Internal dealing regulation and insiders’ trades in the Italian financial market

We analyze insiders’ trades in the Italian financial market. Insiders buy undervalued stocks, but they also act as positive feedback traders. They exploit short term market movements with abnormal returns around trades: they purchase (sell) stocks after a price decline (increase) and trades are followed by a partial reversal. They time the market mainly through purchases immediately communicated to the market and sales (and in part purchases) communicated quarterly to the market. It seems that insiders do not manipulate the market but strategically choose the size of trades, while they are interested to disclose immediately purchases of the assets of the company they prefer not to do it in case of sales. JEL Classification: G14, G15     

Passenger name record (PNR) data: How the EU is promoting (virtual) security by actually limiting Passengers' fundamental rights

The use for security purposes of airline passenger data (PNR) has gradually come to the fore especially in EU-US relations because of the tension between those who considered the use of PNR an effective tool in the fight against terrorism and those who considered the interference in citizens' privacy disproportionate. The Court of Justice intervened decisively on the issue in June 2022 with the “Ligue des Droits Humains” Judgment C-817/19. This ruling should have been followed by a review of the national legislations that transposed the Directive. On the contrary, the Member States are still going in the opposite direction to that indicated by the Court.     

No Identification Without Representation: Constraints on the Use of Biometric Identification Systems

The human species is again becoming nomadic. Each year, about two billion persons move across large geographic distances (not to mention people in “virtual mobility” through information and communication technology). Many of these people have weak or unreliable identification documents—and many poorer people in developing countries do not even have these documents. In 2000, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) calculated that 50 million babies (41% of births worldwide) were not registered at birth. In this scenario, a personal identification scheme based on birth registration and state‐issued passports is less and less tenable. Biometrics appears to offer a viable technological solution. However, the technology itself is subject to popular critique, warning of dystopian futures of overwhelming surveillance and loss of privacy. The best answer to those who fear an Orwellian future is to engage with the technology and seek to ensure that biometric identification systems are developed in positive ways. We suggest that identification schemes become problematic when the reciprocity of identification goes unnoticed, forgotten, or (what is worse) is intentionally bypassed. The dynamics of identification should be reciprocal, dialogical, and involving mutual recognition. In the traditional political domain, this is the recognition by the state of a citizen and by the citizen of the state. In the digital age, identification systems must increasingly transcend geopolitical borders. A globally recognized identification scheme is therefore a necessity. However, it is merely the nature of the borders that has changed here—not the nature of identification. Our call will be: no identification without representation.     

Results of the GEP-ISFG collaborative study on the Y chromosome STRs GATA A10, GATA C4, GATA H4, DYS437, DYS438, DYS439, DYS460 and DYS461: population data

The Spanish and Portuguese ISFG Working Group (GEP-ISFG) carried out a collaborative exercise in order to asses the performance of two Y chromosome STR tetraplexes, which include the loci DYS461, GATA C4, DYS437 and DYS438 (GEPY I), and DYS460, GATA A10, GATA H4 and DYS439 (GEPY II). The groups that reported correct results in all the systems were also asked to analyse a population sample in order to evaluate the informative content of these STRs in different populations. A total of 1020 males out of 13 population samples from Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Macao, Mozambique, Portugal and Spain were analysed for all the loci included in the present study. Haplotype and allele frequencies of these eight Y-STRs were estimated in all samples. The lowest haplotype diversity was found in the Lara (Argentina) population (95.44%) and the highest (99.90%) in Macao (China). Pairwise haplotype analysis showed the relative homogeneity of the Iberian origin samples, in accordance with what was previously found in the European populations for other Y-STR haplotypes (http://www.ystr.org). As expected, the four non-Caucasian samples, Macao (Chinese), Mozambique (Africans), Costa Rica (Africans) and Argentina (Lara, Amerindians), show highly significant Phist values in the pairwise comparisons with all the Caucasian samples.     

Is there performance convergence in OECD public administration styles?

This article contributes to the assessment of the comparative evolution of the public sector performance, productivity and efficiency of 22 OECD countries in the first decade of this century. Overall results show that the average public sector productivity of Anglo‐Saxon countries is higher than that of European Continental and Nordic countries, but the inequality of the distribution of wealth is also bigger. Although the administrative culture of the countries studied influences the areas on which public policies are focused, there is more than one route to improve the performance and productivity of the public sector.     

Integration of dentistry and forensic odontology for a structured identification system and border control

Dear Editor,The increase in migration across countries has led to a range of problems in public health,border control,traveller and deceased identification,age assessment on unaccompanied minors,and identification of dead migrants.A review of these procedures in Italy highlights the need for a wider and centralized collection of antemortem and postmortem data as of the quality of postmortem data collection^[1].