This research note investigates the causal effects of inflationary shocks on household economic indicators, unemployment rates, and other critical labour market indicators for three countries: Germany, Italy and France. These are the three major EU economies and, together, represent nearly half...

The theoretical literature on business cycles predicts a positive investment response to productivity improvements. In this work we question this prediction from theoretical and empirical standpoints. We first show that a negative short-term response of investment to a positive technology shock...

This paper extends the standard New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to agents who cannot smooth consumption (i.e. spenders) and are affected by external consumption habits. Although these assumptions are not new, their joint consideration strongly affects some...

This paper analyzes the role of the employer in workplace training, a novelty with respect to the literature on this topic. Taking advantage of a unique dataset on Italy, we study how individual employer profile and the agglomeration of employers influence firms’ propensity to invest in...

The aim of this work is to match household consumption information from Indagine sui Consumi delle Famiglie (Household Budget Survey, HBS) by the Italian National Statistical Institute (ISTAT) with Indagine sui Bilanci delle Famiglie Italiane (Survey of Households’ Income and Wealth,...

In the paper we focus on emerging market economies’ pattern of trade, with a view to explaining the different features of competitiveness for high skill- and low skill-intensive firms. We consider a theoretical dynamical setup where high-skill firms engage in innovation activity and gain...

In this paper we revisit the impact of global public goods (GPGs) in Official Development Assistance budgets using panel data covering the DAC countries during the period 1973-2009. Our findings reveal a weak crowding-out effect of traditional aid and an increasing financing to weakest-link...

This paper addresses the following questions: which was the contribution of banks’ assets to the US’ expansion in the period until the financial crisis? Did commercial banks respect capital requirements? The two questions are strictly interrelated as, according to a recent...

Our theory of cultural-institutional persistence and innovation is based on uncoordinated updating of individual social norms and contracts, so that both culture and institutions are endogenous. We explain why Pareto-dominated cultural-institutional configurations may persist over long periods...