Gender gaps in the labour market, in boardrooms and in wages are still significant in Italy. This paper, which summarizes the main results of a research project aimed at identifying the economic consequences of these gaps and their main causes, presents some evidence regarding wage...

Many empirical analyses find that the performance of firms headed by women (female firms) varies with respect to those headed by men and that the greatest part of this gap is due to observable characteristics (i.e. gender) related to firms� characteristics. In this paper we evaluate whether...

Broad differences in life expectancy are observed across countries and socio-demographic groups. This paper reviews the evidence for Italy on the level and development of these inequalities and discusses the strength and possible determinants of the relationship between life expectancy and...

Information from the Survey of Italian Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) is not normally used as a basis for regional estimates on account of the small sample size. This paper presents an experimental estimation of regional aggregates for the period 1995-2000, obtained by combining several...

This paper is aimed at evaluating the incidence of measurement error on the main variables collected in the Bank of Italy�s Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW). The results are especially relevant to researchers using the data for economic analysis, since they need to take data...

This work provides an empirical analysis of the development of Italian provinces over the period 1952-1992, investigating the existence of convergence and/or divergence processes, identifying groups of provinces characterised by similar growth patterns and examining the role played by various...

Economic convergence at the sub-national level could have spatially explicit manifestations reflecting convergence clubs and other forms of geographical clustering that are not captured by an overall inequality measure. By decomposing the Theil index of per capita income inequality into between...

The paper evaluates the effectiveness of a major Italian place-based policy (Contratti di Programma), by means of which the state approves and finances industrial projects proposed by private firms. Using the areas to be exposed to the same policy at a later date as counterfactuals, the study...

I examine the post-war economic development of two regions in southern Italy exposed to mafia activity after the 1970s and apply synthetic control methods to estimate their counterfactual economic performance in the absence of organized crime. The synthetic control is a weighted average of other...

This paper provides an empirical evaluation of the main determinants of hotel prices in the Italian tourism industry. We pool information from two datasets: i) a database on hotel prices and attributes based on the Touring Club Italia Guide and providing information on about 1,100 hotels located...