In this paper we consider a model with two industrialised countries and immigrants that come from “the rest of the world”. The countries are distinguished on the basis of three parameters: population size, bias towards immigrants, and production complementarity between native population and...

This paper carries out an empirical assessment of the relationship between social capital and labour productivity in small and medium enterprises in Italy. By means of structural equations models, the analysis investigates the effect of different aspects of the multifaceted concept of social...

This paper carries out an empirical assessment of the relationship between social capital and the quality of economic development in Italy. The analysis draws on a dataset collected by the author including about two hundred variables representing different aspects of economic development and...

This paper proposes a fixed-effect panel methodology that enables us to simultaneously take into account both TFP convergence and the traditional neoclassical-type of convergence. We analyse a sample of Italian regions between 1963 and 1993 and find strong evidence that both mechanisms were at...

We present a theory of spatial development. A continuum of locations in a geographic area choose each period how much to innovate (if at all) in manufacturing and services. Locations can trade subject to transport costs and technology diffuses spatially across locations. The result is an...

Analyses of long run consumption series are rare in literature. We study the evolution of water consumption in Milan in the twentieth century. The objective is twofold: on one side, the univariate analysis tries both to assess the impact of relevant socio-economic and environmental changes on...

Over the past three years Italy has witnessed a rapid growth in the photovoltaic energy market, followed by an equally sudden decline when the government decided to reduce the incentives. This sharp change in the trend of the market calls into question the achievement of Grid Parity and the...

Characterizing the anticipated performance of energy technologies to inform policy decisions increasingly relies on expert elicitation. Knowledge about how elicitation design factors impact the probabilistic estimates emerging from these studies is however scarce. We focus on nuclear power, a...

The present stalemate in climate negotiations has led policy analysts and economists to explore the possible emergence of alternative climate regimes. This paper explores the idea of replacing international cooperation on greenhouse gas emission control with international cooperation on...

The question of the spatial impacts of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has animated intellectual and policy debate for a long time. At the beginning of the 1990s the advent of the Internet brought a new surge of debate: it was argued that the Internet would free the economy from...