We analyze the impact of increasing longevity on technological progress within a simple R&D-based growth framework with overlapping generations and test the model's implication on OECD data from 1960 to 2011. The central hypothesis derived in the theoretical part is that - by raising the...

Italian Abstract: Una delle caratteristiche salienti dello sviluppo economico è la sua dimensione marcatamente urbana. Come in altri paesi avanzati, in Italia la gran parte dell'attività economica si concentra nelle città: nel 2001 i 73 Sistemi Locali del Lavoro (SLL) urbani producevano il 62...

This paper compares the return to pre-crisis levels and the long-term performance of exports in the main Italian regions compared with some European regions with a similar production structure. The results show that the intensity and timing of recovery in the cyclical component of exports were...

The depth and the length of the recent crisis prompted a more positive re-assessment of a countercyclical fiscal stance, especially in the euro area. Against this background, we look at discretionary fiscal policy in the euro area from three different perspectives. First, we provide evidence...

The experience of other successful monetary unions and economic theory suggest that the euro area would benefit from the establishment of a supranational fiscal capacity. Institutional reforms prompted by the crisis (e.g., the European Stability Mechanism and the banking union) are introducing...

In a standard linear structural VAR framework we analyse the size and sign of fiscal multipliers in the euro area, using a newly available quarterly dataset of fiscal variables for the period 1981-2007. From a policy perspective, the analysis of fiscal multipliers in “average times” provides...

We review the general reasons for limiting the discretion of national fiscal policies in the context of a monetary union and, on this basis, we assess the shortcomings of the current Euro area fiscal framework as well as the merits of the main proposals for its reform. Taking into account the...