The classic stochastic frontier panel data models provide no mechanism to disentangle individual time invariant unobserved heterogeneity from inefficiency. Greene (2005a,b) proposed a fixed-effects model specification that distinguishes these two latent components and allows a time varying...

This paper investigates the recent evolution of the oil price, with the objective to analyze the main drivers that during last fifteen years have led the unstable path and the volatility persistence in the international oil market. We assume that the oil price is composed by two components,...

This report illustrates the application of a (relatively) new method to guide decision making under high (and unknowable) levels of uncertainty. The approach allows for the identification of robust policy options that are economically beneficial under different scenarios and varying levels...

The main objective of this article is to evaluate to which extent the set of national and regional cost control policies implemented in recent years in Italy have affected hospital activity. Our contribution is mainly empirical as we focus our attention on the impact that policies like hospital...

We experimentally study the effect of financial education on investment attitudes in a large sample of high school students in Italy. Students in the treated classes were taught a course in finance and interviewed before and after the study, while controls were only interviewed. Our principal...

We device a randomized experiment with task performance in which players directly decide allocation criteria (with/without) veil of ignorance on payoff distribution under different criteria in a stakeholder/spectator position. Our main result is a strong and significant gender effect: women...

This paper asks whether trust in political institutions depends on individual’s political leaning and the political ideology of the national government. We employ information on 140'000 individuals in 30 democratic OECD countries from the World Values Survey, 1981 – 2007, and estimate...

Waste management / disposal performances and a desirable delinking between income and waste trends are influenced by socio economic, institutional and policy factors. In highly regionalised settings many idiosyncratic factors of local interest influence waste management and disposal. Through an...

We study the implications of having different sources of nominal rigidities on the relationship between productivity growth and shocks volatility in a model with procyclical R&D and imperfect competition in goods and labour markets. We show that the effects of uncertainty on long-term growth not...

Modelling comovements amongst multiple economic variables takes up a relevant part of the literature in time series econometrics. Comovement can be defined as "move together", that is as movement that several series have in common. The pattern of the series could be of different nature, such as...