We use firm-level data for France and Italy to explore the impact of service regulation reform implemented in the two countries on the mark-up and eventually on the performance of firms between the second half of the 1990s and 2007. In line with some previous studies, we find that the relation...

According to economic theory, elderly homeowners should be much more eager than they actually are to adopt financial instruments allowing them to borrow against home equity. This paper investigates the determinants of interest for the Italian elderly in one such instrument, the reverse mortgage....

This paper investigates the firm-main bank relationship in a sample of Italy's SMEs. The findings suggest that banks lend to SMEs via different lending technologies. These results support the hardening-of-soft-information view, whereby also transactional lenders might somehow use difficult to...

The aim of this paper is to implement distributional considerations in comparing the economic well-being of individuals over time and living in different regions in Italy. In this sense, the purpose is to implement the recommendations of the Stiglitz's (2009) report concerning augmenting...

Italy has an immobile social structure. At the heart of this immobility is the educational system, with its high direct, but especially indirect cost, due to the extremely long time necessary to get a degree and to complete the subsequent school-to-work transition. Such cost prevents the...

After an accurate analysis of European and Italian laws and rules regarding market transparency, confidential information abuse, and internal dealing, we decided to x-ray all S&P MIB Corporations at 2006/12/29 (insiders buy and sell transactions) during the 2003-2006 period, in order to verify...

In this paper we argue that a better understanding of the relationship between inequality and growth can be obtained by shifting the analysis from the space of final achievements to the space of opportunities. To this end, we introduce the Opportunity Growth Incidence Curve, that can be used to...

The article synthesizes the large and extending literature on the financial and economic crisis from a Post-Keynesian point of view. The authors take on the position that the international and internal real imbalances are serious and worrying, but yet they are not the cause of the crisis or of...

Offshore wind power is regarded as a crucial renewable energy technology to achieve the ambitious CO2 reduction targets of the EU. However, offshore wind power is not yet competitive with traditional electricity generation technologies, so its sustained development depends on national support...

The intergenerational transmission of preference and attitudes has been less investigated in the literature than the intergenerational transmission of education and income. Using the Italian Time Use Survey (2002-2003) conducted by ISTAT, we analyse the intergenerational transmission of reading...