This paper exploits the results of a survey conducted by the Bank of Italy in 2012 on a sample of 1,200 Italian manufacturers in order to analyse logistics costs, outsourcing and the features potentially impacting on the efficiency of the Italian supply chain. We also compare manufacturers'...

The paper describes the methodology and the main results of the sample survey on international merchandise transport that the Bank of Italy has carried out since 1999, with a reconstruction of the aggregate time series to 1989. We have obtained information on the different transport modes from...

Between 2003 and 2007 the volume of container traffic handled by the national port system increased only slightly despite the strong growth of maritime traffic in the Mediterranean Sea. This was due both to national economic stagnation and to the inability of the ports to extend their...

During the past decade all industrial countries attracted sizeable inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI), excluding Italy and Japan: this fact has been interpreted as evidencing a deterioration in Italy�s structural competitiveness. This paper presents the results of a survey conducted...

The Italian and European regulatory framework for patents would benefit from further improvements in order to foster dynamic competition between Italian firms. At the national level the exclusive allocation of the right to patent inventions to universities, rather than to researchers, would...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between the number of lawyers and civil litigation across Italian provinces over the period 2000-2005. First, we document the existence of a positive correlation between the number of lawyers and litigation. We then employ a 2SLS approach to verify...

This paper aims to describe non-respondents in the Bank of Italy�s Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) and to measure the underestimation of income and wealth attributable to non-response. The evidence confirms that non-response is not random, since it is more frequent among...

In this paper we use two complementary Italian data sources (the 1995 Istat and Bank of Italy household surveys) to generate household-specific non-durable expenditure in the Bank of Italy sample that contains relatively high-quality income data. We show that food expenditure data are of...

Providing the possibility to run personalised econometric/statistical analyses on the appropriate data sets by remote processing allows greater flexibility in the production of economic information. Binding confidentiality requirements are required with business survey data. The Bank of Italy's...

In this paper we focus on tenant rents in Italy and compare results from several methods for the rent dynamic estimation. We first document the sources of data available and then introduce quality-adjusted techniques, which enable us to separate the price variation due to qualitative changes in...