We examine the effects of bank deregulation on the spatial dynamics of retail-bank branching, exploiting, much like a quasi-natural experiment, the context of intense liberalization reforms in Belgium in the late nineties. Using .ne-grained data on branch network dynamics within the metropolitan...

The paper investigates the effect of local economic conditions on crime. The study focuses on Italy's local labor markets and analyzes the short-term response of crime to the severe slump of 2007-2009. It shows that the downturn led to a significant increase in economic-related offenses that do...

Although the high rate of urbanization and the high incidence of rural poverty are two distinct features of many developing countries, we still do not know the effects of the former on the latter. We address this issue by exploring the mechanisms through which urbanization may alleviate rural...

Using county employment data for US and two appositely developed zoning algorithms, I compare the industrial concentration of manufacturing sectors calculated following the standard metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas definition with two other counterfactuals, obtained by...

The report provides an independent and comprehensive evaluation of the economic and social impact of the Italian policy framework for innovative start-ups, also known as the “Start-up Act”, first introduced by the Decree-law 179 in 2012. The policy aims at creating a more favourable...

This paper provides a first assessment of the degree to which public research contributes to innovative entrepreneurship, using data on start-ups and venture capital (VC). It looks at academic start-ups founded by recent undergraduates and doctorate students or researchers. It shows that...

This report investigates the factors associated with the intensity of “mass lay-offs” across countries and industries, controlling for the dynamics of overall employment. The results suggest that some important drivers of structural transformation (e.g. digitalisation and globalisation) are...

This report investigates the gender gap in the funding of innovative start-ups across OECD and BRICS countries using a detailed micro-dataset on start-ups and their founders. Results from empirical analysis show that start-ups with at least one woman in the team of founders are less likely to...

Although a high rate of urbanization and a high incidence of rural poverty are two distinct features of many developing countries, there is little knowledge of the effects of the former on the latter. Using a large sample of Indian districts from the 1983-1999 period, the authors find that...