Sectoral and territorial specificities affect the firm’s capabilities of being productive. While there is a wide consensus on this, a quantitative measure of the these effects has been lacking. To this end, we combine a dataset of Italian firms with some meso regional and sectoral variables...

This study considers how firms’ internal variables and regional factors affect the total factor productivity of Italian manufacturing firms. Due to of the hierarchical structure of data in estimation, we employ a multilevel model. Results, which refer to 2006, show the importance of...

This paper evaluates the economic effects of Structural Funds in Italy. After presenting the distribution of Funds across Italian Regions over the period 1996-2007 and documenting how the Regions manage the financial resources recevied by EU, the paper assesses the impact of Structural Funds on...

This paper aims to provide a contribution to the debate on the effectiveness of cohesion policies in Italy. The focus is on the territorial effects of EU spending from 1996 to 2007. The empirical analysis is based on the estimate of an expanded neoclassical growth model in which the Structural...

The paper compares the export quality of Italy, Germany, Japan and China. The empirical analysis is based on export unit value for a sample of machinery products exported to the USA over the decade 1996-2006. The results point to four stylised facts. First, Italy, Germany and Japan are...

The aim of this paper is to assess the effect on firm total factor productivity of the university research. Since the impact of universities on firms’ performance is subtle and complex, we verify whether territorial context, sector and firm size may influence this relationship. Results show...

This paper analyses the TFP heterogeneity of a sample of manufacturing firms operating in seven EU countries (Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain and UK). TFP data refer to 2008. The empirical setting is based on the multilevel modelling which provides two main results. Firstly, we...

Understanding the impact of instability of export receipts on the economic growth of developing countries has been an important area of research in development economics for a long time. A substantial body of literature has documented a wide range of empirical regularities according to which...

The EU grants preferential access to its imports from developing countries under several trade agreements. The widest arrangement, in terms of country and product coverage, is the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) through which, since 1971, virtually all developing countries have received...

This paper assesses the impact of R&D efforts on production in the North and Centre-South of Italy by using a panel of 1203 manufacturing firms over the period 1998-2003. The estimations are based on a nonlinear translog production function augmented by a measure of R&D spillovers. This measure...