In this chapter we draw from existing literature and a range of statistics to describe economic, entrepreneurial and innovative activities in the transportation and warehousing sector of the U.S. economy. We suggest multiple avenues for future work, and argue for more research on the role of...

I generate new data on HIV incidence and prevalence in Africa based on inference from mortality rates. I use these data to relate economic activity (specifically, exports) to new HIV infections in Africa and argue there is a significant and large positive relationship between the two: a doubling...

This paper studies the impact that capital market imperfections have on the natural" selection of the most efficient firms by estimating the effect of the pre-deregulation level of" leverage on the survival of trucking firms after the Carter deregulation. Highly leveraged" carriers are less...

This is a comprehensive study of measurement and substantive issues that arise in determining the rate of multi factor productivity (MFP) growth in the transportation industry over the postwar period, 1948-87. Official data on output and employment are provided by two government agencies and...

To identify the effect of social capital on financial development, we exploit the well-known differences in social capital and trust (Banfield (1958), Putnam (1993)) across different parts of Italy, using microeconomic data on households and firms. In areas of the country with high levels of...

The prevalence of shirking within a large Italian bank appears to be characterized by significant regional differentials. In particular, absenteeism and misconduct episodes are substantially more prevalent in the south. We consider a number of potential explanations for this fact: different...

This paper examines the regional distribution of public employment in Italy. It documents two sets of facts. This first is the use of public employment as a subsidy from the North to the less wealthy South. We calculate that about half of the wage bill in the South of Italy can be identified as...

Available studies on asymmetries in the monetary transmission mechanism within Europe are invariably based on macro-economic evidence: such evidence is abundant but often contradictory. This paper takes a different route by using micro-economic data. We use the information contained in the...

How will countries handle idiosyncratic national macroeconomic shocks under the European single currency? The ways in which European countries now react to internally asymmetric shocks provide a better forecast than do the regional response pattern of the United States. In this paper we compare...

We document the consequences of losing a job across countries using a harmonized research design. Workers in Denmark and Sweden experience the lowest earnings declines following job displacement, while workers in Italy, Spain, and Portugal experience losses three times as high. French and...