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 presents trade policy as in line with that of other continental European powers, with a move to moderate levels of tariff protection for politically sensitive sectors such as steel and textiles and clothing, but also in agriculture, with levels of protection falling slightly before the...

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...

This paper presents the new yearly series of the value-added of services for Italy, from 1861 to 1951, at current prices. For each sector, after discussing sources and methodology, the results are compared with the early Istat (1957) series. By looking at the production value of specific...

The real estate sector is of particular interest from a central bank's perspective; due to its size, it directly and indirectly affects economic developments, financial stability and the monetary policy stance. The volume collects the papers by economists of the Bank of Italy and the discussions...

In this paper I estimate the impact of changes in real and financial wealth � proxied by house and stock market prices � on private consumption for a panel of sixteen emerging economies in Asia and Central and Eastern Europe. Using recent econometric techniques for heterogeneous...

The ability of a two-sector model to quantify the contribution of the housing market to business fluctuations is investigated using U.S. data and Bayesian methods. The estimated model, which contains nominal and real rigidities and collateral constraints, displays the following features: first,...

This paper discusses the limitations of the price-income ratio, the price-rent ratio, and of affordability measures as indicators of housing market conditions. For the purpose of assessing whether house prices are misaligned, the most sensible approach is to calculate the user cost of ownership...

In this paper, I investigate the characteristics of house price dynamics for a sample of 16 emerging economies from Asia and Central and Eastern Europe, over the period 1995-2011. Linking housing valuations to a set of conventional fundamental determinants � relative to both the supply and...

We present a new indicator of house prices in Italy, with more extensive geographical and time coverage. The new indicator now makes it possible to analyze medium- and long-term trends with satisfactory representation of the Italian housing market. It also allows for timely updating, for prompt...