The paper investigates the mechanics through which novel technological principles are developed and diffused throughout an economy consisting of a technologically heterogeneous ensemble of firms. In the model entrepreneurs invest in the discovery and in the diffusion of a technological principle...

In recent years, a large body of empirical research has investigated whether the predictions of secondgeneration growth models are consistent with actual data. This strand of literature has focused on the longrun properties of these models by using productivity and innovation data but has not...

The rise in destination accessibility and the emergence of new market segments have increased the competition among tourism destinations, both at national and international level. In order to gain a significant competitive advantage over competitors, destinations increasingly make use of signals...

Empirical assessments of the forecasting power of spatial panel data econometric models are still scarcely available. Moreover, several methodological contributions rely on simulated data to showcase the potential of proposed methods. While simulations may be useful to evaluate the properties of...

Differently from Atkinson and Morelli (2011) who detect no clear link between increases in income inequality and systemic banking crises, we show that a large majority of crises occurred between 1982 and 2008 have been preceded by persistently high levels of income inequality. Such association...

This paper investigates the relationship between trade liberalisation, consumers' environmental awareness and a negative environmental externality in consumption. We adopt an international Hotelling duopoly setup, where firms are located in two asymmetric countries. We find that, if the...

We study the behavioral underpinnings of adopting cash versus electronic payments in retail transactions. A novel theoretical and experimental framework is developed to primarily assess the impact of sellers’ service fees and buyers’ rewards from using electronic payments. Buyers and sellers...

We perform an econometric analysis of the gambling market in Italy over the recession (2009-2012), observing the consumption patterns in "luck" and "skill" games. We find a different effect between the early and late period of the crisis. Whereas gambling initially behaves as normal good, in the...

How do wage and other financial benefits affect the set of candidates for political office? In this theoretical paper, we answer the question by studying self-selection into politics of individuals with heterogeneous skills and heterogeneous motivations. Our predictions are in line with the...

This paper studies the impact of size on labor cost and productivity for Italian manufacturing firms. The distributions of both labor cost and productivity display a wide support, even when disaggregated by sector of industrial activity. Further, both labor cost and productivity, when considered...