We present two new methodologies which exploit the 'bright side' of the Modi able Areal Unit Problem. The first one produces an estimate of industrial agglomeration which signi cantly improves on existing indices; the second one provides a ranking of industries according to their responsiveness...

The analysis of patent and citation data has become a popular source of evidence on localized knowledge spillovers and innovation. Nevertheless, one aspect has been overlooked: the patent distribution across inventors is extremely skewed, as many inventors -- the comets -- register one or few...

We evaluate the effectiveness of a partial credit guarantee program implemented in a large Italian region using unique microdata from a broad set of firms. Our results show that the policy was effective to the extent that it resulted in an improved financial condition for the beneficiary firms....

We investigate the causal relationship between judicial efficiency and firm size across Italian municipalities exploiting spatial discontinuities in court jurisdictions for identification. The estimated coefficients suggest that the reduction of the length of civil proceedings could exert, all...

This study assesses the causal effect of the inefficiency of the judicial system on the delay in the execution of public contracts. We apply a border-discontinuity design that leverages the variation in the length of civil proceedings across Italian jurisdictions and a granular dataset of public...