There is abundant evidence that immigrants’ networks are associated with larger trade flows between countries of origin and the country (or province) where they settle. The causality of such relation and its magnitude, however, have not been proven beyond reasonable doubt. We use the simple...

In this paper we provide empirical evidence on the effect of ICT investment on the propensity to offshore for a large sample of Italian manufacturing firms. Contrary to previous literature focussing on the service sector, after taking into account the endogeneity of ICT investment in the...

We focus on the role that the transmission of information between a multilateral (e.g., the IMF) and a country has for optimal (conditional) reform design. The main result is that the informational advantage of the country must be strictly greater than the advantage of the multilateral in order...

In an environment with correlated returns, this paper characterizes optimal lending contracts when the bank faces adverse selection and borrowers have limited liability. Group lending contracts are shown to be dominated by revelation mech- anisms which do not use the ex post observability of the...

This paper investigates the determinants of group membership, and in particular the effect of income inequality on individual incentives to join economic groups. Drawing on a simple model, we show that an increase in inequality has an ambiguous e¤ect and that the type of access rule (open...

This Paper examines the link between imported technologies and a country’s export performance, as measured by product quality. The analysis is set against the background of the process of regional integration between the EU and its neighbouring developing countries. The underlying question is...

The cultural and geographic proximity between two regions otherwise very distant (both in terms of factor endowment and of specialization pattern) makes the wage perceived as fair in the peripheral region dependent on the wage prevailing in the core region. As a consequence, the peripheral wage...

This paper presents an integrated view of economic growth, development traps, and economic geography. We explain why there is income convergence among some countries (neoclassical regime) and income divergence among others (poverty trap regime). Income convergence (divergence) and manufacturing...