The lack of educational opportunities generates long-term inequalities in the lives of young people. How and where can we intervene to facilitate access to university for young men and women from low- and middle-income families? A new idea of intervention, based on encouraging family savings, has made its way in the United States. And so-called asset building is also proving effective in Italy.

The EU defines AI as "systems that display intelligent behaviour": they impact on all human activities and have technological, legal, economic and social implications. Many countries have begun to regulate them, but formulating comprehensive regulations appears to be a challenge. The European Commission, concerned that the use of AI may 'cause violations of fundamental rights', has regulated 'high risk' and 'unacceptable risk' sectors. And Italy?

National calls for tenders, regional funding, PNRR funds: there are many resources available to municipalities, but potential beneficiaries often seem to lack the motivation to apply.This is the case with the PNRR funds for kindergartens: more than 3,400 municipalities with a serious shortage of childcare services did not participate in the 2020-2021 'asili nido' calls. What are the reasons? And what can be done to identify (and support) the municipalities with the greatest difficulties?

In the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate, 203 women now sit, 33.6% of the members of Italian Parliament (a percentage higher than the average for EU27 parliaments). At the Presidency of the Council, after 64 governments led by men, for the first time Italy has a woman (only 4 other EU countries do not have a man at the head of the executive). Since 2023, the main opposition party has also been led by a woman. But the road to equality is still a long one. And it also passes, in 2024, through the renewal of the European Parliament.

To control costs and ensure greater administrative efficiency, in recent years many developed countries have approved territorial reforms that have led to mergers between municipalities. In Italy since 2002 the number of municipalities has thus fallen from 8,022 to 7,901. But what happens in the (rare) case of territorial division? The experience of Puglia, where five municipalities split voluntarily in the mid-Seventies

Between 1990 and 2016, the stock of foreign direct investment globally increased from USD 2,254 billion to USD 26,160 billion. Many governments have adopted mechanisms to control the acquisition of strategic companies and the procurement of critical raw materials and industrial products. Also, the European Union has encouraged member States to strengthen their regulatory framework: already 25 out of 27 are doing so. What about Italy?

Tax expenditures have steadily increased over the past six years. In 2022 there were 626 (+ 40%) with fiscal effects on the State budget of -82 billion euros (+ 72%). A further 114 local tax expenditures must be added to these,for a total of 740 benefits. These deviations from the "normal" tax regime increase the complexity of the system and reduce its transparency, in the face of significant revenue losses for public funds: 4% of GDP.

ERP is the policy-pillar of the European Union, both in terms of funds allocated (351 billion between 2014 and 2020) and objectives pursued (redistribution of wealth between regions and countries). Its effects in stimulating growth in lagging areas are, however, quite controversial. Not least because of the (little known) neighbourhood effect: why does being surrounded by poor regions affect the effectiveness of interventions? The case of Southern Europe (including Italian Mezzogiorno).

It replaced the previous casse mutue health insurance system, upholdinh healthcare as a social right. It is known to be one of the best in the world and, based on many international comparisons, it ranks among the topmost ones: avoidable mortality rates in Italy are among the lowest in the EU, while healthy life expectancy is 71.9 years, one of the highest figures. Public healthcare expenditure in Italy accounts for 7.1% of GDP: how does this compare to other healthcare systems in other countries? It is more or less expensive? What do performance indicators tell us?

Stroke in Italy affects 200,000 people every year. It is the third leading cause of death and the leading cause of disability. And the outlook is not rosy: cases in Europe will increase by 34% between 2015 and 2035, causing 45% more deaths and an additional 25% more permanent disability. Can the damage be limited? Sure, and many regions are trying to raise awareness of life-saving behaviors to adopt in emergencies. But do health campaigns really work?

In the I legislature of the Republic, 4 female senators and 49 female deputies entered Parliament: 5% of those elected. In 2022, female parliamentarians reached 33% and, for the first time in the history of our country, a woman assumed the position of Prime Minister. The government led by Giorgia Meloni is one of the three governments with the highest number of women: 22. But at the local level, the path to equality is still long: out of 20 regions there is only one female governor and for every 100 mayors 85 are men.

Article 3 of the Constitution, approved on March 24, 1947, included gender equality among the founding principles of the newly formed Republic. Since then, legislation has changed a great deal in favor of women: from employment guarantees to legal and social protections, from the protection of sexual freedom to opportunities for access to the country's political life. In this, the Constitutional Court has played a leading role: its jurisprudence and urgings have been followed by fundamental reforms.

