The economic crisis of 2008-09 has greatly compounded the challenge of economic policymaking both at the EU level and at the national level by causing a permanent loss in potential output – which may reach between 4 per cent and 6 per cent in the case of Austria (Gaggl and Janger, 2009) –...

Like most industrialized countries and many developing countries, Austria has taken measures to stabilise financial markets and to mitigate the sharp decrease in economic activity caused by the recent financial crisis. These measures amount to 4.2 per cent of 2008 GDP. Model simulations show...

The paper presents the results of a reconstruction of the Italian public debt series since national unification. Computations use today's statistical methodology to obtain a database consistent with the national accounts. The reference sector is general government, not the state sector, as in...

Since the late eighties the Italian National Health System, in particular hospital care, has undergone deep reforms. This paper evaluates the technical efficiency of Italian public hospitals in light of the main features of the hospital system at a regional level. The evaluation was carried out...

Over the last decade two reforms have affected the Italian hospital system, one introducing market mechanisms, the other concerning the tools of planning and expense control assigned to the regional governments. The paper summarizes these institutional changes and describes the evolution of the...

This paper analyzes the evolution of the natural gas distribution sector in Italy from the 2000 reform with the aim of evaluating the regulatory framework, its implementation and its effects on firms and consumers. Market fragmentation has diminished significantly over the years; however, the...

This paper studies the effects on local public transport of the reform begun in the late nineties, using data from a recent Bank of Italy survey. There are still substantial differences across Italy's regions, and the level of efficiency is far from the original aims of the reform. Although...

The paper summarizes the framework used in a research project on local public services carried out by Bank of Italy researchers. It discusses motivations, characteristics, results and general lessons of the project, whose sector-specific results are detailed in individual papers. The project was...

In tourism statistics it is becoming more and more important to identify data sources that are more timely and cheaper than the traditional ones, such as surveys. In this paper, we investigate how mobile phone data (MPD), electronic payments data and internet search data (Google Trends) can...

The growing complexity of the financing and ownership structures of multinational enterprises (MNEs) leads to control chains that extend across a number of countries and obscure the ultimate sources and destinations of foreign direct investment (FDI). This results in what is known in the...