Francesca Medda

• University College London

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria have emerged as critical indicators for evaluating long-term companies’ resilience and investments’ ethical implications. Anti-money laundering laws and regulations are crucial to good practices in governance, and they are becoming even more essential now that the use of blockchain and cryptocurr...

Blockchain tokens have accumulated tremendous market value but remain highly controversial, given their price volatility and seemingly speculative nature. Ironically, this very characteristic can foster token retention as users wait for occasions of appreciation. In this paper, we conduct an empirical analysis with 58 tokens in two steps: first, an...

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) have emerged as vital sources of equity funding, yet there is mixed evidence so far about the relationship between ICO returns and non-financial information (e.g., ICO ratings, whitepapers, and sentiment). Our study, based on data from 391 tokens, reveals a mismatch between ICO ratings and actual token returns. We find...

In a financial landscape marked by the aftermath of the pandemic and the inherent volatility of today’s markets, investors and fund managers grapple with the challenge of selecting stocks that can withstand short-term fluc- tuations and yield long-term gains. Traditional strategies, deeply rooted in a company’s financial metrics, con- front the cap...

Identifying market abuse activity from data on investors' trading activity is very challenging both for the data volume and for the low signal to noise ratio. Here we propose two complementary unsupervised machine learning methods to support market surveillance aimed at identifying potential insider trading activities. The first one uses clustering...

Given their strong performance on a variety of graph learning tasks, Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are increasingly used to model financial networks. Traditional GNNs, however, are not able to capture higher-order topological information, and their performance is known to degrade with the presence of negative edges that may arise in many common fina...

Researchers estimate that more than 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic have been produced since the early 1950s; however, only 9% of all plastic waste ever produced has been recycled. In this article, we propose a plastic credit driven system consisting of a recyclability index (RI) and plastic credit to impel plastic recycling and increase the quality...

This paper investigates how Covid mobility restrictions impacted the population of investors of the Italian stock market. The analysis tracks the trading activity of individual investors in Italian stocks in the period January 2019-September 2021, investigating how their composition and the trading activity changed around the Covid-19 lockdown peri...

In this paper we report on the activities carried out within a collaboration between Consob and Sapienza University. The developed project focus on Information Extraction from documents describing financial investment products. We discuss how we automate this task, via both rule-based and machine learningbased methods, and describe the performances...

In this paper we report on the initial activities carried out within a collaboration between Consob and Sapienza University. We focus on Information Extraction from documents describing financial instruments. We discuss how we automate this task, via both rule-based and machine learning-based methods and provide our first results.

In this paper we report on the initial activities carried out within a collaboration between Consob and Sapienza University. We focus on Information Extraction from documents describing financial instruments. We discuss how we automate this task, via both rule-based and machine learning-based methods, and provide our first results.

Deep neural networks have gained momentum based on their accuracy, but their interpretability is often criticised. As a result, they are labelled as black boxes. In response, several methods have been proposed in the literature to explain their predictions. Among the explanatory methods, Shapley values is a feature attribution method favoured for i...

Impact investing is an emerging but fast fast-growing field in the financial industry. Urban cultural heritage investments having tangible and intangible features are often found in the asset allocation of impact investment portfolios. In this paper we map out the different financial mechanisms of impact investment in the heritage and creative sect...

During the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the UK government mandated the use of face masks in various public settings and recommended the use of reusable masks to combat shortages of medically graded single-use masks in healthcare. To assist decision-making on the choice of masks for future pandemics, where shortages may not be a contributing fac...

This study shows how post-crisis stress tests have affected the supply of home equity business loans. Stress tested banks reduce their loan originations but in terms of purchased loans, this effect is much stronger among stress tested banks that failed the exercise compared to other groups of banks. The magnitude of these effects is inversely propo...

This study shows how post-crisis stress tests have affected the supplyof home equity business loans. Stress tested banks reduce their loan originationsbut in terms of purchased loans, this effect is much stronger among stress testedbanks that failed the exercise compared to other groups of banks. The magnitudeof these effects is inversely proportio...

This study shows how post-crisis stress tests have affected the supply of home equity business loans. Stress tested banks reduce their loan originations but the reduction in loan purchases is more dramatic among stress tested banks that failed the exercise. The magnitude of these effects is inversely proportional to the size of the loans. Even thou...

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK government has mandated the use of face masks in various public settings and recommends the use of reusable masks to combat shortages of medically graded single-use masks in healthcare. To assist decision-making on the choice of masks for future pandemics, where shortages may not be a contributing factor, the UC...

By the end of 2015, approximately 6300 million tons (Mt) of plastic waste had been generated globally, but less than 10% of plastics was recycled. Since different types of plastics have various degrees of recyclability, consumer information about plastic product recyclability is paramount in order to increase the levels of plastic recycled. Against...