Violence against women is often invisible even in the eyes of justice workers: magistrates, lawyers, psychologists, counselors. How and where to intervene? In the 18th Legislature, the Senate Femicide Commission adopted a statistical approach to evaluate anti-violence policies with objective criteria. And it identified weaknesses in a protection system that still struggles to fully protect victims.

Stalking, domestic abuse, rape, genital mutilation, femicide: from the first Extraordinary National Plan of 2015 to the many Regional measures, over the past years the instruments aimed at protecting women have multiplied. The enforcement of such measures, however, is often left to circular letters that make it difficult for the victim to get to know the available tools for her defence (and to request their implementation). The Impact Assessment Office zeros-in on anti-violence resources by drafting the first pertinent guide for citizens.

€352bn earmarked for the 2014-2020 period in order to stimulate growth make cohesion policy the veritable pillar of European integration. However, decades of growth policies were not able to smooth out economic and social imbalances: Italy now unenviably tops the EU-15 chart of countries with the lowest social development index and Southern Italy is the largest depressed region in Europe. What went wrong?

For years the EU has been asking our country to reduce "the use and generosity of exemptions and of preferential tax treatments", and even according to the DEF (economic and financial document) tax expenditures should be cut: in 2017, 636 different measures were identified, subtracting an estimated 75.2 billion Euros from State revenues. Yet plenty of crucial information is lacking: we know the impact, recipients and per capita benefit for only 130 tax expenditure measures, and more than half of these measures benefit less than 30,000 taxpayers.

Ever since 3:36 AM on August 24, 2016, Italy has been dealing with the third major reconstruction process in less than ten years. So far, for the three earthquakes, the government has granted 40,5 billion, 1,8 of which in the past year alone. What, how and where will those billions be spent on? Is the regulatory framework - made up byseveral ever-changing decrees and 96 orders by Special Commissioner and Civil Defence authorities - clear and effective? Has the response given to the newly-homeless population been prompt?

Italy has few graduates. Only 26.9% of people aged 30-34 have a university degree, well behind Lithuania (58.7% of graduates), Luxembourg (54.6%), Cyprus (53.4%) and Ireland following closely. The European average is 39.9%.This lack of educational opportunities engenders long-term inequalities in the life of young people, but low-income families still find it hard to bear the cost of university education for their children. What is to be done, and how? An experience: Percorsi.

In 1,833 days, Senators introduced 2,539 bills. What issues were Senators most interested in? Justice and constitutional affairs were the top scorers, followed by health, culture and pensions. Family and children follow armed forces, safety at work follows trade law. Foreign trade, local finance, Southern Italy and energy, combined, fall short of 1% of bills submitted.

Fewer than a quarter of Italian babies between the ages of zero and two have a place in a public facility for infants. Coverage is uneven across the country: in Valle d'Aosta, four tots out of ten go to nursery; in the Campania region, the number is just 6 out of 100. To increase the number of available places, over the last decade the Italian state has spent some €1.15 billion. The "Buona Scuola" Reform now adds over €200 million per year to the pot, starting from 2017. What's the outlook?

In 2000 Italy abandoned compulsory conscription and migrated, after 144 years, to a leaner military model (from 265.000 men and women to 190,000) entirely composed of professionals. International peace-keeping and peace-enforcing missions became the core task of Italian armed forces, but the crisis that exploded in 2008 has deeply affected the fulfillment of the reform. And between reductions in personnel (expected to number no more than 150,000 by 2024), the ageing of the volunteers in service and severe cuts in spending and investment, even the commitment of troops abroad no longer reached the levels of the early 2000s.

Up until the fifteenth legislature, the Italian government chose which Community acts to send to Parliament for examination. The flow varied widely (2 documents in 1999, 115 in 2000, one in 2002) until in 2006 the European Commission amended its standard practice. Today, dialogue between Rome and Brussels is direct and continuous: during the XVII legislature, the Italian Senate "processed" 924 European acts, of which at least ten per week were flagged by the Government as being of national interest. How are Senators organized to cope with this pace?

