Istat's lead role in the European statistics agencies' drive to include prostitution, drugs and other crime in GDP has earned it an Ig Nobel Prize.
Italy got another of the annual spoof awards for weird science from Harvard's Annals of Improbable Research, for a Bari university team's measurement of the "painkilling" power of art.
The Ig Nobels, which are handed out by Nobel prizewinners, are awarded to science that first makes people laugh, and then makes them think.
Istat won the economics prize for "proudly taking the lead in fulfilling the European Union mandate for each country to increase the official size of its national economy by including revenues from prostitution, illegal drug sales, smuggling, and all other unlawful financial transactions between willing participants". Bari university's Marina de Tommaso, Michele Sardaro, and Paolo Livrea won the arts prize for "measuring the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting, rather than a pretty painting, while being shot (in the hand) by a powerful laser beam".
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