We analyze households’ economic freedom to determine their standard of living, characterized by their capacity to spend on housing, utilities, food, and transport: economic poverty is a lack of freedom due to budgetary constraints. We propose three new measures. The first is the classical...

This paper provides a detailed insight into the magnitude of price-level differentials among Italian regions, supplementing the data collected by Istat with information on house prices and rentals collected by Agenzia del Territorio and by the Bank of Italy and with estimates from other sources....

Following the introduction of euro banknotes and coins many Italians perceived a much sharper increase in the price level than the moderate rise registered by the National Institute of Statistics. The paper shows that the apparent contradiction between the public�s perceptions and...

This paper examines regional inflation divergence within the European EMU aiming at characterizing the properties of inflation differentials. The empirical evidence suggests that a process of price level convergence in the EMU is well on its way.

Three industrial organization (IO) models suggested by Dornbusch (1987) are here adapted to study the labor-cost effects on relative prices of tradable goods between the regions of a monetary union. The assumption of imperfect and segmented goods and labor markets makes the analysis best suited...

We study monetary policy in a New Keynesian (NK) model with endogenous growth and knowledge spillovers external to each firm. We find the following results: (i) technology and government spending shocks have different effects on growth; (ii) disinflationary monetary policies entail positive...

Questo lavoro analizza l’efficacia relativa di due possibili contesti di riferimento della futura azione di politica economica in ambito europeo in termini di obiettivi di stabilizzazione: il primo, caratterizzato dall’attuale architettura istituzionale e il secondo, da un sistema fiscale di...

This paper presents a survey of the literature on the determinants of inter-firm credit and on its implications for the transmission mechanism of monetary policy. Theoretical explanations for trade credit can be divided in two categories: a) theories based on real functions performed by trade...

Il fenomeno dell'indebitamento, insolvenza e crisi economica nel capitalismo è interpretato dall'ortodossia economica secondo la logica speculativa. La nostra intenzione, invece, è interpretare il fenomeno dell'indebitamento, insolvenza e crisi economica nel capitalismo secondo la logica...

In this paper we examine the main aspects of Italian factoring market and its evolution during last two decades. Moreover, we analyze the characteristics of firms accessing this kind of financing. In Italy factoring market size is the third in the world in absolute terms (amount of turnover),...