Between 2014 and 2020, the European Union is setting aside more than 77 billion euros for Italy in structural and investment funds: 46.5 bn in cohesion policies, and 31 bn for the common agricultural policy. However, the UVI and Italy's Financial Police reveal that in 6 out of 10 cases, these funds end up in the hands of scoundrels, swindlers and organized crime. Southern Italy is the biggest offender, accounting for 85% of structural fund fraud. Central Italy is responsible for the lion's share of offences involving agriculture and fishing.

Incentives, exemptions, benefits: every year the State spends 76 billion Euros on fiscal expenditure. But do these measures always respect the environment? Paradoxically, the answer is no. According to the first (and still incomplete) Catalogue of Environmental Subsidies, drafted by the Ministry of Environment with the technical advice of Sogesid, in 2016 about 16.2 billion Euros were allocated for SADs (EHSs - environmentally harmful subsidies), while 15.7 billion were allocated for SAFs (EFSs - environmentally friendly subsidies). Is there a way to reorganise incentive mechanisms and subsidies in order to make them more consistent with the Italy's environmental targets?

Italy's public spending accounted for a good 49.6% of GDP in 2016, but it allocated a very modest share of its resources to investments: just 2.1%, which is not enough to support all investments - especially infrastructure projects - which the country so much needs in order to support aggregate demand, improve and expand service levels, narrow the geographical economic divides and boost competitiveness.

For public administrations, especially Italian municipalities, the public-private partnership (PPP) has therefore been, over the past 15 years, a very important resource for financing new infrastructure projects (underground rail, sports facilities, TLC networks) and for providing services.

If well-implemented, the evaluation cycle is an excellent tool for political decision-makers, making it possible to choose which one of a number of options is likely to produce the best results. In Italy, the use of these techniques - impact analysis and assessment (AIR and VIR), measuring administrative burdens (MOA), and consultations - is often undertaken merely as a bureaucratic exercise. A system of AIRs and VIRs integrated between the various levels of government is missing and only in very rare cases have approved acts undergone ex-post monitoring and assessment.

In 2014, 4.4 million women in Italy were physically or psychologically abused by their partner: one woman in four, among the ones in a relationship. In 2016, 149 women were murdered, 111 of whom (that's three in four, about 75%) by a family member. More than 4,000 women reported sexual violence, over 13,000 were victims of stalking - that's almost a 50% increase compared with 2011 - and 14,000 reported being abused.

Satisfaction, happiness, quality of-life, self-realisation, utility, pleasure: there is an ongoing international debate on whether GDP should be ousted as the sole indicator of well-being. The benchmark on which the progress of a society can be evaluated should not be solely economic. This is demonstrated by the World Bank's per capita GDP classifications: in 2017 Italy was among 16% of the most prosperous countries, but ranked only 48th (out of 155) in the World Happiness Report. In short, given parity of GDP, by comparison with other countries, Italy is lacking in certain "happiness factors".

According to the mainstream economic thought, a more flexible labour market better responds to the enterprises' need to curb costs and boost efficiency. However, it also sparks a market dualism between guaranteed and non-guaranteed workers, income uncertainty, depressive effects on the economy. As for employment, has it soared or dropped? And what about productivity? Here are the main conclusions reached by experts, IMF, World Bank and OECD.

Measuring tax evasion is often described as attempting to obtain "evidence on the invisible". Several approaches have been developed to obtain evidence on tax evasion that depend on the purpose of the analysis and particularly on which effects of tax evasion one wants to measure. In this paper we propose an approach that integrates two methods that the literature has previously applied separately. Both methods adopt a microeconomic perspective. The analysis focuses on the personal income tax (PIT) in Italy (Irpef-"imposta sui redditi delle persone fisiche"-and other local income taxes) and also studies the distributive effects of this type of tax evasion

Emergency decrees, enabling laws, execution of regulatory powers: over the past decades, the Government has considerably expanded its regulatory activity, involving the Parliament - as envisaged by the legislator. From 1996 to 2016 the opinion of Parliament Committees was requested 2,786 times. And what were the results? To what extent have the opinions been followed up?

Excise duties on energy products, taxes on vehicles, noise, pollution and natural resources: environmental taxes paid by Italian residents ensured revenues totalling 53.1 billion Euros in 2013. Is it possible to quantify the environmental costs borne by the community, namely, the damage to the environment and health caused by pollution sources related to household and enterprise activities, and compare them with the environmental taxes paid by the same activities?

