We analyze the debt origination process in which a lender offers prospective borrowers a microcredit product alongside a traditional bank loan, and the impact anti-usury mandates can cause within this credit market. This is a paper about the prospects of financial liberalization following a more...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of various proximity dimensions on the innovative capacity of 276 regions in Europe within a knowledge production function model, where R&D and human capital are included as the main internal inputs. We combine the standard geographical...

The recent history of Europe is characterized by a dual picture showing the Old and New countries in sharp contrast with respect to their industrial specialisation and economic performance. We aim at analyzing the intertwined performance of regions and industries in New and Old European...

There is a large consensus among researchers on the positive role played by human capital on economic performances although the debate on its measurement (education or creativity) is still open. This paper aims to disentangle this issue by proposing a disaggregation of human capital into three...

This paper reports the results of an experiment aimed at investigating the link between empathy, anticipated guilt and pro-social behavior. In particular we test the hypothesis that empathy modulates the anticipatory effect of guilt in bargaining situations and, more specifically, that it...

Quantifying productivity is a conditio sine qua non for empirical analysis in a number of research fields. The identification of the measure that best fits with the specific goals of the analysis, as well as being data-driven, is currently complicated by the fact that an array of methodologies...

It is well known that firms productivity is influenced by information spillovers generated either by other firms located nearby or by direct contacts with final demand or by foreign demand in the case of traded products. In this paper we investigate a new channel of efficiency - enhancing...