The entry of China into world markets has been one of the strongest recent shocks to world trade and advanced countries. industrial sectors. This is particularly true for Italy where labour-intensive, low-technology production represents a large share of output. Using Italian manufacturing...

This paper analyses the effect of competition from low-wage countries on domestic activity, using data on 230 Italian manufacturing sectors between 1995 and 2007. We find that low-wage import penetration is negatively related to employment and other measures of activity. The effect is...

This work presents, in a single framework, the results of several recent studies, carried out by Bank of Italy researchers, on the internationalization of the Italian productive system. The notion of internationalization is considered not only from the perspective of direct investments abroad...

The debate in Italy on the recent disappointing performance of GDP growth has focused on the increasing competitive pressure exerted by firms located in the developing countries and specialized in key product sectors of Italian manufacturing. This paper contributes by explicitly quantifying the...

The paper compares the Argentine specialization model with that of the other major Latin American countries. Given the lack of production data at disaggregate level, we rely on trade flow information from the WTA Statistics Canada database (3-digit SITC classification), available for most Latin...

The history of Italy since her unification in 1861 reflects the two-way relationship between foreign trade and economic development. Its growth was accompanied by a dramatic increase in the country's integration with European and global commodity markets: foreign trade in the long run grew on...

The history of Italy since her unification in 1861 reflects the two-way relationship between foreign trade and economic development. Its growth was accompanied by a dramatic increase in the country's integration with European and global commodity markets: foreign trade in the long run grew on...

The paper investigates R&D and ICT investment at firm level, assessing their relative importance and the extent to which they are complements or substitutes. We use data on a large unbalanced panel sample from four consecutive waves of a survey of Italian manufacturing firms, together with a...

In the last decade, and especially in the course of the recent global economic slowdown, the gap between southern and northern industry has widened. Industrial investment and employment decreased more sharply in the South than in the rest of Italy, and the contribution of the southern regions to...

I examine the effect of reducing export tariffs on the productivity of domestic suppliers of exporting firms. Using a panel of Chilean firms during a period of trade liberalization with the European Union, the United States, and the Republic of Korea, I show that the average reduction in the...