The volume collects the essays presented at the 15th Workshop on Public Finance organised by Banca d'Italia in Perugia from 4 to 6 April 2013. The workshop focused on the link between fiscal policy and macroeconomic imbalances and comprised four sessions. The first session concentrated on the...

We assess the impact of unexpected shocks to real interest rates and GDP growth on government budgets for nine European Union countries. Shocks are estimated as onestep-ahead forecast errors arising from a recursive bivariate VAR model. Our analysis is relevant, in particular, to deciding what...

The constitutional reforms of 2001 and 2003 empowered the Italian regions to enact legislation aimed at removing barriers to effective gender equality. The laws they have adopted in this field are often fragmented � only in a few cases do they form a consistent, comprehensive framework...

The paper surveys the literature on the measurement of innovation activity and evaluates the position of Italy with respect to the other major European countries. Innovation has been measured from different perspectives: the environment in which firms operate, firms' commitment, its outcome....

This paper assesses the effectiveness of Law 215/1992, an incentive scheme intended to boost female entrepreneurship in Italy. Under the law, which was only implemented in 1997 and remained in force for a decade, the allocation of subsidies among the regions was inversely proportional to their...

We test whether the sharp increase in sovereign spreads of euro area countries with respect to Germany after the explosion of the Greek crisis was due to deteriorating macroeconomic and fiscal fundamentals or to some form of financial contagion. Our analysis includes indicators of domestic and...

We evaluate the public-private wage differential in ten euro area countries for men in the period 2004-2007. Using the most recent methodologies on a Mincerian equation, we assess how much of the pay differential between public and private sector workers depends on differences in endowments and...