Using an innovative dataset for ICT use for five countries in Europe, we examine the impact and association of ICT on socio-economic exclusion. Using OLS regression we find significant wage premiums for PC and internet usage at the workplace. Following Dinardo/Fortin/Lemieux (1997), we examine...

We analyse the determinants of ICT investment and the impact of information technology on productivity and efficiency on a representative sample of small and medium sized Italian firms. In order to test the most relevant theoretical predictions from the ICT literature we evaluate the impact of...

The paper investigates the determinants of bankruptcy in three representative unbalanced samples of Italian firms for the periods 1989-1991, 1992-94 and 1995-97. Two important results are that: i) the degree of relative firm inefficiency measured as the distance from the efficient frontier has...

In order to determine how much money is needed to make each household member as well off as they were before a change in living conditions, equivalence scales should be defined on the basis of individual rather than household welfare. This requires the knowledge of individual utilities that are...

Almost all students at American colleges and universities use student evaluations to rate their professors. However most probably know relatively little about the process and what determines aggregate faculty ratings. This paper uses data from an internet rating site to explore potential...

Recent data on the traditional North-South dualistic divide in Italy clearly reveal the halt of any convergence process, with the per capita GDP gap in the Mezzogiorno returning to its historical levels, i.e. around 60% of the North-Centre. The resources mobilized within European policies for...

This paper evaluates poverty sensitivity to growth in mean incomes and distributional changes in Italy across its regions and over a period spanning from 1977 to 2004. We use the "Survey on Household Income and Wealth" (SHIW) of the Bank of Italy to estimate the growth incidence curves and the...

This paper analyses the dynamics of labour productivity across Italian Provinces in the period 1995-2006. Inequality decreased but a clear pattern of polarization emerged, with the formation of a cluster of high-productive provinces in the North and Centre-West of Italy and a cluster of...

This paper claims that the 2011 Italian referendum on nuclear power is taking shape as a clean laboratory for the measurement of one of the main aspects of the NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) issue. Since the citizens voted on the possibility for the government to set up new nuclear plants in...

This article summarizes the major outcomes of the studies presented in two special issues of JMIS on children of immigrants in Italy. The authors suggest that Italy is a monochrome society – a society that truly cannot imagine itself as multicultural. The master narrative emerging from opinion...