This paper investigates the evolution of the gap between Italian regions and Italy as a whole during the period 1980-2007. We tested for the presence of the stochastic and β-convergence hypotheses using different time series approaches. The former was studied, first, for all the sample period...

The paper seeks to evaluate whether and to what extent the recent global financial crisis and its economic aftermaths had any impact on the dynamics of the European countries’ national welfare provisions. Relying on the most recent available data on 16 Western countries, covering the period...

In this paper we test the presence of β-convergence among Italian regions, in the period 1980-2003, in presence of a trend break in the series following a new approach (Vogelsang and Tomljanovich, 2002). The break year is considered either known (1992) and endogenously estimated from the data....