Cira Perna is currently Professor of Statistics and Head of the Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Salerno (Italy). Her research work mainly focuses on non-linear time series, artificial neural network models, and resampling techniques. She has published a number of papers in national and international journals on these topics, and she has been a member of the scientific committees of several national and international conferences. Monica Pratesi is Professor of Statistics, University of Pisa, and holds the Jean Monnet Chair "Small Area Methods for Monitoring of Poverty and Living Conditions in the EU" 2015-2017. She is the Director of the Tuscan Interuniversity Centre - Advanced Statistics for Equitable and Sustainable Development, entitled to Camilo Dagum. Her research interests include methods for survey sampling and analysis of survey data, small area estimation and design-based population inference. She has published a number of papers in national and international journals on these topics and has been a member of the scientific committees of several national and international conferences. Anne Ruiz-Gazen is Professor of Applied Mathematics, specializing in statistics, and a member of the Toulouse School of Economics  - Research at University Toulouse 1 Capitole. Her areas of research include multivariate data analysis, survey sampling theory and, to a less extent, spatial econometrics and statistics. She has published more than fifty articles in refereed journals and books and has been a member of the scientific committees of several conferences.