We show analytically that the credibility problem which has affected the European Stability Pact originates from the insufficient distinction between two reasons for having binding fiscal constraints. The first reason deals with the governments’ tendency to neglect the effects of their fiscal...

Starting with Wicksell and until the heyday of Keynesian economics, inflation, unemployment and business cycles were thought and taught mainly as problems originating from "saving-investment imbalances" due to some form of malfunctioning of the capital market. Whereas modern studies of imperfect...

Sen’s capability approach to the assessment of individual well-being and welfare policies, and to the search for theoretical foundations of a paradigm of human development, is challenged by a puzzling fact. In rich countries where material wealth and liberties are at high levels, a significant...

We studied the distribution dynamics of the demand for books in Italy. We found that for each of the three broad sub-markets into which the book publishing industry can be classified - Italian novels, foreign novels and non-fiction - sales over a three-year sample can be adequately fitted by a...

In a realistic framework where the potential innovators’ research lines are imperfectly correlated and imitation takes some time, this paper studies an industry regulated by an authority which can tax (subsidize) the firms’ pure profits (R&D expenditures). By comparing the market equilibrium...