Accessibility is at the core of the economic and social development of cities. Investments in urban transport systems are thus paramount in achieving accessibility. Many cities are suffering from inadequate central government funding and reduction of finance, particularly in times of austerity and now in the presence of the new global pandemic. In...

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the digital- isation of the global economy and industry. However, the Next Generation EU (NG-EU) plan, which aims to provide a strong economic recovery for EU member states, has been criticised for its allocation delay and increased risk of hysteresis, that is, the dependence of the state of a system on its his...

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK government has mandated the use of face masks in various public settings and recommends the use of reusable masks to combat shortages of medically graded single-use masks in healthcare. To assist decision-making on the choice of masks for future pandemics, where shortages may not be a contributing factor, the UC...

Digital tokens linked to financial and economic ventures may have multiple functions and uses. In this work, we examine the relationship between various token functions and the market price of the corresponding token. We consider 86 venture related blockchain tokens, and develop the analysis through a stepwise testing of four hypotheses using panel...

Being able to explain a prediction as well as having a model that performs well are paramount in many machine learning applications. Deep neural networks have gained momentum recently on the basis of their accuracy, however these are often criticised to be black-boxes. Many authors have focused on proposing methods to explain their predictions. Amo...

Preprint v2: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346547858_The_impact_and_effectiveness_of_the_general_public_wearing_masks_to_reduce_the_spread_of_pandemics_in_the_UK_a_multidisciplinary_comparison_of_single-use_masks_versus_reusable_face_masks

Preprint v2: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346547858_The_impact_and_effectiveness_of_the_general_public_wearing_masks_to_reduce_the_spread_of_pandemics_in_the_UK_a_multidisciplinary_comparison_of_single-use_masks_versus_reusable_face_masks

Green bonds are a novel way to help unlock finance for investment in sustainable development. Some issuers and investors are watching this market with keen interest to see whether a green premium-or "greenium"-arises. The current consensus in the literature is that there is a detectable greenium in the secondary markets for corporate and US municip...

We study entry deterrence in air transport markets with a full-service (FS) carrier (the incumbent) and a low-cost (LC) carrier (the potential entrant). We consider a vertically differentiated product model where airlines have different operating cost and different generalized prices so they compete in ticket prices and frequencies. Thus, more freq...

In this study, we investigated the performance of US green municipal bond compared with general municipal bonds. The performance of this bond sector was assessed with two different approaches: through the creation and benchmarking of a green municipal bond index; and by looking for differences in yields between green municipal bonds and their conve...

Increased awareness in the United Kingdom around the issues of dealing with plastic waste, particularly non-recyclable plastics, has created political pressure to find new ways to manage this waste stream. As a result, the UK government recently convened consultations around adapting the national plastic waste management strategy in light of curtai...

In this paper, we study the consequences of diversification on financial stability and social welfare using an agent based model that couples the real economy and a financial system. We validate the model against its ability to reproduce several stylized facts reported in real economies. We find that the risk of an isolated bank failure (i.e. idios...

The intense pressures being brought to bear by the increasing diversity in European urban development patterns call for innovative funding mechanisms to promote smart sustainable urban development, most notably in the energy sector. Currently in Europe, various policy initiatives support sustainable urban development through financial engineering m...

Bitcoin is the world’s leading cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization briefly exceeding $300 billion. This hints at Bitcoin’s amorphous nature: Is this a monetary or a corporate measure? Hard values become explicit in the processing of transactions and the digital mining of Bitcoins. Electricity is a primary input cost. Bitcoins earned are of...

This chapter documents the first pilot project integrating the social impact investing dimension in a large infrastructure project: the project finance for the upgrande and extension of the public hospital in Treviso (Northern Italy). The case study is a compelling example of ‘Shared Value’ highlighting the potential and limits of the theoretical f...

The intense pressures being brought to bear by the increasing diversity in European urban development patterns call for innovative funding mechanisms to promote smart sustainable urban development, most notably in the energy sector. Currently in Europe, various policy initiatives support sustainable urban development through financial engineering m...

Even today, the 2007 financial crisis imposes negative impacts on the ability of local authorities to raise funds for capital investment, particularly for infrastructure. A fundamental need thus exists for municipalities and regional authorities worldwide to broaden their financial channels and explore flexible financial options. In the USA, munici...

As cities worldwide are projected to experience a noteworthy growth in population in the decades to come, additional strain is placed on many urban systems that are already at capacity. At the same time, public funds dedicated to transportation are experiencing vital cuts, creating this way considerable problems and forcing transportation specialis...

This data article presents the UK City LIFE1 data set for the city of Birmingham, UK. UK City LIFE1 is a new, comprehensive and holistic method for measuring the livable sustainability performance of UK cities. The Birmingham data set comprises 346 indicators structured simultaneously (1) within a four-tier, outcome-based framework in order to aid...

