The purpose of this paper is to test whether finance constraints create an incentive for debt-constrained firms to improve efficiency along time, using a sample of 1124 firms from the Italian manufac- turing over the period 1989-1994. Technical efficiency change indices are derived using a new...

This paper analyses the relationship between industrial total factor productivity and public capital across the 20 Italian administrative regions. We add upon the existing literature in a number of ways: we analyse a longer period (1970-98); we allow for the role of human capital accumulation;...

Collateral - generally defined as an asset used to provide security for a lender's loan - is an important feature of credit contracts and all the available evidence suggests that its use is getting more pervasive. This informative book builds upon recent research into this topic. Sena analyses...

A number of competing views are swirling around the literature concerning the impact of globalization on the ability of cooperatives to survive. This 10th volume of the Advances in the Economic Analysis of Participatory & Labor-Managed Firms series wants to understand some of these elements in...

In this paper, we test the extent to which producers' cooperatives can experience an increase in technical efficiency following a tightening of financial constraints. This hypothesis is tested on a sample of Italian conventional and cooperative firms for the wine production and processing...

This paper analyses the mechanisms through which profit-sharing schemes may induce debt constrained firms to improve technical efficiency over time to guarantee positive profits. This hypothesis is first formalised in a partial equilibrium framework and then is tested on a sample of Italian...

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new test of the spillover hypothesis of the endogenous growth literature and to apply it to a panel of firms from the Italian manufacturing over the period 1989- 1994. I depart from previous literature into two respects: first, I measure total factor...

The use of Diagnostic Related Groups (DRG) as a mechanism for hospital financing is a currently debated topic in Portugal. The DRG system was scheduled to be initiated by the Health Ministry of Portugal on January 1, 1990 as an instrument for the allocation of public hospital budgets funded by...