This study explores how direct online booking affects the variation in hotel bed-places occupancy rate between peak and off-peak periods, thereby contributing to three strands of literature, respectively the determinants of seasonality, the tourist information acquisition process and the impact...

The aim of the paper is to investigate the impact of financial structure on firms’ probability of bankruptcy in Western Europe convergence regions. The empirical evidence shows that the financial structure is a key factor explaining firms’ bankruptcy, but while the debt, the cash flow and...

The paper studies the impact of firms’ over-indebtedness on innovation. First, we build up an over-indebtedness index which takes account of the firm’s level and structure of the debt as well as of its sustainability. Secondly, we investigate to what extent over-indebtedness explains...

The paper compares the export quality of Italy, Germany, Japan and China. The empirical analysis is based on export unit value for a sample of machinery products exported to the USA over the decade 1996-2006. The results point to four stylised facts. First, Italy, Germany and Japan are...

The goal of this research is to verify whether, and to what extent, differences in the availability of both internal and external financial resources explain differences in intangible activity between the Centre-North and the South of Italy. The paper focuses on Italian manufacturing firms over...

Questo lavoro fornisce alcune evidenze sul posizionamento qualitativo delle esportazioni. L’analisi empirica, relativa al periodo 1996-2006, si concentra sulla qualità delle esportazioni nel settore della meccanica di Italia, Germania, Giappone e Cina nel mercato degli Stati Uniti. La ricerca...

This paper examines the relationship between the insolvency systems and the investment share of GDP across countries. The objective is to find out the relationship between bankruptcy procedures and economic performances around the world. Empirical evidence suggests that: 1) the investment share...

Central-government politicians channel resources to sub-national entities for political gains. We show formally that the central politicians' allocation decision has two drivers: political alignment (between central and local politicians) and the level of local political accountability. However,...