From 1997 through early 2003, the United Nations Oil for Food Program allowed Iraq to export oil in exchange for humanitarian supplies. We measure the extent to which this program was corrupted by Iraq's attempts to deliberately set the price of its oil below market prices in an effort to...

Real estate agents in the US typically charge a 6 percent commission, regardless of the price of the house sold. As a consequence, the commission fee from selling a house will differ dramatically across cities depending on the average price of housing, although the effort necessary to match...

Real estate agents typically charge a 6 percent commission, regardless of the price of the house sold. As a consequence, the commission fee from selling a house will differ dramatically across cities depending on the average price of housing, although the effort necessary to match buyers and...

From 1997 through 2003, the UN Oil for Food Program allowed Iraq to export oil for humanitarian supplies. We hypothesize that Iraq deliberately set the price of its oil below market prices to solicit bribes from oil buyers. By comparing the price gap between Iraqi oil and its close substitutes...

We study how growth of cities determines the growth of nations. Using a spatial equilibrium model and data on 220 US metropolitan areas from 1964 to 2009, we first estimate the contribution of each U.S. city to national GDP growth. We show that the contribution of a city to aggregate growth can...

Innovative glazing systems with silica aerogel in interspace were investigated for energy saving in buildings. Aerogel is a promising transparent insulating material, due to its low thermal conductivity (down to 0.010Wm−1K−1), high solar factor, high daylight transmittance and remarkable...

Energy savings for heating, air conditioning and illuminating plants could be improved by innovative Transparent Insulation Materials (TIMs), which aim to optimize two opposite requirements: transparency and thermal insulation. Aerogel is one of the most promising materials for use in highly...

The present work deals with the problem of monitoring and diagnosis, through non-intrusive methodologies, of stationary internal combustion engine, with particular attention to the cogenerative 1MW unit installed at the Engineering Faculty of the University of Perugia. Specifically, acoustic and...