PhDs

Nguyen Thanh Thanh Duong is PhD in Public Governance, Management and Policy – Department of Statistical Sciences "Paolo Fortunati". She focuses her research on forecasting the effects of climate change on the tourism industry's economic aspects, particularly in relation to tax revenue. Her academic interests revolve around employing quantitative approaches, forecasting techniques, and econometric models to understand the economic impacts of climate change, with a specific focus on the tourism sector.

In her research, she employs various methodologies such as deep learning, time series analysis, and forecasting to analyze complex and high-dimensional data. During her second and third years, she conducted research as a visiting scholar at LSCE (Laboratoire des sciences du climat et de l'enosystemnement), a research institution specializing in climate and environmental studies, associated with CEA (Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives), in collaboration with the University of Paris-Saclay in Paris, France.

Supervisor: Andrea Guizzardi; co-supervisor: Ida D'Attoma. 

Title of the research: Quantitative Approach on Tourism Dynamics in Light of Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events.

Sahar Paktinat holds a PhD in Public Governance, Management, and Policy from the Department of Economics. She also holds a Master's degree in Health Economics, Management, and Policy. Her research investigates the role of organizational structures and human capital in the outcomes of high-volume orthopedic surgery—with a focus on hip fractures and knee replacements. Her thesis develops a comparative analysis that integrates longitudinal administrative data from the Emilia-Romagna Region, collected in collaboration with the IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli, and data from Norwegian health registries, processed at the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research in Oslo as part of the NORCHER project. This comparative design allows us to examine how different institutional and organizational contexts—the Italian and Norwegian healthcare systems—influence the relationship between clinical activity volume and post-operative outcomes. Methodologically, the thesis combines multidirectional fixed-effects models, instrumental estimates based on hospital choice, and Cox survival models. She has served as a tutor in Macroeconomics (Economics and Business, 2022–2023 academic year) and has experience teaching English. Her research interests include health economics, applied microeconomics, and causal inference.

Supervisor: Rossella Verzulli; co-supervisor: Cristina Ugolini.

Research Title: The Role of Human Capital in a Highly Specialized Context: The Case of High-Volume Orthopaedic Surgery