This paper analyses how to extract market expectations from asset prices, with a particular example: using the term structure of interest rates to estimate the probability the market attaches to the event that a country, Italy, joins the European Monetary Union at a given date. The extraction of...

Dati gli ampi divari di basi imponibili esistenti tra le regioni italiane, è necessario che il decentramento fiscale sia accompagnato da un sistema di perequazione a favore delle regioni più povere. Il dibattito italiano sul "federalismo fiscale" condivide questa necessità, ma non discute in...

We derive a set of stylized facts on the effects of non-systematic fiscal policy in the four largest countries of the Euro area, and discuss their implications for the fiscal policy coordination debate, for the effectiveness of fiscal shocks in stabilizing the economies, and for the interaction...

Returns to scale to capital and the strength of capital externalities play a key role for the empirical predictions and policy implications of different growth theories. We show that both can be identified with individual wage data and implement our approach at the city-level using US Census...

The expectations model of the term structure states that the yields to maturity of long term bonds are equal to the average of expected future short-term bond yields.This venerable model has been subjected to numerous empirical tests and almost invariably rejected. The empirical failure is...

I explore the dynamics of national production in a two-sector, two country model with cross-sector mobility and forward-looking agents, when trade costs fall or when the news of a boom in a sector is learned. Using the phase diagram method, introduced by Baldwin 1999 in this type of...

Since its creation in 1997, more than 400 European firms have been listed on Euro.NM, the circuit of stock exchanges targeted at the financing of innovative firms in high-tech industries. We collect a unique database from the listing prospectuses and annual reports of these firms. We...

This paper proposes a representation of (possibly) probabilistically unsophisticated preferences whereby (1) beliefs are jointly represented by a finitely additive probability measure and a vector-valued measure; (2) uncertain prospects are ranked according to the difference between a baseline...

In spite of ongoing dramatic changes in labor market structure, we present statistical evidence that transitional economies display rather low worker flows across sectors and occupations. Such low mobility can be explained by low returns to job changes as well as by market segmentation in the...

The aim of this paper is to estimate the effect of research externalities across space, in generating innovation.We do so by using R&D and patent data for eighty-six European Regions in the 1977-1995 period. We find that spillovers exist for regions within a distance of 300 Km from each other....