Local systems are conglomerations of municipalities held together by commuting links. ? Are they real life objects or the result of some cryptic algorithm? Real life objects. Real life cities, to be precise, even if not made of brick and mortar, but of relationships. Relationships is the matter...

We investigate the effectiveness of European Structural Funds on employment, population and house prices in Local Labor Markets (LLM) located in Southern Italy. We exploit the variability in disbursements between 2007 and 2013 and estimate the impact of the interventions by allowing for...

The European Union has a common rural development policy, motivated by the fact that more than 90% of the entire European territory can be classified as rural and 56% of European citizens live in rural areas. Each Member State sets out a Rural Development Programme (RDP) focused on three main...

Research trying to explain tourism flows and expenditures for different destinations has so far adopted either a tourism-demand or a tourism-supply approach. Whereas on the one hand the former ignores the product specificities (Papatheodorou, 2001), the latter, on the other, fails to take into...

The study of the determinants of innovation processes has received great attention in both the economics and the business literature. However, only few contributions have proposed a comprehensive framework able to bring together different but not mutually exclusive research approaches. This...

This paper investigates the interplay between cultural traditions and policy effectiveness. It explores the differential impact of a large development program (Cassa per il Mezzogiorno), implemented for four decades, starting in the 1950s, to stimulate convergence between Italy's South and the...

Immigration has recently been at the centre of the political and economic agenda. Economists have studied extensively the impact of immigration on several economic and social indicators of host countries. The effect of immigration on innovation and technical change is, however, not much studied....

The focus of our contribution is to shed light on the importance of firm agglomerations and FDI as drivers of firm survival in Italy. We focus upon different types of agglomeration economies related to the geographical context checking how these economies impact differently on heterogeneous...

Using fund-, firm- and bank-level data we investigate the investments of private equity (PE) funds in the north-western regions of Italy. Both the private equity fund managers and the PE investments are heavily concentrated in this most developed area of the country. The average size of the...

In collaboration with the OECD, Friuli Venezia Giulia Region in Italy is spearheading a project aimed at bolstering the capacity of local governments in strategic planning and wide area development. Recognizing the efficacy of tailored, integrated approaches, the project underscores the...