Following the literature on the comparative advantage of small versus large banks at lending to small businesses, and in light of the worldwide decline in the number of intermediaries that specialize in this type of lending associated with deregulation in the banking industry, we examine the...

This work attempts to shed light on the “information technology productivity paradox”. Employing a large data set of Italian manufacturing firms we compute ICT marginal productivity across different cluster of firms and the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on output...

This study focuses on the dynamic behaviour of a small open economy specialized in tourism based on natural resources when tourist services are supplied to foreign tourists who are crowding-averse and care for the environment. We analyse the steady-state properties of the model and a unique...

This paper analyses the effects on consumers’ welfare of the privatisation policy carried out in the UK since 1979. The approach we follow sees the privatisation of a State owned enterprise within the broader framework of the “policy reform” theory (Drèze and Stern, 1990). By adopting...

The paper aims to propose a formalization of the concept of ceteris paribus (CP) by means of a dynamic model. The basic result of the analysis is that the CP clause may assume essentially different meanings according to (1) the kind of variables assumed to be ”frozen” and (2) the length of...

Employing a large data set of manufacturing firms the paper tries to assess the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on productivity growth in Italy and to investigate the differences in ICT adoption between North and South of the country. Not all firms invest in ICT and...

The paper examines the main trends of sectoral specialization and geographic concentration of the manufacturing industry in the Italian Local Labor Systems from 1981 to 2001. The main results are the following - both specialization and concentration show a tendency, although very weak, to...

In the context of policy reforms in Higher Education in both the UK and Italy, we review recent evidence on student outcomes in higher education and subsequent transitions into the labour market for both these countries. We also provide the results of some new analysis for each of the two and,...

Il saggio si propone di delineare una politica europea dei trasporti impostata, non secondo i tradizionali riferimenti alla realizzazione delle infrastrutture ed alla regolazione dei mercati, ma come insieme di interventi volti a introdurre e diffondere le innovazioni – prevalentemente...

We study the relation between workers’ skill dispersion and firm productivity using a unique dataset of Italian manufacturing firms from the early eighties to the late nineties with individual records on all their workers. Our measure of skill is the individual worker’s effect obtained as a...