Based on the various works on the relevance of the institutional arrangements for a country’s economic performance, this paper studies the role and the determinants of the reform policies for the development paths of the transition countries. Looking at the U.S.S.R breakdown as an extremely...

The aim of this paper is to argue that peace among the European countries represents the fundamental common good promoted by economic integration, for which solidarity and willingness to pay are required; however, there are structural problems able to slow the process of European integration. The...

This paper investigates the impact of hooliganism on attendance in Italian stadium and the effect of anti-violence measures adopted by Italian Government in 2007. Results first show that a structural break took place on Serie A average attendance in season 1979/80. The econometric investigation...

Despite the considerable interest in the concept of human development, there has been little research on the political determinants of its dimensions. This paper investigates the role played by the type of political systems on the non-income components of human development. In particular it...

We interpret the emergence of Jihadist terrorism in the light of contest theory. Al Qaeda may be portrayed as a contest organizer, providing a ‘prize’ to the best terrorist group. Each group maximizes its probability of winning by launching attacks more destructive than previous ones...

We discuss the case when the sum of the growth rate of productivity and that of the labour force is an increasing function f of the actual growth rate of income y. We show that a natural rate of growth is a solution of the equation y =f(y); hence its endogeneity to y requires the unlikely case...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between a firm's R&D expenditures considered as an investment in knowledge, and its productivity, looking at sectoral peculiarities which may emerge; to this end, we use a large unique longitudinal database consisting of 1,809 US and...

This paper provides a methodological analysis of credit risk in manufacturing firms by using two different credit scoring approaches. The first is the traditional discriminant approach (DA) for bankruptcy prediction based on a logistic regression model, whereas the second, Data Envelopment...

The machine tool industry has a leading role in the Italian manufacturing system, above all in Northern Italy. This industrial branch is a strategic intermediate point in many manufacture dies, with an average innovation intensity higher than that of many other industrial branches. This work...

The recent financial crisis has led to a great level of environmental uncertainty and dramatically affected managers' expectations and firms' corporate strategies, including their acquisition moves. Building on a sample of 385 acquisitions in Italy in the period 2007-2010, the paper addresses...