We examine friendships and study partnerships among university students over several years. At the aggregate level, connections increase over time, but homophily on gender and ethnicity is relatively constant across time, university residences, and different network layers. At the individual...

The European higher education landscape has become increasingly integrated causing competition among universities that is no longer bound to national borders. In view of this development, the present paper investigates the relative efficiency of 450 European universities between 2011 and 2014....

Using a DSGE model with nominal wage rigidity, we investigate two scenarios for the Italian economy. The first considers sustained policy commitment to reform. The results indicate the possibility of 'growing out of bad initial conditions', if fiscal consolidation is combined with a program for...

For many governments enacting green policies is a priority, but these often entail substantial and uneven costs on citizens. How does the introduction of green policies affect voting? We study this question in the context of a major ban on polluting cars introduced in Milan. The policy was...

Small businesses (SMEs) depend on banks for credit. We show that the severity of the Eurozone crisis was worse in countries where firms borrowed more from domestic banks ("domestic bank dependence") than in countries where firms borrowed more from international banks. Eurozone banking...

This paper investigates the factors (such as different sources of financing, energy audits and internal monitoring activities) affecting the propensity of European small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to adopt energy efficiency measures (EEMs). For this purpose, a Probit model is estimated...

We present a novel approach for analyzing the effects of EU cohesion policy on local economic activity. For all municipalities in the border area of the Czech Republic, Germany and Poland, we collect project-level data on EU funding in the period between 2007 and 2013. Using night light emission...