Following the growing interest towards the role of the knowledge in the modern economies the economic literature has focused a lot of studies into the role of the producers of new knowledge, e.g. universities and public research institutions. The relations between these bodies and the firms, the...

Postal Services play a fundamental role in each nation, because of the double impact they generate from a social and economic point of view. The introduction of the European directives opens the way towards a larger importance of free competition. But, even if liberalisation of postal markets...

The main viewpoint related to privatisation is concerned with the aim of verifying the presence of incentive mechanisms on the managerial behaviour. This paper, differently from other earlier studies on this topic, is aimed to study, with an econometric approach, the dynamic of economic...

Due aspetti molto importanti del processo di privatizzazione sono la scelta della tecnica di collocamento e quella dell’assetto proprietario da dare all’azienda dismessa. La soluzione ad ognuno di questi due problemi risulta legata da un lato agli obiettivi di policy, dall’altro a...

The analysis regarding the results of firms privatized mainly during the Eighties within competitive sectors confirms the superiority of private control. The comparison between suitable control samples shows an improvement in profitability associated to a clear progress in labour productivity....

This work aims at investigating the changes in technical efficiency following the privatization of 39 Italian medium-sized firms operating in competitive sectors. Using Data Envelopment Analysis over a period of 10 years we highlight that, apart from acquisitions by foreign groups, there have...

Using the Italian and European Union competition authorities databases over the 1991-1994 period, this paper analyses the ownership reallocation process in Italy, in terms of the characteristics of acquired firms and the effects of ownership changes. Our results show that acquired firms’...

This paper investigates whether financial pressure has an impact on the performance of state-owned firms. By combining different theoretical frameworks, we explore the conditions under which debt discipline becomes effective even for state firms. Using a panel of 1318 Italian state and private...

The analysis of the technology and costs of the gas distribution networks highlights that the number of customers is more important than the amount of gas delivered, as well as the absence of economies of scale, the presence of economies of density and the significant role of the morphologic and...

After a review of the governance of welfare policies and of subsidiarity experiences in the third sector, the Social Agency Model is proposed. It integrates in a structured way public and private action against poorness, above all the activity of the third sector. The model is based on the...