Italian manufacturing ¯rms have been losing ground with respect to many of their European competitors. This paper presents some empirical evidence on the e®ects of innovation on employment growth and therefore on ¯rms' productivity with the goal of understanding the roots of such poor...

In this paper we investigate the way consumption changes around retirement in Italy. Using micro data covering the 1985-96 period, we find that consumption age patterns are similar to those found in the US and other developed countries, despite the much more wide-spread cohabitation of different...

This paper studies how heterogeneity in income dynamics affects the POUM hypothesis (the idea that poor people do not support high level of redistribution because they hope to be rich in the future). We consider a setting where individuals evaluate their expected future income using both their...

Recovery in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain is held back in part by structural barriers. Overcoming these requires structural reform and public investment. Given the limited availability of political and financial capital, prioritising reform efforts and spending is important, but difficult....

This paper analyzes the existing relationship between economic growth and the monitoring of corruption and examines the possible outcome of the implementation of a State reform in order to weed out corruption. Growth is always higher when monitoring is high and therefore corruption eradicated....

This paper proposes a strategy to increase the efficiency of forecast combining methods. Given the availability of a wide range of forecasting models for the same variable of interest, our goal is to apply combining methods to a restricted set of models. To this aim, an algorithm procedure based...

This paper estimates the direct and indirect socio-economic impacts of the 2000 flood that took place in the Po river basin (Italy) using a combination of Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model and Spatial and Multi-Criteria Analysis. A risk map for the whole basin is generated as a function...

We estimate a New Keynesian DSGE model on French, German, Italian, and Spanish data. The main aim of this paper is to check for the respective sets of parameters that are stable over time, making use of the ESS procedure ('Estimate of Set of Stable parameters') developed by Inoue and Rossi...

This paper examines how the applied multi-sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) literature has moved into quantification of the impacts of greater market access for services. This includes discussion of multisector linkages to the service sector, as well both measuring barriers to trade...

The expansion of Western European production accelerated in the first half of 1997. Exports were the main engine, driven by a devaluation of European currencies and strong growth abroad. Domestic demand also picked up somewhat led by investment in machinery and equipment. Inflation remained at...