Related papers: Statistical Considerations on Political Responsivi…
Transmitting messages in the most efficient way as possible has always been one of politicians main concerns during electoral processes. Due to the rapidly growing number of users, online social networks have become ideal platforms for…
The study presents a time-series analysis of field-standardized average impact of Italian research compared to the world average. The approach is purely bibliometric, based on census of the full scientific production from all Italian public…
This paper discusses the size distribution, - in economic terms - of the Italian municipalities over the period 2007-2011. Yearly data are rather well fitted by a modified Lavalette law, while Zipf-Mandelbrot-Pareto law seems to fail in…
How to elect the representatives in legislative bodies is a question that every modern democracy has to answer. This design task has to consider various elements so as to fulfill the citizens' expectations and contribute to the maintenance…
Politics and discussion in parliament is likely to be influenced by the party in power and associated election cycles. However, little is known about the extent to which these events affect discussion and how this has changed over time. We…
We study the evolution of population density across Italian municipalities on the based of their trajectories in the Moran space. We find evidence of spatial dynamical patterns of concentrated urban growth, urban sprawl, agglomeration, and…
This study introduces a statistical mechanics framework to analyze the territorial distribution of the Resident Foreign Population across Italian municipalities. The observed percentages of foreign residents are treated as the reference…
In this work, the SIR epidemiological model is reformulated so to highlight the important {\em effective reproduction number}, as well as to account for the {\em generation time}, inverse of the {\em incidence rate}, and the {\em infectious…
This study examines the relationship between ambiguity and the ideological positioning of political parties across the political spectrum. We identify a strong non-monotonic (inverted U-shaped) relationship between party ideology and…
How similar are politicians to those who vote for them? This is a critical question at the heart of democratic representation and particularly relevant at times when political dissatisfaction and populism are on the rise. To answer this…
The binomial system is an electoral system unique in the world. It was used to elect the senators and deputies of Chile during 27 years, from the return of democracy in 1990 until 2017. In this paper we study the real voting power of the…
As the COVID-19 outbreak is developing the two most frequently reported statistics seem to be the raw confirmed case and case fatalities counts. Focusing on Italy, one of the hardest hit countries, we look at how these two values could be…
We analyse tourism behaviour of Italian residents in the period covering the 2008 Great Recession. Using the Trips of Italian Residents in Italy and Abroad quarterly survey, carried out by the Italian National Institute of Statistics, we…
The pursuit of truth is central to democratic deliberation and governance, yet political discourse reflects varying epistemic orientations, ranging from evidence-based reasoning grounded in verifiable information to intuition-based…
In this work we study, on a sample of 2.3 million individuals, how Facebook users consumed different information at the edge of political discussion and news during the last Italian electoral competition. Pages are categorized, according to…
We propose a method to measure the effectiveness of the recruitment and turnover of professors, in terms of their research performance. The method presented is applied to the case of Italian universities over the period 2008-2012. The work…
The paper presents analysis of time evolution within am Internet political forum, characterized by large political differences and high levels of emotions. The study compares samples of discussions gathered at three periods separated by…
This paper presents a user modeling pipeline to analyze discussions and opinions shared on social media regarding polarized political events (e.g., public polls). The pipeline follows a four-step methodology. First, social media posts and…
With the increasing frequency of major natural disasters, understanding their political consequences is of paramount importance for democratic accountability. The existing literature is deeply divided, with some studies finding that voters…
We hypothesize that if election results are manipulated or forged, then, due to the well-known human attraction to round numbers, the frequency of reported round percentages can be increased. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed raw data…