The history of Italy since her unification in 1861 reflects the two-way relationship between foreign trade and economic development. Its growth was accompanied by a dramatic increase in the country's integration with European and global commodity markets: foreign trade in the long run grew on...

The paper explores the long run evolution of Italy's performance in technological innovation as a function of international technology transfer, reconstructing the different phases and dimensions of Italian innovative activity, tracking the transfer of foreign technological knowledge through a...

This paper explores the interactions between external trade and regional disparities in the Italian economy since unification. It argues that the advantage of the North was initially based on natural advantage (in particular the endowment of water, intensive in silk production). From 1880...

The paper describes the evolution of the well-being of the Italians during the 150 years since the country's unification. The progress in material standard of living was substantial, with GDP per capita growing 13 times between 1861 and 2010 and hours of work (and hence effort) falling...

What is the relationship between real exchange rate misalignments and economic growth? And what effect, if any, did undervaluations or overvaluations of the lira/euro have on Italy's growth? We address these questions by presenting, first, three main facts: (i) there is a positive relationship...

After a quick profile of Italian foreign direct investments since 1900 and a short review of the main explanations of the lagged multinational growth by Italian manufacturing companies, a quick glimpse of business histories is given to the only two still today living "old protagonists" (Pirelli,...

We document a sharp reversal in electoral participation between the North and the South of Italy after the 1912 enfranchisement which extended voting rights from a limited lite to (almost) all adult males. When voting was restricted to the elite, electoral turnout was higher in the South but...

This work focuses on some economic aspects of the two main waves of Italian emigration (1876-1913 and post-1945) and of the immigration of recent years. First, we examine the characteristics of migrants. Second, for the period 1876-1913 we investigate the determinants of emigration using a new...

In this paper we investigate the link between government debt-to-GDP ratio and real per capita income growth in Italy over 1861-2009. We model our regression analysis on a standard production function. Our results support the hypotheses of a negative relation between public debt and growth and...

The economic performance of a country depends, among other things, on the strategies and structures of its firms. In the framework that is designed by institutions and policies and determined by technology and macroeconomic cycles, entrepreneurs decide how to allocate available resources in...