This paper examines the results of a survey carried out in 2007 by the Bank of Italy concerning different characteristics of the organization of lending activities. Between 2003 and 2006 the physical distance between the headquarters and the branches increased, the limits to the decision-making...

Even before the global crisis, the Italian economy was in difficulties internationally, but slow growth and a declining share of world trade were accompanied by a perceptible process of manufacturing transformation. This paper, using data from the Bank of Italy�s survey of manufacturers,...

The unsatisfactory performance of Italian export volumes in the last decade has been attributed to three factors; the product specialization still centered around traditional sectors, the small firm size and the exceptional rise in export unit values. This paper analyzes the latter with the aim...

This paper estimates a pricing-to-market equation for Italy over the period 1990-99 with the aim of assessing the degree of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT). As compared to previous works, we minimize aggregation and selection biases using export data on all products (about 700 from 4 digits of...

In the last 15 years the Italian employment structure has undergone some radical changes. As a result, the proportion of high-skilled jobs (managers and professionals) has increased at the expense of medium-skilled jobs (clerks). Differently from the US, in Italy (and in many other European...

The Italian and European regulatory framework for patents would benefit from further improvements in order to foster dynamic competition between Italian firms. At the national level the exclusive allocation of the right to patent inventions to universities, rather than to researchers, would...