INNOVATIONS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: NEOCLASSICAL VERSUS EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH

In the last 20 years, the concept of ‘Sustainable Development’ (SD) has become very popular and wide spread in the world. In particular, the environmental dimension of SD asks for new ways to accomplish enhanced quality of life with reduced environmental impact. As a consequence, innovations that contribute to sustainable path ways through an improved environmental quality (the so-called ‘Sustainable Innovations’ - SI s) are facing a growing interest. The present study aims at contributing to the debate about innovation and SD, by focusing on the analysis of SIs from, respectively, the neoclassical and the evolutionary perspective. Whereas neoclassical theorists neoclassical theorists focus on the ‘double externality problem’ of SIs, on the one hand, and on the factors that influence the irimplementation, on the other, evolutionary approach analyses mainly radical technological changes thus stressing the need for a consideration of additional aspects ( in particular social and institutional ones) in the analysis of SIs.Innovations, Sustainable Development, Neoclassical Theory, Evolutionary Approach

Causality between Energy and Economic Growth: the Italian case

The causal relationship between economic growth and energy consumption represents a widely studied topic in energy economics literature. Although it is very well known that there is a strong correlation between energy use and growth, the issue of causality still remains to be answered. This study aims to investigate the possibility of the energydemand- led growth and growth-driven energy demand hypotheses in Italy by testing the causality between real GDP and electric power consumption through an ECM model. Results do not reveal any causality linkage.Causality; Economic growth; Energy Consumption

Deep Learning Solutions for TanDEM-X-based Forest Classification

In the last few years, deep learning (DL) has been successfully and massively employed in computer vision for discriminative tasks, such as image classification or object detection. This kind of problems are core to many remote sensing (RS) applications as well, though with domain-specific peculiarities. Therefore, there is a growing interest on the use of DL methods for RS tasks. Here, we consider the forest/non-forest classification problem with TanDEM-X data, and test two state-of-the-art DL models, suitably adapting them to the specific task. Our experiments confirm the great potential of DL methods for RS applications

The Paris Game: Charles de Gaulle, the Liberation of Paris, and the Gamble that Won France (Book Review) by Ray Argyle

Review of The Paris Game: Charles de Gaulle, the Liberation of Paris, and the Gamble that Won France by Ray Argyl

Do domestic firms benefit from the presence of MNEs? The case of the Italian manufacturing sector

According to the main economic literature, foreign direct investment (FDI) from Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) can generate positive externalities to host countries, increasing the domestic firms productivity. Recently, the attention of researchers has moved from the analysis of ''horizontal'' spillovers i.e. those benefits to local enterprises at an intraindustrial level - towards the investigation of ''vertical'' spillovers phenomenon i.e. the diffusion of positive effects on domestic economies at an inter-industry level. In this paper we investigate the presence of both these two kinds of spillovers using a firm-level panel data of domestic and foreign firms in the Italian manufacturing sector. The results show the lack of ''horizontal'' spillovers and, at the same time, the presence of ''vertical'' ones.FDI; MNEs; Spillovers; Italian manufacturing sector

Exact solution of the 1D Hubbard model with NN and NNN interactions in the narrow-band limit

We present the exact solution, obtained by means of the Transfer Matrix (TM) method, of the 1D Hubbard model with nearest-neighbor (NN) and next-nearest-neighbor (NNN) Coulomb interactions in the atomic limit (t=0). The competition among the interactions ($U$, $V_1$, and $V_2$) generates a plethora of T=0 phases in the whole range of fillings. $U$, $V_1$, and $V_2$ are the intensities of the local, NN and NNN interactions, respectively. We report the T=0 phase diagram, in which the phases are classified according to the behavior of the principal correlation functions, and reconstruct a representative electronic configuration for each phase. In order to do that, we make an analytic limit $T\to 0$ in the transfer matrix, which allows us to obtain analytic expressions for the ground state energies even for extended transfer matrices. Such an extension of the standard TM technique can be easily applied to a wide class of 1D models with the interaction range beyond NN distance, allowing for a complete determination of the T=0 phase diagrams.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, to appear in European Physical Journal

Bell's inequality violation due to misidentification of spatially non stationary random processes

Correlations for the Bell gedankenexperiment are constructed using probabilities given by quantum mechanics, and nonlocal information. They satisfy Bell's inequality and exhibit spatial non stationarity in angle. Correlations for three successive local spin measurements on one particle are computed as well. These correlations also exhibit non stationarity, and satisfy the Bell inequality. In both cases, the mistaken assumption that the underlying process is wide-sense-stationary in angle results in violation of Bell's inequality. These results directly challenge the wide-spread belief that violation of Bell's inequality is a decisive test for nonlocality.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figure

Bell's inequalities I: An explanation for their experimental violation

Derivations of two Bell's inequalities are given in a form appropriate to the interpretation of experimental data for explicit determination of all the correlations. They are arithmetic identities independent of statistical reasoning and thus cannot be violated by data that meets the conditions for their validity. Two experimentally performable procedures are described to meet these conditions. Once such data are acquired, it follows that the measured correlations cannot all equal a negative cosine of angular differences. The relation between this finding and the predictions of quantum mechanics is discussed in a companion paper.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figure