In this paper we use a unique dataset of Italian manufacturing firms that includes firm-level price data to investigate whether increased penetration of Chinese products affects the competitive environment in an advanced country like Italy. Instrumenting import penetration from China to account...

Estimating on Italian data the empirical model proposed by Roberts and Tybout (1997), we find that that sunk costs of exports are quite relevant: an exporting firm at year t, which has therefore has already paid such costs, has a probability of exporting in the next year that is 70 percentage...

The economic performance of a country depends, among other things, on the strategies and structures of its firms. In the framework that is designed by institutions and policies and determined by technology and macroeconomic cycles, entrepreneurs decide how to allocate available resources in...

Productivity is the main factor holding back long-term economic growth in Italy. Since the second half of the 1990s, productivity growth has been feeble both by historical standards and compared with the other main euro area countries. Understanding the reasons for such a performance and finding...

We provide an in-depth analysis of Italy's export performance relative to the other main euro-area countries over the last two decades, using both macro and micro data. We argue that the relatively unsatisfactory performance of Italian goods exports until the eve of the 2008-09 crisis is the...