The problems of Italy�s education system mostly stem from its modus operandi and interactions with the expectations of families and students. The recent signs of improvement in Italian students� proficiency, plausibly reflecting greater emphasis on rigour, could be reinforced by making...

We examine the determinants of entry into Italian local banking markets during the period 1991-2002 and build a simple model in which the probability of branching in a new market depends on the features of both the local market and the potential entrant. Our econometric findings show that, all...

A number of empirical studies have analyzed the effect of agglomeration on multinational investment, verifying whether the agglomerated areas attract foreign direct investment inflows. Despite the large number of papers, no systematic attempt has been made to disentangle whether FDI are...

This paper focuses on how multi-plant firms allocate their workforce and investments between headquarters or plants located in or close to the headquarters area (HQ plants) and those located in the same country but farther away from the headquarters area (non-HQ plants). Using survey data on...

During the past decade all industrial countries attracted sizeable inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI), excluding Italy and Japan: this fact has been interpreted as evidencing a deterioration in Italy�s structural competitiveness. This paper presents the results of a survey conducted...

The paper assesses the extent to which mortgage rates in Italy are priced according to credit risk as proxied by the probability of household mortgage delinquency estimated using the EU-Silc database. For reasons of data availability we restrict the analysis of mortgage pricing to Italian...

Putnam (1993) argues that (i) center-northern Italy has developed faster than southern Italy because the former was better endowed with social capital; and (ii) that the endowments of social capital across Italian territories have been highly persistent over centuries. This paper provides an...

During the last two decades, house prices in Italy have increased dramatically in real terms, particularly in large towns and cities; the rise in rents has been even more marked. This paper analyses home affordability for households, considering both the rent and the property markets. In...