This Report analyses and compares a number of indicators related to the evolution of the competitive behaviour of firms in the Single Market, from 1999 to 2007, in a selected number of both manufacturing and services industries and eight EU countries: Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Poland,...

We study the effect of import competition on workers’ mental distress. To this purpose, we source information on the mental health of British workers from the British Household Panel Survey, and combine it with measures of import competition in more than 100 industries over 2001-2007. We find...

The economic impact of an institutional transplant depends on the underlying cultural envi-ronment of the receiving country. This paper provides the first evidence that the positive effect of importing good institutions cancels out when the receiving territories are characterized by cultural...

An influential literature shows that product quality varies widely across countries and industries. In this paper, we propose and test an explanation that rests on the interplay between cross-country differences in financial frictions and cross-industry differences in financial vulnerability. We...

Product quality plays a key role in economics, but differs markedly across countries and industries. What are the determinants and implications of this pattern? In this paper, we test an explanation for the large heterogeneity in product quality that rests on the interplay between cross-country...

The economic impact of an institutional transplant depends on the underlying cultural environment of the receiving country. This paper provides the first evidence that the positive effect of importing good institutions cancels out when the receiving territories are characterized by cultural...

We study how cultural distance affects the rejection of imposed institutions. To this purpose, we exploit the transplantation of Piedmontese institutions on Southern Italy which occurred during the Italian unification. We assemble a novel and unique dataset containing information on episodes of...

What determines the rejection of exogenously imposed institutions? To address this question, we exploit the transplantation of institutions that occurred when southern Italy was annexed to Piedmont, during the Italian unification process of the 1860s. We assemble a novel dataset on episodes of...