Essays at the Intersection of Industrial Organization and Political Economy

I study the interplay between markets and politics. Across three different chapters, I offer novel theoretical contributions to the fields of Industrial Organization and Political Economy. In the first chapter, I study how political connections affect the optimal privatization policy in markets where public firms compete with private ones in quality and prices. In the second chapter (co-autored), we study how market concentration affects firms’ lobbying. We provide a welfare analysis of merge...

Environmental impacts on benthic communities of alpine streams: from field studies to artificial flumes

From domestication to management: an anthropological and ethological approach to the welfare of domestic pigs under naturalistic conditions

The Unconscious Self How the brain encodes bodily-self visual cues in the absence of awareness

We constantly experience ourselves as inherently tied to our conscious experience and to our own body. The nature of self-consciousness has long captivated thinkers across disciplines, sparking debates on its functions and meaning in philosophy, and its underlying brain mechanisms in neuroscience. On one side, consciousness seems to be mainly characterized by its holistic and integrated nature. On the other side, unconscious processing operates at lower cognitive levels, handling predictable ...

Impact of gut microbiota on clinical management of critical patients

Artificial intelligence and machine learning applications in Nuclear Medicine for the identification of predictive and prognostic factors in oncological and endocrinological diseases

Recent technological advances, combined with the increasing volume of data available in electronic health records, have paved the way for the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in the medical field. ML is a branch of AI that uses algorithms trained on available observations in order to predict the output of future input data. Nuclear medicine, which has grown to play a key role in the diagnostic work-up and treatment of various cancers, represents an ideal s...

Evaluation of the prevalence and clinical-laboratory characteristics of Intolerance to single and multiple drug classes in hypertensive subject (MDI-TO)

Multiple Drug Intolerance (MDI) is a clinical condition where adverse drug reactions (ADRs) occur in at least three drug classes without an immunological mechanism. MDI pathogenesis mechanism has not been clarified yet and no in-vitro tests are available for its diagnosis, often carried out through an exclusion process. There are few studies in literature focused on identifying the mechanisms and clinical determinants of MDI. In the context of Arterial Hypertension, the use of combination the...

New heterogeneous sustainable catalysts and process intensification technologies for the development of industrial synthetic protocols

Introduction and evaluation of fall detection technologies for fall prevention in older adults at home