This paper studies the determinants of the willingness to pay (WTP) for long term care (LTC) coverage provided through either a public or a private insurance program. Two insurance services are considered, a first one compulsory and financed out through general taxes, another one purchased on a...

While it is well established to think of international tourism as a type of exports, namely ‘home’ exports, the potential of tourism flows as an engine for fostering trade among countries is a poorly studied topic. In this paper we show that this relationship can be studied at a very...

The first goal of this work is to collect available physical geographic data on islands and to elaborate measures of insularity. We then evaluate whether and when insularity can become ‘bad’ geography in terms of poor economic performance. We find that two important dichotomies are present -...

The impact of international tourism flows has been poorly studied within the international trade literature. In this paper I use disaggregated bilateral data on both movements of people and movements of goods in order to carry out a panel data analysis on how the two flows are linked. Rajan and...

The main goal of this paper is to study empirically the export decisions of the European firms and to explore their international activities to the European Neighbouring Countries (ENCs). We investigate what are the main characteristics, behaviour and strategies of European firms that export to...

The objective of the paper is to examine whether trade activity intensifies over time as the outcome of signed bilateral trade agreements. Focusing on (the trade component of) the European Neighborhood Policy, the paper conducts an in-depth study of trade activity between the EU and its...

This paper looks at the issue of border effects in the enlarged European Union. We have considered accession countries of different size and other characteristics, i.e. Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia and Cyprus. We have measured the extent to which internal trade exceeds...

We look at determinants of intermediates inputs imports focusing on the role of distance as a direct measure of the costs involved in spreading a production process across different economies. We consider imports to two countries - Italy, whose competitive advantage is still hinged in the...

This paper studies the preferences of tourists visiting the island of Sardinia (Italy), by means of a choice modelling approach. The focus is on some specific demand-enhancing effects which should confirm the feasibility of implementing sustainable tourism policies. Multinomial logit estimations...

This paper offers an empirical analysis of the impact of reforms in the natural gas industry on consumer prices across the EU-15 area. After briefly reviewing the most recent reforms, we study the relationship between regulatory indicators and price dynamics by means of panel data econometrics....