New budget balancing, electronic invoicing, split payments, code of public contracts: over the past few years the bookkeeping of Italian public bodies has been revolutionised by a number of reforms. One of the most radical ones has been, starting from 2011, the harmonisation of balance sheets: in order to comply with the new accounting systems, several mayors had to conduct a real inspection, sorting out assets and liabilities and writing off bad debts.

How many are there? Who runs them? What do they do? How much do they earn? In Italy, for years we have been trying the complete the pertinent map, which is crucial to sort out a fragmented system that lacks transparency. In 2014, the spending review special commissioner actually identified four different databanks. The Treasury Department seeks information every year from over ten thousand public administration offices. But too many have never answered.

Together with the update memo to the DEF (Economic and Financial Document), in a few days the Government will be publishing its First Preliminary Report on Fiscal Expenditure: exemptions, deductions, tax credits, and favourable tax rates that the executive has been tasked with "reducing, eliminating or reforming", acting specifically on measures that are "unjustified" or "superceded".

On 24 August 2016, at 3:36 am, an earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter magnitude scale rocked central Italy. The aftermath was absolutely terrible, in terms of death toll, disrupted economy, devastated cultural heritage. The Civil Defence estimated that material damage totalled about 23,530,000 Euros, which adds on to the significant damage caused by the previous two earthquakes, which struck L'Aquila in 2009 and the Po Valley in 2012.

The Senate of the Republic and the Finance Police (Guardia di Finanza) have drafted a report on counterfeit Made in Italy products, highlighting a phenomenon that jeopardises health, security, the Italian productive systems and that is proliferating thanks to the Internet. Over the last five years (2012-2016), the Finance Police has conducted 60,000 judicial police actions, seized one billion products worth 10.8 billion Euros and put down 1,614 websites (620 in 2016 alone).

From 28 April 2006 to 31 December 2016 the senators submitted 1,271 interpellations, 7,780 oral questions and 19,309 questions requiring a written reply, for a total of 28,360 parliamentary oversight acts, 6,913 (roughly 24%) of which were followed up, between the 15th and 17th parliament.

Italy holds an EU record: 19.9% versus an EU average of 11.5%. One youth in five does not attend school, does not work and is not looking for a job. The trend is falling (in 2013 almost 23 young men out of 100 were doing nothing) but if we consider inactive youths aged between 25 and 29, equally affected by unemployment (in Italy, Greece and Spain the figure tops 40%), the NEET generation exceeds 2.2 million people.

For Italy, an inverse-U shaped relationship is found with the maximum of the effectiveness around 70% and no effects below and above 50% and 80%, respectively. This approach is quite informative as allows the policy makers to tailor the policy according to the specific value of the ratio.

In 2008 a reform occurred in Italy in the formation of selection committees for qualifying to university professorship. Prior to the reform members of the committees were elected by their peers, then they have been randomly drawn. This policy was intended to increase the equality of opportunities of candidates via a reduction of the role played by connection to commissioners. Results show that candidates internalised the changed environment and adapted their strategy of application. However the reform did not necessarily raise the impact of scientific quality of candidates on the outcome of competitions.

Almost 57,000 detainees at 30 June 2017: with 113 inmates per 100 places available, the prison crowding rate in Italy has gone up by 5 points compared with 31 December 2016. In eight regions the figure exceeds 120%. In Apulia, it has reached 148%, nearing the index that in 2013 led the European Court of Human Rights to condemn Italy over the "inhuman or degrading treatment" of detainees.

The Italian tax-benefit system generates a broad range of effective marginal tax rates, with positive and negative values, determining, in some cases, also a "poverty trap" (that is a marginal tax rate higher than 100 percent). The marginal and average tax rates are also sometimes decreasing with growing taxable income, while at a low level of income we have such high tax rates that a disincentive for labour supply may result.

The partnership agreement with the EU for the use of European Structural and Investments Funds is currently in full force. Italy is selecting the major works to be completed during the European seven-year programme 2014-2020. And there is a novelty: the agreement signed with the EU requires that we comply with the fundamental nexus between plan and project through self-assessment mechanisms, but it also identifies several result indicators for thematic goals, in terms of both value before the public expense and final target.

The evaluation of civil servants and the quality of the services provided to citizens-users have become increasingly important in recent years. The Senate is not part of the Public Administration, but nevertheless, in 2001 it started measuring its performances: a drop in personnel (-40% since 2006) and in financial resources (-32% in real terms), an increase in the services offered. Here is the latest report from the Senate.