The paper investigates the organization of the Italian water sector in the light of the reforms of public utilities. The aim is to examine the degree of implementation of the water sector reform (the so-called Galli Law of 1994) and assess the performance of operators through a study of their...

Italian Abstract: La qualità dell’approvvigionamento energetico costituisce un importante fattore di competitività per le imprese e di benessere per le famiglie. Analizzando i divari sul territorio italiano nella continuità della fornitura elettrica, il lavoro mostra come, in media per...

Interchange fees (IF) are fees that a cardholder's bank (issuer) receives from the merchant's bank (acquirer) when a card payment is executed. Interchange fees are an important part of the fees charged to merchants by acquirers. Because of their level and fragmentation, interchange fees can...

This paper provides new estimates of cost scale economies for Italian banks, based on a model of bank production that takes into account a comprehensive definition of output including different categories of loans, deposits, off-balance sheet items, payment services, and brokerage and asset...

Since the mid-nineties international financial integration has advanced gradually in the emerging areas of Asia, while it has progressed rapidly in Central and Eastern Europe. This process has helped provide long-term benefits for the economies of the two regions in terms of faster productivity...

In this collection of papers we first analyze the evolution of the Italian food industry and the retail trade sector during the past decade (Chapters 1 and 2). Chapter 3 describes the structure of large retailers and buying groups in Italy. Chapter 4 proposes alternative measures of the degree...

The Italian and European regulatory framework for patents would benefit from further improvements in order to foster dynamic competition between Italian firms. At the national level the exclusive allocation of the right to patent inventions to universities, rather than to researchers, would...

This paper presents a quantitative and analytical documentation to the debate on taxi service liberalization. The results of a survey of the Bank of Italy on the main Italian cities show that the supply of taxi is much lower than that of other foreign cities. The paper gives also some...

We provide the first thorough investigation of the effect of anti-money laundering inspections on banks' reporting of suspicious transactions. We do so by using highly detailed data from Bank of Italy and UIF (Italian authority for anti-money laundering), which include information on i) on-site...

Using data from a Bank of Italy survey, this paper analyzes the Italian taxi market and its recent changes. Local regulations are rather homogeneous, while there is a widespread disproportion, within municipal advisory committees, between the number of representatives of taxi drivers and that of...