The Italian government is proceeding with the privatisation of the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane group, and is considering a merger with the government-owned highways company. In this article, we argue that changes could be made to the privatisation and reform process, learning from the British...

Using data from a Bank of Italy survey, this paper analyzes the Italian taxi market and its recent changes. Local regulations are rather homogeneous, while there is a widespread disproportion, within municipal advisory committees, between the number of representatives of taxi drivers and that of...

This paper presents a quantitative and analytical documentation to the debate on taxi service liberalization. The results of a survey of the Bank of Italy on the main Italian cities show that the supply of taxi is much lower than that of other foreign cities. The paper gives also some...

The modernization of the solid waste management sector prompted by the Ronchi decree of 1997 has proceeded slowly and is far from being completed. Regional differentials in the effectiveness of local policies and in the efficiency of waste collection and disposal firms are still large. Southern...

The aim of this paper is to review the main features of the new theory of public utilities regulation, theoretically assuming asymmetric information. The results considered imply a departure from first best outcomes and give way to a strategic interaction between firm and regulator. The role of...

The Italian and European regulatory framework for patents would benefit from further improvements in order to foster dynamic competition between Italian firms. At the national level the exclusive allocation of the right to patent inventions to universities, rather than to researchers, would...

There has been a significant increase in project financing in the public sector in Europe in the past decade, benefiting the implementation of infrastructure projects. In Italy, project financing is still much more limited than in such countries as Spain and the UK: the projects funded are...

The paper investigates the organization of the Italian water sector in the light of the reforms of public utilities. The aim is to examine the degree of implementation of the water sector reform (the so-called Galli Law of 1994) and assess the performance of operators through a study of their...

Italian Abstract: Comnciando dal classico paradosso di Cournot viene mostrato quanto siano errate le ipotesi per giustificare una fusione. Viene poi calcolato il risultato di una fusione che lasci nel breve periodo costante la quota di mercato dell'impresa che non partecipa alla fusione e...