Since Putnam s work on social capital, the Italian regional case has been a very rich source of both data and theories about the origins of large and persistent differences in local stocks of social capital, and about the impact of such differences on economic performances. The Italian case is...

This paper presents a New Economic Geography model of structural change, agglomeration and growth. By assuming the same non-homothetic preference structure as Murata (2008), we obtain similar results in that a progressive reduction of trade costs allows the economy to pass from a...

This paper employs provincial data to study the relationship between several crime typologies, namely murder, theft, robbery and fraud, and economic output in Italy. We employ a spatial econometric approach where the spatial proximity is defined by a measure of physical distance between...

I build a dynamic general equilibrium model of a small economy specialized in tourism where visitors are attracted by the stock of existing environmental assets, and the stock of tourism and leisure facilities. Residents, at any date, choose the level of consumption, the number of visitors, and...

Using data for 51 manufacturing and service sector for the period 1970-2005 in 14 countries, this paper show that employment protection legislation has a negative and significant effect on growth of value added and hours of work in more human capital intensive sectors. We argue that labour...

This paper presents a theoretical and empirical investigation of the relationship between human capital composition and economic growth and points to the importance of tertiary education in the explanation of growth for developing countries. In the theoretical analysis, we allow for non-constant...

We build a growth model in which tourism development generates pollution while tourists are pollution adverse. We establish that long run positive growth exists only for a particular value of tourists pollution adversion. Furthermore, we show that an intensive use of facilities is associated...

The paper examines the relationship between human capital and productivity growth with reference to the Italian regions. Two approaches can be distinguished. One belonging to the neoclassical tradition stresses the accumulation of human capital as a determinant of growth, while the other,...

The picture on disparities in productivity growth and in unemployment across European regions reveals the existence of a slow and not very systematic convergence of labor productivity toward a common level, and of an even more uncertain convergence of unemployment rates. This paper uses a...

This paper analyses the growth effects of high levels of human capital at the industry level. By favouring technology adoption, human-capital-intensive industries grow faster compared to less human-capital-intensive industries in economies that have higher levels of human capital. Using data for...