Increased robot diffusion has raised concerns for its possible negative impact on employment. Following an empirical approach in line with those applied to the US and Germany with contrasting results, this paper provides evidence about the effect of robots on employment outcomes in Italy (second...

Economic activity is concentrated in urban areas and during the 20th century the urban population grew at a faster rate than the national average in many countries. Why is this the case? In this paper we focus on the urban premium in firms' productivity. We run two exercises. First, we document...

It is frequently argued that the geographical context in which firms operate can have a crucial impact on their propensity to internationalize. In this paper, we present the results of an empirical analysis that examines the determinants of export performance for a sample including more than...

This paper investigate the effects of the prolonged double-dip recession on the productive capacity of the Italian manufacturing sector, employing three methods: a production function approach, a survey-based methodology and a statistical filtering of the industrial production series. We...

Between 2008 and 2013 productive capacity was considerably downsized in the Italian manufacturing sector. This paper analyses the micro-data collected for the Bank of Italy surveys to identify the main drivers of the reduction in the whole 2008-13 period and in four sub-periods (pre-crisis...

Il lavoro documenta la recente evoluzione del sistema industriale italiano e discute i principali fattori che influiscono sulla sua competitività. Dall'analisi emerge un quadro di diffusa debolezza. In tutti i comparti industriali i livelli produttivi sono inferiori a quelli precedenti la...

In this paper we study the relationship between the quality of contract enforcement and firms' participation in Global Value Chains. Using new data on Italian manufacturing firms' supply of customized inputs to other firms and variations in law enforcement in courts across Italy, we find that...

Il lavoro descrive le strategie di ricerca e sviluppo (R&S) delle imprese italiane, usando i dati dell'indagine annuale sulle imprese (Invind) condotta dalla Banca d'Italia. I risultati, relativi al periodo 2008-2010, fanno emergere per le imprese italiane una serie di fatti stilizzati della...

Using an extension of the methodology proposed by Koopman, Wang and Wei (2014) for quantifying the domestic value added in a country's exports of manufactures, this paper provides calculations of the market shares in value-added for a number of countries and compares them with the standard...

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...