One of the objectives of the reforms and liberalization of the last 15 years in local public services was to reduce the traditional fragmentation of production. This was to be achieved through restructuring that reduced inefficiencies and made it more possible to exploit economies of scale,...

In this collection of papers we first analyze the evolution of the Italian food industry and the retail trade sector during the past decade (Chapters 1 and 2). Chapter 3 describes the structure of large retailers and buying groups in Italy. Chapter 4 proposes alternative measures of the degree...

The unsatisfactory performance of Italian export volumes in the last decade has been attributed to three factors; the product specialization still centered around traditional sectors, the small firm size and the exceptional rise in export unit values. This paper analyzes the latter with the aim...

We investigate the causal relationship between judicial efficiency and firm size across Italian municipalities exploiting spatial discontinuities in court jurisdictions for identification. The estimated coefficients suggest that the reduction of the length of civil proceedings could exert, all...

The paper analyses the main differences in the financial structure of Italian and European non financial corporations in the 2004-2007 period, that is during the years before the financial crisis. The research is based on individual balance sheets of Amadeus (Analyse Major Databases from...

We analyse the results of a survey conducted by the Bank of Italy in the spring of 2012 on Italian science and technology parks. First we describe the main features of science parks in Italy. Then we investigate whether they have been effective in improving the economic performance and...