Defended Doctoral Researches

PhD Candidate: Sahar Paktinat (DSE – 38th cycle)
Supervisor: Rossella Verzulli (DSE); co-supervisor: Cristina Ugolini (DSE)
PhD Scholarship Ex M.D. 352/2022 – co-financed by Rizzoli Orthopedic Institute, Bologna.

Abstract: Orthopaedics has become a focal point for modern health systems, driven by population ageing, rising demand for joint replacement, and growing quality-of-life expectations. This dissertation examines how organisational arrangements affect orthopaedic outcomes, comparing urgent hip fracture surgery with elective knee arthroplasty across Italian and Norwegian settings.
For emergency hip fractures in Emilia-Romagna, higher surgical volumes are found to causally reduce 30-day mortality, supporting minimum-volume standards as a policy instrument. For elective knee arthroplasty in the same region, no systematic differences in long-term prosthesis survival are found between public and accredited private hospitals, suggesting that outsourcing routine procedures can relieve public sector pressures without compromising quality. Turning to Norway, hospital volume shows no robust effect on clinical or labour market outcomes following knee replacement. Taken together, the results suggest that organisational arrangements matter more for acute, unplanned procedures than for highly standardised elective interventions, where centralisation or ownership type confer little measurable benefit. For routine elective procedures, outcome variation across hospitals may instead reflect surgeon-level experience or organisational practices, warranting further investigation.

• Thesis Defence – March 27th, 2026

  [ .pdf 2680Kb ]

PhD Candidate: Nguyen Thanh Thanh Duong (STAT – 38th cycle)
Supervisor: Andrea Guizzardi (STAT); co-supervisor: Ida D'Attoma (STAT)
PhD Scholarship Ex M.D. 351/2022

Based on three quantitative studies, this thesis measures and forecasts the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events on tourism demand in Italy.
The first paper estimates four augmented tourism demand functions with climatic variables for each season. It finds that both climate and economic factors, particularly GDP and exchange rates, are key determinants. The analysis highlights non-linear effects of climate, suggesting its influence may surpass economic factors if warming continues. It concludes that public governance and operators must address climate impacts now, recommending product innovation and a remodeling of supply into new high and low seasons to maintain the industry's high added value.
The second paper investigates long-term climate change impacts on Italian tourism demand up to 2100 under RCP 4.5 and 8.5. Winter tourism is projected to decline initially but may recover through product diversification, while spring is forecasted to benefit consistently. These findings project climate change as a structural driver reshaping seasonality, potentially reducing the summer peak. The study integrates physical climate variables into econometric forecasting, offering policy-relevant insights for enhancing sector resilience and sustainability.
Using daily data, the third paper examines the impact of the May 2023 Emilia-Romagna floods on tourism. While Rimini suffered the largest absolute losses, smaller provinces like Ravenna experienced steeper relative declines, revealing greater vulnerability. Projections show short-duration heavy rainfall likelihood increases significantly with warming. This analysis quantifies climate-related economic risk, highlighting adaptation value for vulnerable tourism destinations.
This thesis's primary contribution is directly integrating raw physical climate data from state-of-the-art sources like ERA5 and EURO-CORDEX into econometric models, paving a new way for studies in this field. Policy implications are significant, offering evidence to inform targeted adaptation strategies, highlight mitigation urgency, and enhance long-term resilience of the Italian tourism economy and wider community.

• Thesis Defence – March 27th, 2026

  [ .pptx 3927Kb ]

PhD Candidate: Oreste Sabatino (SPS – 38th cycle)
Supervisor: Sabrina Ragone (SPS); co-supervisor: Adoracion Galera Victoria (Universidad de Granada)
PhD Scholarship Ex M.D. 351/2022

This research analyzes the relationship between European governance, the ecological transition, and national institutional frameworks, with particular reference to the cases of Italy and Spain, from a comparative public law perspective.
The study reconstructs the evolution of the concept of governance from a corporate management model to a method of public governance, and its consolidation within the legal order of the European Union, up to the experience of the Green Deal and Next Generation EU (NGEU).
The development of European policies for the ecological transition has led to a profound transformation of public law, redefining multilevel governance in economic, environmental, and institutional terms.
The ecological transition emerges as a new frontier of European public law, in which sustainability, climate neutrality, and territorial cohesion become guiding principles of public intervention in the economy, administrative action, and the relationship between public authorities and the market.
The comparison between Italy and Spain shows that, in both systems, the governance of the ecological transition has resulted in a strengthening of the national executive and tensions in relations between central authorities and territorial autonomies.
In environmental matters, the Italian system continues to be affected by structural administrative fragmentation and insufficient interinstitutional coordination, only partially mitigated by recent legislative measures aimed at rationalizing competences and strengthening central administrative action.
At the same time, the governance of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) has led to a marked process of centralization and significant verticalization of decision-making, accompanied by a progressive marginalization of Parliament and the Regions.
Spain, within the framework of its system of autonomous regions, adopts an institutional model based on a delicate balance between territorial autonomy and state unity: the Autonomous Communities enjoy broad powers in implementing environmental policies, while the national legislature has progressively introduced instruments of functional and regulatory re-centralization aimed at strengthening the central administration’s roles in guidance, legislation, and planning.
In this context, the intervention of the Constitutional Court has proved decisive, not so much as a mere factor of centralization, but rather as a mechanism for delimiting environmental matters through the recognition and clarification of state competence over fundamental principles and the related coordination functions.
The contribution of this research lies in having framed governance and the ecological transition within a theoretical perspective of substantive constitutionalization, presenting the ecological transition no longer as a mere sectoral policy—as environmental protection traditionally was—but as a new organizing paradigm of European public law.
The ecological transition is no longer configured as a programmatic value or policy principle, but assumes the function of a structural criterion and organizing principle of public policies.
From this perspective, the research stands out from existing scholarship by offering a systematic analysis and comparison of the public law of the ecological transition, highlighting its constitutional dimension and transformative potential for national legal systems, with particular reference to Italy and Spain.
The comparative analysis shows how the ecological transition is emerging as a key principle also for a new balance between unity and institutional pluralism, reshaping relations between levels of government and between European and national law.
The relevance and timeliness of the research lie in the awareness that governance of the ecological transition constitutes today one of the main laboratories of innovation in European public law, as well as a testing ground for contemporary constitutionalism.
It demonstrates the capacity of law to act as a factor of integration between economy, society, and the environment, transforming the ecological transition into an organizing principle and a benchmark for the effectiveness of public power within the European legal order.
From this perspective, the research proposes an original interpretative framework for understanding the ongoing transformation of European public law toward a model capable of integrating development, ecological transition, and cohesion as shared constitutional values.

• Thesis Defence – March 27th, 2026

  [ .pptx 265Kb ]