We model a monetary union where fiscal discretion generates excessive debt accumulation in steady state and inefficiently delayed debt adjustment following shocks. By setting a debt target and raising the political cost of deviating from the optimal pace of debt reversal¸ institutional design...

This paper argues that, contrary to the views of most development economists, policies that raise the cost of labor relative to capital are in the collective and individual interest of LDCs. The reason is that low wages mean that the attractiveness of an LDC production location is positively...

This paper revisits the empirical evidence about the link between firms' performance and their international status, based on a large sample of Italian enterprises. To this purpose, we merged two waves of the Capitalia survey (1998-2000, and 2001-2003) retrieving firm level data for roughly...

This paper surveys recent contributions on the Internalisation issue, based on different theories of the firm, to show how the make-or-buy decision, at an international level, has been assessed through the opening up of the "black box" - traditionally explored by the theorists of the firm - and...

In this paper we investigate the choice of FDI versus joint-venture, made by Italian, Spanish and Swiss multinationals in China, as shaped by the risk of Dissipation of Intangible Assets. Probit estimates, based on an entirely new firm-level dataset, constructed by the author, show that FDI is...

This paper provides a theoretical formalisation of the joint-venture contract, as an alternative to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), within a Dissipation of Intangible Assets framework. In a two-period, two-country equilibrium model, we discuss how the threat of knowledge spillover shapes the...