Fostering entrepreneurship as a tool for the creation and support of rural businesses is a crucial goal for the integrated development and survival of rural economies. Despite the recognition of entrepreneurship as one of the main determinants of rural economic development, empirical research in...

Keynesian economics dominated economic thought and macroeconomic policy-making in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the diffusion of Keynesian economics has been uneven. In this paper, we compare the spread of Keynesian economics in two continental European countries: Belgium and Italy. We focus on...

Empirical tests of the theories on the relationship between political competition and economic performance generate a puzzle: data tend to support the theory at the lower levels of government, but not in panels of countries. We argue that the larger set of policy instruments reduces the tax...

The historical forerunners of contemporary austerity are still largely unexplored. This essay considers the "liberal phase" of Fascist Italy (1922-1925) as a case study to explain austerity as a full-blown rationality, that is intrinsically, and simultaneously, theory and practice, encompassing...