This paper provides an assessment of Italian aid policy during the period 1983-2006. In comparison with other donors (DAC and G-7), the main stylized facts are: persistently lower aid/GDP ratio, greater recourse to multilateral channels, a higher percentage of �tied� flows and...

We use data for 143 developing countries during the period 1980-2004 to study empirically the relationship between multilateral aid (as proxied by IDA flows) and support for US foreign policy, as measured by voting alignment at the United Nations General Assembly. Our identifica�tion...

The paper explores whether and how current lending-of-last-resort can be extended beyond national borders. It argues that what makes lending of last resort effective at the national level is a blend of resource availability, technical discretion, ex-ante supervision, and powers of enforcement....

Profit share in Italy has been growing between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s, remaining stable at historically high levels since than. After dropping in the first half of the 1970s, owing to an unprecedented rapid rise in wages, profit share started to recover. The rise during the 1980s...

The paper assesses the vulnerability of China to external shocks via the indirect negative effect of a slow-down in exports on domestic demand for investment. In the last decade China has increased its dependence on external demand, particularly from the advanced countries; at the same time it...

In an economy where entrepreneurs with unequal "abilities" face alternative investment projects, which differ in degree of risk and productivity, we analyse the Nash equilibrium contracts arising from a banks-borrowers game in the context of asymmetric information. We show that, for a particular...

In this paper we build a measure of potential private-sector value added for the Italian economy that is consistent with the capital accumulation process in the Banca d'Italia's Quarterly Model -and more generally with the rest of the supply-side block of that model.

This paper investigates the relationship between exchange rate fluctuations and the investment decisions of a sample of Italian manufacturing firms. The results support the view that a depreciation of the exchange rate has a positive effect on investment through the revenue channel, and a...

The paper reconstructs the items of the regional accounts, disposable income and wealth of the household sector for the North-West, North-East, Centre, and South and Islands for the years 1970-1995. The analysis is significant for the length of the sample period, the number of time series...

This paper examines how business investment responds to investment tax credit, as enacted by Italy�s Law 388/2000. To assess whether the programme made investments possible that otherwise would not have been made, it exploits some features of the tax credit scheme, such as the fact that...