We contrast two potential explanations of the substantial differences in entrepreneurial activity observed across geographical areas - entry costs and external effects. We extend the Lucas model of entrepreneurship to allow for heterogeneous entry costs and for externalities that shift the...

This article studies the behavior of a firm searching to fill a vacancy. The main assumption is that the firm can offer two different kinds of contracts to the workers, either a short-term contract or a long-term one. The short-term contract acts as a probationary stage in which the firm can...

We present a simple model which establishes a non linear and possibly non monotonic relationship between financial development and economic growth. Applying a threshold regression model to King and Levine™s (1993) data set, we find evidence that is consistent with the main implications...

This paper explores the spatial distribution of innovative and productive activity across 109 regions of the European Union, thanks to an original databank on regional patents statistics. The main results worth highlighting are as follows. The technological activity in the EU appears to be...

This paper extends the VAR methodology to examine the consequences of monetary policy decisions by considering two types of nonlinearities in the determination of official interest rates - 1) the asymmetry related to the different nature of the discrete and infrequent positive and negative...

This paper uses a comprehensive firm level data set for the manufacturing sector in Italy to investigate the effect of government support on privately financed R&D expenditure. Estimates from a two-step equation model suggest that public assistance has a positive effect on private R&D...

The aim of this paper is to analyse the out-of-sample performance of SETAR models relative to a linear AR and a GARCH model using daily data for the Euro effective exchange rate. The evaluation is conducted on point, interval and density forecasts, unconditionally, over the whole forecast...

This paper analyses how a set of economic variables and a deterrence variable affect criminal activity. Furthermore, it highlights the extent to which crime is detrimental for the economic activity. The case study is Italy for the time span 1970 up to 2004. An Autoregressive Distributed Lags...

We develop a New Economic Geography and Growth model which, by using a CES utility function in the second-stage optimization problem, allows for expenditure shares in industrial goods to be endogenously determined. The implications of our generalization are quite relevant. In particular, we...

This paper investigates formation of expected longevity in an elderly population. We use Italian data from the early (2004) release of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The SHARE provides a numerical measure for subjective survival probability (SSP). To assess...