This article aims at explaining substantial and persistent regional labour productivity differentials in Italy. First, the role played by the diversity of local economic structures is quantitatively assessed. Within-industry productivity levels are then related to regional endowments of physical...

In the last two decades the socio-economic literature has highlighted the importance of social capital (an ample set of social relations and cultural attitudes) for economic growth and the wellbeing of citizens. The literature broadly suggests a negative correlation between social capital and...

Putnam (1993) argues that (i) center-northern Italy has developed faster than southern Italy because the former was better endowed with social capital; and (ii) that the endowments of social capital across Italian territories have been highly persistent over centuries. This paper provides an...

By using unique data from the section on social behavior of the Bank of Italy's 2004 Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW), the paper studies the individual determinants of several aspects of social behavior: attitudes to cooperating with anonymous others; interest in politics;...

Labor productivity convergence is a key factor in the catching up process of less developed regions. For the regional economies as a whole labor productivity differentials can be traced back to three distinct determinants: - composition effects due to the peculiar structure of the regional...

The paper investigates the importance of history for local economic performance in Italy by studying the role of social capital, which refers to trust, reciprocity and habits of co-operation that are shared among members of a local community. The paper presents a test based on worker...

Even before the global crisis, the Italian economy was experiencing international difficulties, although the slow growth and declining share of world trade were accompanied by a perceptible process of manufacturing transformation. The paper uses data from the Bank of Italy’s survey of...

This article contributes to the growing empirical literature on family firms by studying the impact of the founder-chief executive officer (CEO) succession in a sample of Italian firms. We contrast firms that continue to be managed within the family by the heirs to the founders with firms in...

This paper aims to analyze the macroeconomic impact of infrastructures through review of the literature, meta-analysis and empirical analysis of the Italian data. We report a general consensus over the positive effects of infrastructures, even though the results are affected by the estimation...