In a model of sequential patent races, it is examined whether or not introducing a patent law in the home country is beneficial to the firms and the society as a whole given the foreign country already offers patent protection. Before the first patent race starts, the firms and the foreign...

When the home country introduces a patent law after the winner of the patent race is known the country's welfare may rise only if the domestic firm wins. If the home country decides before the patent race ends, the welfare may be increased when the probability that the domestic firm wins is...

This paper carries out an assessment of the influence that different kinds of social ties exert on labour precariousness, on the state of health of urban environments and on the economic performance in Italy. Overall, the empirical evidence shows that weak ties connecting members of voluntary...

This paper carries out an empirical assessment of the relationship between social capital and the quality of economic development in Italy. The analysis draws on a dataset collected by the author including about two hundred variables representing different aspects of economic development and...

It is proposed to consider the business cycle as hysteresis loop with fluctuating limiting points. Concept is based on the Method of System Potential, (Proceedings of International System Dynamics Conference 2003, No.56) which describes dynamics of spontaniously arising Complex Systems as the...

We analyze how the financial crisis affected a wide range of investments in Indonesian children and children's outcomes including school enrollment, immunizations, and mortality. Our dataset is the National Socio-Economic Survey (Susenas), a large nationally representative sample. We build on...

The aim of this paper is to study the the fundamental macroeconomic determinants of both the CPI and the PPI-based real effective exchange rate in 5 selected acceding countries from Central and Eastern Europe, i.E the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. The paper is based on...

Vengono presentati I principali meccanismi di incentivazione in Italia ed in alcuni paesi europei, in termini sia di descrizione delle iniziative che di analisi del loro impatto in termini di investimenti complessivi e di nuova occupazione. Per I singoli strumenti proposti vengono presentati...

In this paper we examine the productivity of indigenous soil and water conservation investments in the Boukombe region in Northwest Benin, using an in-depth survey among 101 farmers on farm inputs, outputs, and SWC investments. We show that positive effects of SWC investments are only observed...

Recent literature contains many stories of how foreign aid affects economic growth. All the stories hinge on the statistical significance in cross-country regressions of a quadratic term involving aid. Among the stories are that aid raises growth (on average) 1) in countries where economic...