Turin School of Regulation is constantly exploring regulative developments, challenges and trends. The deep comprehension of what is happening in the regulative world, is at the core of the activities of the school. Alongside with training and capacity-building activity, Turin School of regulation promotes a policy-oriented research stream on local aspects of regulation. The regulation of local public services has been at the core of the Turin School activities since its beginning. In recent years big attention had been paid to how regulation is dealing with the platform economy. Accordingly, with commissioning bodies the school promotes specific researches and insights. . 

ONGOING PROJECTS

PLATFORMS AND COVID-19 IN TURIN AREA
The Turin School of Regulation, with the financial support of Chamber of commerce of Torino, has conducted a research on the the impact of COVID-19 on platforms in Turin area. The research aimed at  monitoring the developments in the platform sector following the COVID19 pandemic and the measures taken to mitigate its effects (lockdown) and to understand how companies have reacted to the emergency and how they have reorganized development and growth activities and projects. Download the report (in Italian)

THE PLATFORM ECONOMY IN TURIN: AREAS, DIMENSIONS, IMPLICATIONS
The Turin School of Regulation, with the financial support of Chamber of commerce of Torino, has conducted a research on the platform economy in the city of Torino. The research aimed at creating a map of the local companies which are adopting and promoting platforms and its related business model and at understanding in which sectors these companies are mostly operative. The effects of the entry of new innovative economic actors in some sectors has determined disruptive effects and new challenges that need to be considered. Dowload the report (in Italian)

THE PLATFORM ECONOMY IN TURIN: WORK, SKILLS AND REGULATORY PROFILES IN DIGITAL MARKETS
This project, in partnership with Chamber of commerce of Torino, is an in depth study on the effects of the platform economy on the labour sector. The aim of this research is to develop a better understanding on the impacts of the platform economy on the working dimension in the local context of Torino. In details the research deals with the new job profiles that have been created and if and how this is representing new challenges from a regulative perspective. Dowload the report (in Italian)

SMART CITIES AND REGULATION
The Turin School of Regulation, with the financial support of Planet Idea SRL, has been analyzing governance, competition and service innovation in smart cities from a regulatory perspective. The aim of this study has been to outline innovation of the regulatory framework for the smart city with a twofold approach. On one hand a human centered approach entrusting technology with the role of enabling factor and not of a primary and/or unique driver. On the other hand a governing approach able to update the policy and regulation design to cope with problems of fair competition, labour rights, platform access/network neutrality and privacy.

FIELD | Framework of Incentives to Empower Local Decision-makers
The Turin School of Regulation is developing a multidisciplinary methodology for the analysis of local actors, incentives and information endowment that surround and lie behind the success or the failure of local services, infrastructures and projects, defining the playing field where their realization takes place. The methodology aims to narrow the gap between the result of academic research and daily decisions making process in relevant context as local public service regulation, project life cycle, local welfare policies. Visit FIELD webpage.

PREVIOUS PROJECTS

PRIMI | Privatization Regulation in Italy, Mexico and India
This project, coordinated by SOAS-University of London, develops a framework for a large collaborative and comparative research project on water governance. The substantive part of the framework is developed through comparative analysis of regulation and privatization in water governance and their impact on water security in three countries: Italy, Mexico and India. Research focuses on the shared but diverse experience of urban-rural and sectoral water re-allocation as part of societal (post-) modernization. Visit PRIMI webpage

Turin-Index | Turin-Index on final users arrears status
The research project explores the possibility of using billing data of local public services to derive a signal of vulnerability (or presence of a fuel poverty state). The working group referred to the economic and sociological literature that studies the poverty states, i.e. periods of life in which the disposable income of the family is below a certain threshold, as a reference point to analyze the dynamics of arrears. In particular, the use of the Longitudinal Poverty Index (Mendola et al., 2011) was proposed to create an index, the Turin-Index, capable to define different levels of arrearage intensity. Through the use of this measure it is possible to provide a dynamic view of the phenomenon based on the history of payments for each household, the intensity of delays and an “emergency effect”. The Index can be easily aggregated to construct city or regional measures. Visit Turin-index webpage

MONSPL | Monitoring Tariffs of Public Services and family expenditures. An analysis in main cities of Piemonte Region  
MONSPL is an annual report containing data related to tariffs of water, waste, gas, electricity and district heating for households in county towns in Piedmont and in other 9 Piedmontese municipalities selected amongst those with a higher number of inhabitants. The aim of the study is to develop an analytic and complete information set on the structure and the dynamics of tariffs in local public services, on the relationship with the cost of living and on incidence on family expenditures. This is useful information to manage with due awareness the debate on public services, delivering trustful information to different stakeholders (institutions, regulatory bodies, utilities, consumers). Visit MONSPL webpage (in Italian)

Mechanism design and local regulation: the case of welfare and aid policies
In 2010 a stream of research on transdisciplinary analysis of individuals’ behavior was launched, thanks to the analysis and application of Mechanism Design theories and to the study of Information Asymmetries, and of Behavioural Economics . More specifically, FA/ TSLR started exploring how these theories can be applied to certain contexts, in particular to welfare policies, which are very complex when they go beyond simple transfer of subsidies or aid to recipients listed in potential beneficiary lists. A collection of international case studies of Conditional Cash Transfer policies led to the organization of an international conference in Torino in 2012, titled “Rethinking aid and subsidies in urban contexts”. A second step was the development of a game (in the sense of Game Theory) between a giver and a recipient of welfare benefits with conditions attached. The preliminary results of the game were presented in the paper "Helping the Poor as a Non Cooperative Game". Visit this link to know more.

AFFORD | Affordability of tariffs of main local public services in Piedmont 
The project aims at analysing the issue of affordability of tariffs of main local public services, in particular energy-environment related services, identifying the factors of change and the impacts on vulnerable groups. This in order to provide local policy makers and stakeholders with the necessary knowledge and instruments to face a topic that, considering the macroeconomic context, is likely to attract more and more attention. Visit AFFORD webpage (IT | EN)