The paper presents a general equilibrium model of endogenous growth and trade between two countries, an advanced country (A) and a backward country (B). The development stage is summarized by the level of knowledge stock accumulated through R&D investments. The latter generates technological...

This paper formalizes one mechanism through which diversification in the production of research & development across firms located in a city dampens volatility in the local labor market, improves the incentives to perform research & development and smooths the aggregate business cycle...

The paper describes the innovation strategies of a representative sample of Italian firms participating to the Bank of Italy�s yearly survey. The evidence covers the 2008-2010 period and highlights some stylized facts widely discussed in the economic literature. Results show that the...

This paper investigates empirically whether inward greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI) is related to greater sectorial innovation in the host Italian provinces. We combine several sources of data to estimate panel count models, regressing the annual number of patents in each province and...

We examine the impact of natural disasters on GDP per capita by applying the synthetic control approach. Our analysis encompasses two large-scale earthquakes that occurred in two different Italian regions in 1976 and 1980. We show that the short-term effects are negligible in both regions,...

Unit roots in output, an exponential 2 per cent rate of convergence and no change in the underlying dynamics of output seem to be three stylized facts that cannot go together. This paper extends the Solow-Swan growth model allowing for cross-sectional heterogeneity. In this framework, aggregate...

Unit roots in output, an exponential 2 per cent rate of convergence and no change in the underlying dynamics of output seem to be three stylized facts that cannot go together. This paper extends the Solow-Swan growth model allowing for cross-sectional heterogeneity. In this framework, aggregate...

This paper explores the growth-enhancing role played by heterogeneity in human capital accumulation. It develops a growth model that takes into account more than one mechanism for accumulating human capital; in particular, schooling and on-the-job training are considered. The paper demonstrates...

This paper studies the correlation between inequality, measured by the Gini coefficent of incomes, and the growth rate of per capita GDP in a panel of countries between the late 1950s and late 1990s. Inequality Granger causes growth with a negative coefficient, while growth Granger causes...

We introduce a novel methodology to measure the relative TFP of the tradeable sector across countries, based on the relationship between trade and TFP in the model of Eaton and Kortum (2002). The logic of our approach is to measure TFP not from its "primitive" (the production function) but from...