This paper shows that vertical specialisation can increase the elasticity of trade to income, hence explaining dramatic events such as the great trade collapse. We argue that a change in the extent of vertical specialisation affects the elasticity of trade to income, while a mere change in...

This paper studies the case of the Marche footwear districts. Statistical evidence and interviews with entrepreneurs suggest that the traditional inter-firm relationships within these districts have significantly changed during the past decade. Some leading firms have been building up more...

This paper studies costs and benefits of firm networks, and related industrial policies, with a focus on the �network contract� recently introduced in the Italian legislation. Incentives to networks creation could be useful to foster future mergers, but may prove ineffective as a...

This paper analyses the relationship between international fragmentation of production, trade openness and global export performance in the European Union from 2000 to 2009. As most trade models featuring international production sharing show, the higher the level of fragmentation and related...

This paper analyzes the characteristics of Italian firms involved in global value chains (�intermediate� firms) by using the Bank of Italy survey on industrial companies. Intermediate firms show, on average, worse features than �final� firms: smaller size, lower share of...

Both macro and (still scarce) micro evidence support the idea that a new economy is emerging in the US, not (yet) in Europe. Some have argued that the inadequacies of Europe�s financial system are an important part of the explanation. This paper, after surveying the existing literature on...

This paper investigates the incentives of experts competing to influence decision making. Competition for influence is shown to have an ambiguous effect on truthtelling incentives and a decision maker might be better off relying on one source of information only. This result has important...

We investigate the diffusion of information and communication technologies (ICT) in Italian manufacturing using microdata. We find a positive correlation at firm level between ICT investment, human capital of the labor force and reorganization. Starting from row data, we build a measure of ICT...

We study the relation between workers� skill dispersion and firm productivity using a unique dataset of Italian manufacturing firms from the early eighties to the late nineties with individual records on all their workers. Our measure of skill is the individual worker�s effect obtained...

This paper explores the effects of husbands' commuting time on their wives' labour market participation and on family time allocation. We develop a unitary family model of labour supply, which includes commuting times and household production. In a pure leisure model longer commuting time for...