This paper examines the case for efficiency-driven banking sector consolidation in Italy, evaluates its potential … gradually recovers, operational efficiency gains are nonetheless needed to restore large parts of the banking system to healthy … profitability. Banking system consolidation can play a role in facilitating such efficiency gains, but its effectiveness is likely …

The paper assesses the degree of banking competition and efficiency in Italy?over time as well as compared to that in … highcost, high-income system, particularly with respect to retail/services, and efficiency gains have yet to fully materialize … to be an important consideration, both in enforcing Italy''s antitrust laws and in ensuring that the procedures for …

across Italy's provinces. Exploiting the large heterogeneity in the efficiency of the public sector across Italian provinces …This paper studies the effect of public sector efficiency on firm productivity using data from more than 400,000 firms … significantly reduces the labor productivity of private sector firms. The results suggest that raising public sector efficiency …

Productivity growth in Italy has been persistently anemic and has lagged that of the euro area over the period 1999 … whether total factor productivity growth varies with the level of corporate indebtedness. We employ a novel estimation …

The paper provides a quantitative assessment of social returns to education in Italy. It shows that, after controlling … social returns between 2 and 3 percent. This result is robust to alternative estimation methods and does not seem to depend … on endogenous sorting. The paper also shows that social returns are higher in the lagged areas of the south of Italy …

particularly true for Italy, where the variability of production in manufacturing is extremely high and almost entirely due to …

(relative to the variability of the forward bias), and predictable. Estimation of structural models of the risk premium suggests … that anticipated fiscal contractions in Italy and lower uncertainty about the future path of fiscal policy are associated …

The paper analyzes the efficiency and profitability of Japanese banks from 2000-06. It uses a non-parametric approach …, the data envelopment analysis (DEA) to analyze banks'' cost and revenue efficiency. The results show that the performance … regional banks being less cost and revenue efficient relative to both City and Trust banks. While Japanese bank profitability …

interest rate spreads and margins in Armenia using a bank-level panel dataset for the period 2002 to 2006. We find that bank …-specific factors, such as bank size, liquidity, and market power, as well as the market structure within which banks operate, explain a … potential to increase cost efficiency and competition in the banking system …