We use a panel of European firms to investigate the relationship between intangible assets and productivity. We disentangle between tfp and technology adoption, while available studies so far have considered only a notion of productivity conflating the two effects. To this aim, we estimate...

University drop-out is a topic of increasing concern in Italy as well as in other countries. In empirical analysis, university drop-out is generally measured by means of a binary variable indicating the drop-out versus retention. In this paper, we argue that the withdrawal decision is one of the...

This paper aims to empirically investigate the impact of a vast array of public policies on wireline broadband penetration through a novel and unique dataset covering 30 OECD countries, over the period 1995–2010. Estimation results show that, while both supply- and demand-side policies have a...

We investigate institutional and policy drivers of telecommunications deregulation in Europe. In particular, we focus on those determinants which received so-far a comparatively little attention: policy speed and timing, path-dependency, institutional complementarity. We find that: first,...

Previous empirical literature suggests that privatization choices are driven by ideology. However, available measures of this political bias are weakly grounded as they neglect crucial factors affecting privatizations, such as the liberalization levels and the public finance structure. To fill...

In many contexts, warning systems of law enforcement are used to let uninformed individuals learn what is illegal, while sanctions are applied only after a number of repeated violations. Surprisingly no em- pirical evidence is available so far, over the learning impact of warnings. This paper is...

We use a panel of European firms to investigate the relationship between intangible assets and productivity. We disentangle between tfp and technology adoption, while available studies so far have considered only a notion of productivity conflating the two effects. To this aim, we estimate...

Like land before the industrial revolution, in the present global economy much knowledge is being enclosed in private hands. In this paper we argue that these enclosures have become a major factor in specialization among firms and among countries: both are forced to specialize in the fields that...