Over the century and a half since its unification, Italy caught up with the most advanced economies. Such a result was achieved in the presence of an industrial structure which is in many respects unique in international perspective and characterized by a dominance of small firms and a marginal...

This paper analyses the structure of Italian capitalism during the post-WWII economic miracle by focusing on the governance and management of small and medium firms. Using innovative sources, the paper shows that poorly conceived and/or enforced laws and legislation created incentive for...

The main objective of this paper is to shed light on the Italian entrepreneurship between the beginning of the Second industrial revolution and the end of the XX century. It is based on a new dataset concerning the profiles of 386 entrepreneurs. The results are twofold: first, by proposing an...

During the Twentieth century, Italian joint-stock companies remained relatively small and tended to die young. This fact constrained the development of the full potential of the Italian industry, as small-dimensioned companies struggled to implement the most efficient technologies and managerial...

The aim of this research is to provide a long run estimate of the Human Development Index (HDI) for Italy. To this purpose we have reconstructed Italian historical series relative to life expectancy, literacy rate, school enrolment rates and income. All the series presented are the result of a...

In this paper we provide a survey of the long term evolution of the Italian “National innovation system” since the unification. . First we provide a broad reconstruction of long term trends by examining a wide range of quantitative indicators of science and technological activities in...

In the last twenty years the Italian economy showed claer signs of structural crisis. Using a variety of secondary literature, this paper claims that the recent decline must be seen as part of a long-term trend of sub-optimal performance driven by the inability of the country to remain congruent...

The paper focuses on the evolution of the capacity of Italian goods to reach international markets from the Unification (1861) up to now. In so doing we provide a wide range of new series on the topic. On one hand we present the general trends of macroeconomic data related to trade, on the other...

the specialization in exporting primary products is frequently deemed harmful for long-run development, because it increases volatility of terms of trade and thus the number and frequency of macroeconomic shocks. One would expect modern economic growth to solve the problem by changing the...