This paper analyzes the local determinants of producer service growth in Italy, focusing on agglomeration economies, and taking into account the particular features of this sector with respect to manufacturing. Using an OECD classification, we estimate a dynamic specification allowing for...

The analysis of patent and citation data has become a popular source of evidence on localized knowledge spillovers and innovation. Nevertheless, one aspect has been overlooked: the patent distribution across inventors is extremely skewed, as many inventors -- the comets -- register one or few...

Despite the fact that it provides a potentially useful analytical tool, allowing for the joint modeling of dynamic interdependencies within a group of connected areas, until lately the VAR approach had received little attention in regional science and spatial economic analysis. This paper aims...

In this paper we examine the empirical relationship between immigration and crime across Italian provinces during the period 1990-2003. Drawing on police data, we first document that the size of the immigrant population is positively correlated with the incidence of property crimes and with the...

Does regional income inequality affect a household's likelihood of being indebted? This question is addressed by using survey data on Italian households. The analysis shows that inequality in the regional income distribution has a negative effect on the probability of being indebted. In...

This paper formalizes one mechanism through which diversification in the production of research & development across firms located in a city dampens volatility in the local labor market, improves the incentives to perform research & development and smooths the aggregate business cycle...

This paper presents ideas and methods underlying the construction of an indicator that tracks the euro area GDP growth, but, unlike GDP growth, (i) is updated monthly and almost in real time; (ii) is free from short-run dynamics. Removal of short-run dynamics from a time series, to isolate the...

In this paper we study how the Great Recession affected university students in terms of performance, with a focus on the drop-out probability. To do so, we use individual-level data on a representative sample of university students in Italy in 2007 and 2011. We measure the severity of the...

In the five years 2011-2015 global trade fell short of expectations to a much larger extent than global GDP. We show that two key features of real trade flows − their high volatility and their procyclicality − are the cause behind the cyclicality of the income elasticity of trade. This...

Since monetary policy affects risk premiums, and these appear to have a stronger influence on economic activity when they rise than when they fall, temporary monetary expansions may both stimulate the economy and sow the seeds of damaging financial market corrections in the future. We...