The book brings together a series of research papers presented at a workshop on "Economic integration between the Mezzogiorno and the Centre North", held at the Bank of Italy in Rome on 15 March 2011. The workshop assessed the degree of economic integration between the two areas from several...

This paper identifies a new sufficient condition for a prudent agent to have positive precautionary saving in the presence of labor income and interest rate risks of any size. We also provide three economic interpretations for this condition focusing respectively on the marginal effect of saving...

After the Golden Age, Italy experienced increasing difficulties in adjusting its economy to the changing external context and to the requirements for sustaining catch-up growth at a higher level of economic development. The adjustment issue is common to advanced countries but the difficulties...

The present paper studies the provision of big and inefficient public investments in proprietary states. By means of these investments, whose rate of return is either nil or negative, an incumbent dictator can transfer resources to his/her supporters and obtain a head-start advantage in the...

After the Golden Age, Italy experienced increasing difficulties in adjusting its economy to the changing external context and to the requirements for sustaining catch-up growth at a higher level of economic development. The adjustment issue is common to advanced countries but the difficulties...

We survey the rich literature studying the behaviour of labor shares in recent decades. To explain their dynamics – the main feature being the decline of European and American shares starting in the 1980s – such literature considers models that use either neoclassical or Leontief-type...

In this paper we examine the Italian regional policies launched in the second half of the 1990s and aimed at promoting the development of Southern Italy. Ten years on, the goals have not been reached, either in terms of social and economic development, or of the performance of firms receiving...

The paper analyzes the optimal level of decentralization in local-public-good provision. Although all voters pay for such investments, only a subset benefit from them; their rate of return, however, is positive. Through pork-barrel projects, which do not increase welfare, any resource allocation...

We survey the rich literature studying the behaviour of labor shares in recent decades. To explain their dynamics – the main feature being the decline of European and American shares starting in the 1980s – such literature considers models that use either neoclassical or Leontief-type...

In the era of «small government», policy was considered the right way to conceive the role of the state in society and in the economy. This was intended as a perspective able to reduce the room for politics, considered a (dangerous) clash of power and party interests, and ideology. Given the...