Public expenditure decisions increasingly require demonstratable benefits from each area of expenditure. At the same time, investment in human capital represents a form of investment in which individuals typically bear considerable specific, as well as systematic, risks regarding future returns...

This paper deals with the effects of productive public spending on long-term economic growth within an endogenous growth model with uncertain lifetime consumers in the presence of lump-sum transfers, public consumption and investment subsidies. A flexible framework capable of analysing the...

Generally, two facts occur with strategic complementarities and fixed prices: i) the equilibria are multiple, and ii) if the complementarities are strong, the law of demand is violated and the equilibrium is unstable. In this paper, we analyse the effect of price flexibility on these features as...

This paper shows that tax reform techniques are well-suited to an examination of the Laffer argument, i.e., the possibility that an increase in a tax rate may reduce tax revenues (and vice versa). Our methodology allows us to examine the Laffer argument directly, without deriving the Laffer...

There is an increasing debate on the potential use of the signals arising from financial markets as a complement to the information set available to supervisors. Following this stream of research, this paper provides for the first time some empirical evidence on Italian banks, using a unique...

The paper examines several outstanding issues on the interface between the measurement of performance in primary and secondary education and the management of improved performance in this nationally important sector. These issues relate to the clarification of the objectives of the education...