages the emergency ambulance services in an area with a number of towns and hospitals. One of the main issues is to allocate human resources considering a certain number of criteria. In this paper we propose a possible solution to such a problem by means of a multicriteria method.

L'esigenza di organizzare in maniera sistematica alcuni contenuti pre-corsistici, come le equazioni e disequazioni di primo e secondo grado, è maturata negli anni di insegnamento nei corsi di Matematica tenuti presso il Dipartimento di Economia. La lettura attenta e attiva del testo garantisce di raggiungere un duplice risultato: da un lato comprendere a fondo (quindi CAPIRE) le equazioni e disequazioni e dall'altro dotarsi di un metodo di studio e lavoro utile ad affrontare con profitto lo studio della matematica. Il libro quindi si rivolge a tutti coloro i quali desiderino approcciarsi allo studio della matematica con uno spirito critico e costruttivo dotandosi di un metodo e uno strumento di studio utile ad affrontare qualunque argomento di matematica e non solo.

The new Italian regulation for the distribution of the Ordinary Financing public Fund (FFO) is included in the framework of the reformation of the University System financing politics. A part of the FFO is bound by a specific merit rating performed by the C.N.V.S.U. (forthcoming A.N.V.U.R.) for the competent Ministry. Such an evaluation results in a periodical monitoring of achieved results for each University, compared with the triennial operating programme in which the main targets, in terms of improvement and efficiency of the public service quality, are presented. From the quantitative viewpoint, this ambitious goal is reached by means of a Quality Aggregate Index (QAI), obtained by the weighted synthesis of twenty-one parameters, measured on scale of ratios and assembled for homogeneity in five macro-areas. The present proposal for the QAI quantification does not seem to be statistically clear and is tends to create discordant results compared with the inspiring regulation. In this study, the authors, preventatively examine carefully the procedure indicated by the Ministry, pointing out the statistical problems implied in it. Such statistical problems can arise also in assessment systems for other countries where the Public Funds distribution is correlated with the evaluation of the efficiency of University (public and/or private) activities. We focus our attention on the theoretical and computational problems of a generic QAI, suggesting an alternative methodology. At the end of the paper, numerical simulations are computed in order to show the effectiveness of the adopted procedure.

This article proposes a differential game model, in order to analyze markets in which regional regulation is operative and competition is based on quality. The case we have in mind is healthcare public service, where consumers (patients) choose the provider mainly basing on the providers’ location and the quality of services, while prices play a more limited role. In most European countries, within the same State, regional (or local) providers compete on quality to attract demand. Market regulation is set at national and/or regional level. Our model highlights the features of equilibrium in such a framework and specifically investigates how the differences in product quality evolve among regions and how inter-regional demand flows behave. Differently from some available similar models, that do not take into account the regional dimension of the decision process, we find that quality differentials among regions may persist in equilibrium.

In this paper, the spherical indicatrix curves drawn by quaternionic frenet vectors are computed. Also the quaternionic geodesic curvatures of the spherical indicatrix curves to E^3 and S^2 are found.