The paper offers an exploratory empirical analysis of the impact on consumers' welfare of the reforms of the gas industry in EU-15 area. After considering the key features of the natural gas industry and of its reform in selected countries, we study the relationship between regulatory reform...

The paper offers an exploratory empirical analysis of the impact on consumers' welfare of the reforms of the gas industry in 15 member states of the European Union. After considering some features of the natural gas industry and of its reform in selected countries, we study the relationship...

This paper surveys the recent literature devoted to the analysis of the interactions between the adoption of voluntary or negotiated agreements as a tool of environmental policy and market structure. The goal of this survey is twofold. On the one hand, we would like to identify the market...

Is tourism an opportunity for lagging countries in the elusive quest for growth (Easterly, 2002)‘ Recent empirical evidence suggests that the answer is a cautious yes. Aggregate cross-country data show that tourism specialization is likely to be associated with higher per capita GDP growth...

This paper analyses the conditions under which a group of firms has the incentive to sign a Voluntary Agreement (VA) in order to control its emission flows even in the presence of free-riding by other firms in the industry. For the purpose of this paper it is assumed that free-riders cannot be...

We analyze the empirical relationship between growth, country size and tourism specialization by using a dataset covering the period 1980-2003. We find that small tourism countries grow significantly faster than all the other sub-groups considered in our analysis. The reason for this is neither...

Specializing in tourism is an option available to a number of less developed countries and regions. But is it a good option? To answer this question, we have compared the relative growth performance of 14 "tourism countries" within a sample of 143 countries, observed during the period 1980-95....