We develop a monopolistic version of a dynamic model of banking, where financial intermediation and payment services play a relevant role. We then empirically test the model using balance-sheet data for large European and US banks, and find strong support for the main predictions of the model....

This paper analyses the choice of full versus shared ownership of the production affiliate made by Italian multinationals in Asia, based on an entirely new firm-level dataset, constructed by the author. The decision to internalise production, rather than relying on a local partner, is driven by...

This paper displays an analysis of geopolitical organizations within the framework proposed by Alesina and Spolaore (1997), where heterogeneity concerns the geographical space. This model adds heterogeneity in terms of income. Main results of the paper: (i) in the normative equilibrium (social...

This paper studies empirically the link between financial markets volatility and primary placements of stocks and bonds for the US economy. We find that the impact of volatility on primary placements is not statistically significant.

The combination of special interest politics (agency problems) and informational asymmetries presents serious problems as the implementation of conditionality is concerned. In this paper we focus on the role that the transmission of information between the IMF and the borrowing government has...

We empirically investigate the e®ect of trade liberalization on trade tax revenues applying panel-data methods to a large sample of African countries from the period 1970-2000. The goal of this paper is to determine whether controlling for macroeconomic features of African economies and taking...

L’obiettivo primario del lavoro consiste nella ricerca dei principali fattori determinanti della spesa turistica a Milano e nella stima dei loro effetti, tenendo sotto controllo le possibili variabili influenti e le interazioni rilevanti. In tale contesto si porrà particolare attenzione allo...

Political regimes and institutions di®er across countries. Such char- acteristics in°uence public spending within each country. The aim of this paper is to check for the existence of a link between political institu- tions, income inequality and public spending. We develop an empirical...

We analyze the labor market for painters in Baroque Rome using unique panel data on primary sales of still lifes, portraits, genre paintings, landscapes and figurative paintings. In line with the traditional artistic hierarchy of genres, average price differentials between them were high. We...

We study the Seventeenth century market for figurative paintings in Italy analyzing original contracts between patrons and artists. We show that a number of supply and demand factors affected prices. We find a positive and concave relation between prices and size of paintings reflecting...