The application of real options and fuzzy real options to renewable energy investment decisions is explored in the context of the valuation of three urban rooftop solar projects. Four real options methods were used to analyse the abandonment option present within these projects. Two of these methods, Fuzzy Black-Scholes and Fuzzy Binomial, used fuz...

Container port operations are widely regarded as being beneficial to regional economies, particularly in aggregated terms. The present paper examines this common knowledge in the specific case of the leather, bag and shoe industry in Korea. The authors use two panel datasets of the industry, one dataset of 16 regions and the other dataset of enduri...

According to the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (2012), the shipping market in the SPICs is relatively contestable. Nonetheless, the trade flows are extremely imbalanced since imports usually far outweigh exports, and the freight rates are often significantly higher than in other parts of the world (ADB 2013). These inefficiencies in the trade m...

The task to define a single, consistent and accurate method for our analysis has posed a serious initial challenge, since our aim was to capture the complexities of multiple trade variables which continuously and simultaneously interact, change and adapt to specific contexts and trade chains. Our endeavours throughout this book have certainly led u...

The trade reforms initiated in Uganda during the 1990s have gradually led to trade liberalisation aiming to improve competitiveness and reduce distortion in the markets. For instance, the granting of preferential treatment in the form of duty reductions to COMISA countries, and the East African Community Custom Union treaty signed in 2004 are two p...

Regional science offers a rich toolkit for analysis and policy development for substantive applications. In this book, the science is applied to the challenge for global investment agencies seeking to enhance trade in lagging regions. The challenge is particularly acute for sea-locked and land-locked countries and striking examples are provided by...

In Chap. 6 we analysed how different shipping networks can stimulate trade flows and facilitate the emergence of a hub-and-spoke structure. The hub-and-spoke offers significant gains in trade, because by implementing consolidation, it increases competition and economies of scale, reduces transport costs, and therefore fosters a collaborative approa...

We have seen in the previous chapter how high transport costs and lack of transport infrastructures act as impediments to trade, and how these conditions largely shape the structure of the agriculture sector and negatively impact on trade flows in Uganda. There is consensus among experts and scholars (USAID 2008) that improving access to markets an...

Our model of trade in sea locked countries is grounded on the concept that the flow of trade is characterised by integrated layers of networks. The Multilayer model is composed of three categories of layers: physical, economic and sociological, which will determine the main outputs of the analyses. These layers are interactive, so to comprehensivel...

As mentioned in Chap. 1, our two case studies have some similarities as we will see, but they differ in scale. The SPICs case calls for an outward looking perspective and the scale is extensive; whereas Uganda is inward looking and demands a micro-scale of analysis. For the outward looking perspective of the South Pacific Islands we adopt network t...

In Chap. 1 we offered a preliminary review of the main economic parameters of the two regions under examination by focusing on GDP. Here, we extend the analysis beginning with the employment rate in Fig. 3.1. We note that, in relation to the South Pacific Island countries, Fiji has the lowest employment rate compared to other SPICs and also to Ugan...

Crop price dispersion across farmers/outgrowers is one of the main problems arising when we examine price asymmetric information in the agriculture sector in Uganda (Gollin and Rogerson 2010; Calderon 2009; Minten and Stifel 2008; Mandl and Mukhebi 2002). Farm gate prices are often 50% less than the urban wholesale price, and a large portion of thi...

Different studies demonstrate how market inland country delays often hinder trade more than the effect of foreign tariffs (Hummels 2001; Portugal-Perez and Wilson 2009; Djankow et al. 2010; Freund and Rocha 2010). This is especially evident when we consider Africa’s exports, and in particular, highly time-sensitive goods such as agriculture product...

This chapter is based on the main concepts that Caschili and Medda (2015) have developed to construct the Port Attractiveness Index, which is used in multiplier attachment to construct the shipping network in module II. Caschili and Medda (2015) define port attractiveness as the combination of the productive capacity of a port and its level of inte...

We focus on the seven districts mentioned in Chap. 9, located in the Central and Eastern regions of Uganda—Luwero, Mpigi, Masaka, Iganga, Mitiyana, Kamuli, and Mukono. We use available data to define the spatial, geographical and demographic environment of the agent based system. The spatial and geographical environment is captured using a network...

The purpose of this chapter is to integrate the previous chapters in relation to policy analysis. We start by examining the vertical interactions within the Multilayer model framework, and in doing so, we return to hypothesis 3: How can trade be facilitated and investment and growth take place by leveraging transport logistics accessibility as well...

