The hypothesis that ownership structure affects persistence of profits in the Italian banking industry is tested. The time-invariant components of ROA and ROE are regressed against ownership concentration and the fraction of shares held by the major shareholders. The results show that abnormal...

This article is aimed at testing the catching up hypothesis for the Italian regions. The use of Malmquist productivity indices allows to decompose productivity growth into technological progress and technical efficiency change, interpreted respectively as innovation and catching up measurements....

In this article we examine the dynamics of economic reforms that are implemented by incumbent policy-makers interested in maintaining their political power. We use a sample of 86 countries over a time period going from 1980 to 2001 and find that the achievement of an equilibrium level of market...