This paper provides factual evidence on the extent of public intervention in the Italian economy. It further illustrates the internal contradictions and weaknesses of public action in Italy. New policy proposals to solve old structural problems of the Bel Paese are then discussed. Among them, a...

Unemployment in Europe is a worrying phenomenon not so much because it hits 18 million people, but because it almost exclusively affects particular population segments. Italy represents a textbook case of a European country where labour market imbalances only weigh upon certain social...

In the past four years, and under pressure from the EC authorities, most constraints on air transport prices in the European Community have been removed. This paper concentrates on the effects of increased competition on fare behaviour. It uses an unpublished 1990 dataset on eight fare...

This paper uses comparative statistics in a simple three-period overlapping generations model to show that any pay-as-you-go mechanism for public retirement pensions, when adopted in a dualistic economic system, penalises the most dynamic demographic groups, i.e., the <MI>developing<D> rather than the...</d></mi>

The unemployment dynamics in the Mezzogiorno of Italy seem to corroborate the New Economic Geography predictions, whereby, under some specific hypotheses, a stronger economic integration can amplify the regional polarisation of unemployment rates in Europe. It is, however, unclear which features...

This paper analyses the spectacular fiscal adjustment currently occurring in Italy. In 1990, the Italian General Government showed the second largest primary deficit-to-GDP ratio in Europe; in 1997 it is expected to have the largest primary surplus-to-GDP ratio, with a 3% overall deficit-to-GDP...

A microeconomic theoretical model shows that two factors - the compensation and progressivity effects - produce the shifting (if any) of tax rates on wage formation. From an analytical viewpoint, they may be positive or negative and of equal or different sign. A microfounded nested macroeconomic...

Difficulties in European fiscal harmonization will mainly depend on present inter-country differences in effective rather than scheduled tax rates and tax structures. This paper therefore tries to evaluate the historical and current heterogeneities and similarities which characterize not only de...