In the economic literature increasing attention is paid to the efficiency evaluation in the cultural sector. However, so far, the performance of archives is rarely investigated, notwithstanding their cultural and historical relevance. Indeed, the analysis of archives raises interesting...

The paper highlights issues on the theory of voluntary provision of public goods, building on the investigation by Peacock, in connection with the contributions by Coase and Buchanan. Our goal is twofold. We first draw attention to the early literature investigating the provision of public goods...

Although the performance of the tourism sector has been investigated extensively, the effects of institutional governance have largely been unexplored. This study uses a quasi-natural experiment setting owing to differences in tourism policy devolution between special and ordinary statute...

The diffusion of digital information and communication technologies (ICT) in public services is generally assumed to improve their performance. However, the impact of ICT on the efficiency of public services is rarely verified. This study focuses on public historical archives (PHAs), which are a...

We study the distribution of funds in Sicily (the Autonomous Sicilian Region) to the heritage authorities of regional governments. Using data uniquely available for the nine provinces of Sicily for the period of 1992–2002, we find that the allocation of funding for cultural heritage...

In the last decade, Italy has experienced a considerable decentralization of functions to the regions. This transformation has been especially relevant for the National Health System that has de facto assumed a federal system design. The federal reform aimed at disciplining public health...