In the last decade the Italian economy has underperformed compared both with the previous decades and with the main European countries. It is widely acknowledged that this evolution reflects unresolved structural problems, which have become more urgent in view of the major changes in the world...

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...

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...

Financial exclusion concerns 2.5 billion individuals and more than 450 million enterprises. The G20 countries are committed to the reduction of this phenomenon. The Bank of Italy has a fundamental role in the field of financial inclusion, both on a national and an international scale through...

This paper combines the literature on financial crises with that on international immigrations by investigating whether the increasingly large flows of workers� remittances can help reduce the probability of current account reversals. The rationale for this stands in the great stability and...

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...