This book is a tribute to the work of Maurizio Grassini, econometrician and model builder. The selection of his works in the first part of the volume is mainly devoted to research issues of multisectoral modelling. In fact, M. Grassini has dedicated a large part of his professional life to building and developing the INTIMO model for the Italian economy within the INFORUM research project. The book does not aim to be a celebration of the past but takes a look at the future of the multisectoral modelling which M. Grassini has contributed so much to. In the second part of the book, colleagues and friends who have encountered M. Grassini in the professional sphere on matters of quantitative economic analysis or still working with him on interindustry models have given their contribution to look at the future prospects of a research field firmly based on the experience of what has been done so far.

Over the last 30 years, the Inforum approach to macro modelling has been shared by economists worldwide. Researchers have focussed much of their efforts to developing a linked system of international interindustry models with a consistent methodology. A world-wide network of research associates use the same methods and software obtaining comparable results. The XXth Inforum World Conference was held in Florence in September 2012 and this book contains a selection of papers presented during that Conference. All these contributions are aimed at policymakers, stakeholders, and applied economists. Some papers are devoted to specific topics (total factor productivity, energy issues, external linkages, demographic changes) and some others are oriented to macro model building and simulations.

INFORUM is a research project started more than forty five years ago by Clopper Almon. The focus is on the development of dynamic, interindustry, macroeconometric models to forecast the economy in the long run. Over the last 30 years, the Inforum approach to model building has been shared by economists in many different countries. Researchers have focused much of their efforts to developing a linked system of international interindustry models with a consistent methodology. A world-wide network of research associates use similar methods and a common software obtaining comparable results to produce studies of common interest to the group. Inforum partners have shared their research in an annual conference since 1993. The XXII Inforum World Conference was held in Alexandria, Virginia in September 2014 and this book contains a selection of papers presented during the sessions. All these contributions share an empirical and pragmatic orientation that is very useful for policymakers, business, and applied economists. Some papers are devoted to specific topics (productivity, energy, international trade, demographic changes) and some others are oriented to model building and simulations.

This volume is the first translation of Romano Bilenchi’s 1940 masterpiece to appear in English. This is surprising since The Conservatory of Santa Teresa is much more than an invaluable historical document of life in provincial Tuscany around the time of the First World War. It is truly one of the most important works of fiction published in Italy under Fascism. In telling of the pre-adolescent Sergio’s encounter with the larger world of sex, politics, and the violence and cruelty of adult life, Bilenchi succeeds in representing a universal paradigm, that of the clash of innocence with experience. But what makes Sergio’s trajectory unique is that he goes through it in the company of three extraordinary women who are at once femmes fatales and benevolent guides: his mother, his aunt, and his tutor, all almost unbearably beautiful, as least in Sergio’s eyes. These women, plus the dazzling landscape of the Sienese countryside as captured by Bilenchi, make Sergio’s journey an enviable even if sometimes painful and bewildering experience.

A Monetary Hope for Europe. This book studies the euro in a global perspective and opens a new series edited by the Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence of the University of Florence, Verso l'unificazione europea. Most of the chapters have been written by economists who met and discussed their diverse views at a multi-disciplinary conference organized by the Centre in May 2013 under the title The euro and the struggle for the creation of a new global currency: Problems and perspectives in the building of the political, financial and economic foundations of the European federal government. The list of contributors also includes historians as well as European and international law academics. Their essays have been revised on the basis and against the backdrop of an ongoing crisis of both the euro and the whole European project in the last years and months. The volume aims to provide useful data and interpretations to improve knowledge on the euro and the European Union in their economic, historical, juridical and political perspectives.

The book meticulously analyses the history of the critical reception of avantguard art through the interpretations received by one of its greatest emblems, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon by Picasso, 1907. Since Les Demoiselles has been considered over this century the true paradigm of Modern Art, this book is, fundamentally, a sort of synthesis of the discourses about Modernism from formalism, iconology, Leo Steinberg's 'Other Criteria’, sociological, the biographical and psychoanalytical theses, cultural and historicist and lastly, the impact of post-structuralism and the feminist, post-colonialist and transnational interpretations. The final chapter deals with the artistic versions of Les Demoiselles d'Avignonmade by artists. It is an essay on the different versions and identities of Modern Art and Modernism that have been produced throughout the last century.

This book challenges critical approaches that argue for Giacomo Leopardi’s and Samuel Beckett’s pessimism and nihilism. Such approaches stem from the quotation of Leopardi in Beckett’s monograph Proust, as part of a discussion about the removal of desire. Nonetheless, in contrast to ataraxia as a form of ablation of desire, the desire of and for the Other is here presented as central in the two authors’ oeuvres. Desire in Leopardi and Beckett is read as lying at the cusp between the theories of Jacques Lacan and Emmanuel Levinas, a desire that splits as much as it moulds the subject when called to address the Other (inspiring what Levinas terms ‘infinity’ as opposed to ‘totality,’ an infinity pitted against the nothingness crucial to pessimist and nihilist readings).

In this book, Giovanni Molteni Tagliabue asserts that the realization of the values and the implementation of the objectives as indicated in democratic constitutions (political, social rights and the people’s welfare) are hindered by structural defects of the legislative/government architecture and processes. Expertise and science have scarce say in politics and policy. The author suggests an innovative view through the ‘REDemo Project’. 1. Rationalization: the insertion of public scientists into legislative/executive mechanisms, with the creation in each democracy of a National Scientific Assembly – parallel to the extant partypolitical Chamber of Representatives – consisting of academic experts and researchers (legal scholars, political analysts, economists, sociologists, land/urban planners, industry/infrastructure designers, biotechnologists, agronomists, ecologists, educationists, specialists on public health, on cultural heritage, etc.) elected by universal suffrage; 2. Extension: the broadening of the institutions of direct democracy and reinforcement of the electorate as decision-maker of last resort. So the main themes and objectives of the book are an examination of the major flaws in today’s democracies (pars destruens) and a proposal for a renewed institutional framework (pars construens).

This book is the result of a research project designed and carried out at the Department of Architecture, University of Florence. This research was based on the transfer of knowledge from members of the Albanian Diaspora in Italy (university students, young architects and researchers) to their home country. This unique process blazed a trail in the Albania-related studies by creating a methodology, which could be replicated not only in Albanian rural contexts, but also elsewhere. The book constitutes a structured tool for generating sustainable and socially inclusive territorial development processes in five lesser-known Albanian cultural sites. Their tangible and intangible cultural heritage was seen as a driving factor for triggering development processes aimed at improving the inhabitants’ quality of life and strengthening local identity and social networks. Through concrete proposals and strategies, the book offers scenarios and solutions capable of enhancing the potential of each village and, at the same time, counteracting the effects of land abandonment that so often characterise them.