This paper examines the relationship between inequality and growth in the Italian regions in the period 1990-2004. Our results support the conjecture, formulated by the most recent economic theory, that greater inequality in the distribution of personal incomes reduces real growth. Furthermore,...

This paper tests for the existence of neoclassical and/or technological catching up across Italian regions in the last three decades. The test is performed making use of a model based on the decomposition of output growth, similar to that proposed by Dowrick - Rogers (2002). The results imply...

This note extends the results on the first four derivatives of the utility function by Menegatti (Eur. J. Oper. Res. 232 (2014) 613–617) to the case of high-order derivatives. We show that, under usual assumptions, if the generic derivative of the utility function of order n is sign invariant...

This note shows that there exists a threshold level of optimal prevention for a risk neutral agent which separates cases where a risk averse agent exerts less effort in prevention than a risk neutral agent and cases where she exerts more effort. We also show that the risk averse agent makes...

This paper identifies a new sufficient condition for a prudent agent to have positive precautionary saving in the presence of labor income and interest rate risks of any size. We also provide three economic interpretations for this condition focusing respectively on the marginal effect of saving...