The existence and persistence of large spatial disparities in un-employment within national economies is a central issue in regional economics. Previous empirical analyses have largely disregarded the role of fundamentals. On the contrary in this paper we explore the link between labour...

This paper studies the distribution dynamics of development across European regions over the period 1975-2000. Regional development is measured in terms of both per capita GDP (Y/P) and its components: labour productivity and employment ratio (that in turn can be decomposed in terms of activity...

The object of this paper is to estimate if and how the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) and the Baltic Free Trade Agreement (BFTA) exerted a significant impact on intra-European trade, effectively reducing the influence of the European Association Agreements (EAs) in shaping the...

This paper looks at some aspect of globalisation. After a discussion on its definition, the first part highlights historical evolution of globalisation in its major components (trade flows, foreign direct investments, portfolio movements and migration). The evidence shows that (1) globalisation...

In this paper, we look at the role of export composition in the growth process, considering how increased similarity in trade structure among countries can induce catching-up in income levels in a group of countries in transition. We analyze the sectoral export patterns of the Central and...

We analyse the relationship between regional unemployment and labour productivity in Europe, basing our empirical analysis on the predictions of a Neary-type General Oligopolistic Equilibrium trade model with efficiency-wages. Using semiparametric and dynamic panel data estimators and...

This paper explores the structure of Italian revealed comparative advantages (RCA), focusing on the export structure itself, on its changes over time and on its degree of persistence. The analysis is developed with the use of visual statistical tools and non-parametric statistical techniques...

This paper is about economists and their opinions on economic policies. Using a representative sample of Italian economists as a case study, we show that disagreement is large on both the causes of the economic difficulties in Italy and the economic policies to be implemented for a recovery....

In this article we investigate the empirical relationship between overall specialization and per capita income. The metric we use to measure overall specialization is the median of the sectoral distribution of the Balassa Index of Revealed Comparative Advantages applied to four-digit (SITC...