Is exporting potato chips really the same than exporting microchips? Is the rate of economic growth independent on the export structure? Is moving toward dynamic sectors a key for economic growth? Our purpose is to determine whether and how the sectoral composition of exports aects countries...

This paper empirically analyses overall specialization and revealed comparative advantages of the South Mediterranean countries. The paper has been divided into two sections. The first section deals with the relation between overall specialization and per-capita income, through a semi-parametric...

I was accustomed to think that the world, in this of "modern economic growth", is becoming less specialized: the invention of new goods is, only partially, a "Schumpeterian" process, in the sense that new goods sometimes replace old ones, but it can also happens that these new goods simply are...

This work considers a hypothesis on mechanisms of productivity levels convergence among countries in an attempt to examine some of the current assumptions in this field. After a short summary of the chief findings of other authors, the study focuses on the pioneer follower contraposition,...

In questo lavoro si affrontano due questioni, la prima relativa alla nascita, la seconda alle trasformazioni dei sistemi locali marchigiani. Le determinanti storiche specifiche dei processi di "decollo" dei sistemi produttivi locali di piccola impresa risultano fortemente eterogenee, mentre un...

[ENGLISH] We analyze the phenomenon of international labor productivity convergence at the light of the hypothesis of catching up in technology. We present evidence that the process is much slowed by international demand fluctuations and it reduces the possibility of catching up of the Recently...

In questo lavoro viene analizzata la dinamica del settore calzaturiero italiano a partire dal 1960. Tale dinamica è osservata da molteplici punti di vista; tuttavia la chiave interpretativa di fondo si basa sull’idea che l’aspetto fondamentale da cui partire è costituito dalla posizione...