Ashraf and Galor (2012) advanced the bold thesis that genetic diversity within different human populations has been a foundational determinant of long-run economic development. We show that their results are not robust after controlling for a key missing variable – the Eurasia dummy. After...

In the present context of increasing competitiveness, inducted by the globalization process, to avoid being marginalized or given up, Italian socio-economic systems need to think out models of differentiated development on a local level and based on the exploitation of territorial resources....

Europe's power system is still marked by a distinct national component, and despite some regions with strongly integrated power systems, electricity supply today still has a largely national basis. Policies to decarbonise the power sector may fundamentally alter this situation, because power...

This paper documents an energy ladder that nations ascend as their per capita incomes increase. On average, economic development results in an overall substitution from the use of biomass to fulfill energy needs to energy sourced from fossil fuels, and then toward nuclear power and certain...

Europe is in need of massive infrastructure investments. Only in the energy sector, EUR 1.1 trillion will be needed by 2020 to finance an infrastructure able to match future demand for energy, to ensure security of supply and to comply with the decarbonisation targets. However, the EU...

Europe's power system is still marked by a distinct national component, and despite some regions with strongly integrated power systems, electricity supply today still has a largely national basis. Policies to decarbonise the power sector may fundamentally alter this situation, because power...

After four years of efforts to implement the European Directive on strategic environmental assessment (SEA), it remains unclear whether decision-making should actually be subject to the SEA Directive. Unlike the approaches adopted by the European Directive regarding the Environmental Impact...

Some recent papers by Dell et al. (2009) and Dell et al. (2012) (DJO) relating weather and economic outcomes, have delivered meaningful messages with clear implications to the effects of a changing climate. In a nutshell, the authors claim that a 1°C increase in global average temperatures...

Additionality is one of the key principles driving the functioning of the EU Cohesion Policies (ECP). The present paper studies how additionality affects the distributional effects of the ECP. Using the example of the firm-level investment support, we analyse the role of additionality and...

In this paper we use novel historical data on economics and social rights from the constitutions of 201 countries and an instrument variable strategy to answer two important questions. First, do economic and social rights provisions in constitutions reduce poverty? Second, does the strength of...