The diffusion of knowledge in the world generates positive externalities if knowledge flows increase the productivity of R&D. Our work analyzes knowledge diffusion and knowledge externalities in generating innovation and in determining productivity. We first estimate the determinants of...

In an interesting and influential paper Robert Lucas (1993) considering the experience of East Asian small economies, suggests that 'on the job' learning could be the principal engine of their miraculous growth in the last 20 years. In this paper I develop an overlapping generation model where...

Young highly educated workers developed in the 70 s and 80 s a preference for working in larger cities. As a consequence highly educated young workers in 1990 were over-represented in cities, in spite of the lower wage premium they earned for working in crowded metropolitan areas if compared to...

In this article we estimate the long-run aggregate elasticity of substitution between skilled and unskilled workers. This is an important parameter as it allows us to compute the skill biased technological progress (SBTP) from the evolution of relative wages. However, it is hard to estimate...

The importance of innovation for the economic performance of industrialized countries has been largely stressed recently by the theoretical and empirical literature. Moreover the intensity of knowledge externalities in generating innovation, is the key parameter in determining sustained growth...

We study the effects of immigration on native welfare in a general equilibrium model featuring two skill types, search frictions, wage bargaining, and a redistributive welfare state. Our quantitative analysis suggests that, in all 20 countries studied, immigration attenuates the effects of...

Emigration of young, motivated individuals may deprive countries-of-origin of entrepreneurs. We isolate exogenous variation in a large emigration wave from Italy between 2008 and 2015 by interacting diaspora networks with economic pull factors in destination countries, and find that larger...

Using an originally constructed dataset that follows 30,000 Italian individuals from high school to the labor market, we analyze whether the gender composition of peers in high school affected their choice of college major, their academic performance and their labor market income. We exploit the...

This paper investigates how the size of co-ethnic networks at the time of arrival affect the economic success of immigrants in Germany. Applying panel analysis with a large set of fixed effects and controls, we isolate the association between initial network size and long-run immigrant outcomes....

The offshoring of production by multinational firms has expanded dramatically in recent decades, increasing these firms' potential for economic growth and technological transfers across countries. What determines the location of offshore production? How do countries' policies and characteristics...