We consider a model of financial contagion in a bipartite network of assets and banks recently introduced in the literature, and we study the effect of power law distributions of degree and balance-sheet size on the stability of the system. Relative to the benchmark case of banks with homogeneous degrees and balance-sheet sizes, we find that if ban...

We consider a model of financial contagion in a bipartite network of assets and banks recently introduced in the literature, and we study the effect of power law distributions of degree and balance-sheet size on the stability of the system. Relative to the benchmark case of banks with homogeneous degrees and balance-sheet sizes, we find that if ban...

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) have been prompted to reconsider their traditional asset allocations given the underperformance of equity markets post-2008 financial crisis and the collapse of commodity prices in recent years. Timberland and farmland investments are increasingly attracting the attention of these funds, seeking higher and more stable...

This book applies regional analysis to the challenges facing global investment agencies seeking to enhance trade in lagging regions. It shows how spatial interaction and agent-based modelling can be used as the basis for developing new plans and policies. An in-depth analysis of trade routes is presented, which can be used to develop policies for i...

This article discusses the interaction between demographic aging, population decline, and various aspects of the local development challenges facing public authorities. In particular, this article examines some of the financial issues arising from population aging and decline and the ways in which new approaches to public finance are being used in...

Disentangling the reasons behind urban agglomeration is crucial to understanding how a city is the product of competition and collaboration between various urban agencies. Agglomeration can arise from investment in utilities, clustering of firms and proximity of labour and knowledge. The model demonstrates the emergence of spatial patterns, such as...

The projects that are financed in an urban environment depend on a variety of factors. With the portfolio approach cities can determine which projects benefit them most in terms of profits and social benefits and can choose them accordingly.

This paper presents a method for the multi-risk assessment of infrastructure systems, which concentrates on the harmonization of losses from different hazard types. Within a bridge, each type of structural component has a different exposure and susceptibility to different hazard types, such as earthquakes, ground failures and floods. Therefore haza...

This chapter examines how maritime shipping can be modelled through the use of Complex Adaptive System (CAS) theory. It overviews the main features of the Global Cargo Ship Network (GCSN) as proposed in the studies of Ducruet and Notteboom, and Kaluza. Four networks are subsequently constructed: all available links, sub-network of container ship, b...

This chapter models the international trade system by articulating horizontal and vertical connections in these networks to generate what is called the Interdependent Multi-layer Model (IMM). The IMM can be a useful tool for decision makers in the global trade market in further understanding the causality and directionality of certain parameters th...

Infrastructure has received much attention in recent years. Investment in infrastructure is particularly effective and has been recommended to institutional investors for investments such as pension funds because of the characteristics of infrastructure assets. However, robust analytical and empirical analyses in support of these investments are li...

Maritime ports and investments to target their expansion are often deemed by governments not only as an important enhancement of their national assets but also as a means of establishing a gateway to the global shipping network. In the last two decades, ports have grown rapidly to become increasingly specialized, highly capital-intensive, and able...

Uganda is a landlocked country in East Africa with a population estimated at 35 million. 85 % of the population still lives in rural areas and survives mainly on subsistence farming by growing crops such as matooke, beans, sweet potatoes, coffee (for export), cassava, maize, millet, groundnuts, sorghum, and sesame. There are many obstacles to movin...

The dry bulk industry witnessed a boom and bust phase between 2005 and 2010. The aim of this work is to assess whether this pattern was driven by speculation or was a supply and demand outcome. In order to evaluate the presence of speculation, a global multi-factor risk model is implemented to estimate the long-term (cointegration) relationship bet...

The many varied views on resilience indicate that it is an important concept which has significance in many disciplines, from ecology to psychology to risk/disaster management. Therefore, it is important to be able to quantifiably measure the resilience of systems, and thus be able to make decisions on how the resilience of the system can be improv...

According to the Annual Disaster Statistical Review of 2012, the average number of naturally-triggered disasters occurring within a period of 1 year is about 300 events, in which over 100,000 people are killed as a consequence of their impacts. The statistics of disasters shed light on important trends arising, of which the two most salient are tha...

Trade flows are characterised by interdependent economic networks such as the global supply chain, international bilateral agreements, trans-national credit, and foreign direct investments, as well as non-economic components (i.e. infrastructures, cultural ties and spatial barriers). We construct an Interdependent Multi-layer Model (IMM), which is...

Although ports play a traditional role as loading and connecting centers for cargo and passengers, container ports as intermodal junctions have undergone continuous and diverse changes since the late 1950s as a result of technological advancements and transport network expansion. In order to shed light on the port transformation process, the object...

Infrastructure has been receiving much attention in recent years. Investment banks and fund managers are increasingly promoting the investment characteristics of infrastructure assets and they argue that investing in infrastructure should be ideal for institutional investors such as pension funds. However, the claim lacks empirical support. We sugg...