We use a panel of European firms to investigate the relationship between intangible assets and productivity. We disentangle between tfp and technology adoption, while available studies so far have considered only a notion of productivity conflating the two effects. To this aim, we estimate...

We contrast two potential explanations of the substantial differences in entrepreneurial activity observed across geographical areas - entry costs and external effects. We extend the Lucas model of entrepreneurship to allow for heterogeneous entry costs and for externalities that shift the...

In questo lavoro l’analisi degli spillover si è concentrata sulle esternalità fra le impre-se italiane del tipo intra- e inter-industry ed i loro effetti sulla produttività. Le rela-zioni tra i vari settori sono state approssimate attraverso una matrice degli scambi commerciali. I...

This paper investigates on the role played by public capital in increasing the productivity levels in Italy. For the construction of the regional series for the public capital stock over the period 1996-2003, the study benefits from the use of the rich dataset on public expenditure, recently...

This paper aims at contributing to the growing literature on the influence of public capital to the overall productivity levels. Using a panel of 20 Italian regions over the period 1970-1995 we estimate a production function which includes as inputs - units of labour, private capital and public...

In this paper a complete set of estimates of long-run production functions for 20 regions and 17 sectors in Italy is provided over the period 1970-1994. Our approach features two important aspects. First, this paper represents the first attempt to provide such a comprehensive set of estimates...

This work attempts to shed light on the “information technology productivity paradox”. Employing a large data set of Italian manufacturing firms we compute ICT marginal productivity across different cluster of firms and the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on output...

Employing a large data set of manufacturing firms the paper tries to assess the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on productivity growth in Italy and to investigate the differences in ICT adoption between North and South of the country. Not all firms invest in ICT and...

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 as a...

This paper provides total factor productivity estimates for a sam- ple of 115 European Regions over the period 1976-2000. In particular, a set of Cobb-Douglas production functions is estimated using panel techniques and allowing for heterogeneity across regions. Moreover, on the basis of...