A stochastic discrete choice model and its related estimation method are presented which allow to disentangle non-linear externalities from the intrinsic features of the objects of choice and from the idiosyncratic preferences of agents. Having veried for the ergodicity of the underlying...

Was the spinning jenny profitable <i>only</i>in England? No. The present work finds that the jenny was profitable also in France. Such result contrasts recent findings on the topic by revising basic computations on the profitability of the spinning jenny.

Why was England the cradle of the Industrial Revolution? The present work shows that scale economies and demand, combined with the conditions of the relative prices of input factors, allow to provide a purely economic answer to this question. The labor-saving innovations of the Industrial...

The work studies the processes of growth of the world top 150 pharmaceutical firms, on the grounds of an original database which allows also disaggregate analysis at the level of single therapeutical classes and chemical entities.Our findings show that the industry -whose long-term evolution is...

This paper provides a description of the production process by comparing different frameworks in which to analyze the relations between inputs and output. The analysis is performed on a representative sample of Italian manufacturing firms. We employ both parametric and non-parametric analysis....

Since the seminal work of Pareto, many empirical analyses suggested that the distribution of firms size is characterized by an asymptotic power like behavior. At the same time, recent investigations show that the distribution of annual growth rates of business firms displays a remarkable...

In an economic geography model where both a negative pecuniary and a positive technological externality are present, we introduce an explicit dynamics of firms locational choice and we characterize its long run distribution. Our analysis shows that economic activities evenly distribute when the...

We consider a simple pure exchange economy with two assets, one riskless, yielding a constant return, and one risky, paying a stochastic dividend, and we assume trading to take place in discrete time inside an endogenous price formation setting. Traders demand for the risky asset is expressed as...

This work presents experimental results on a coordination game in which agents must repeatedly choose between two sides, and a positive fixed payoff is assigned only to agents who pick the minoritarian side. The game presents a variety of asymmetric pure strategy equilibria, and a unique...

Using an analytically solvable general equilibrium model, we study how the distribution of economic activities is affected by the trade-off between pecuniary externalities, as dependent on transportation costs, and localized technological externalities, as dependent on inter-regional spillovers....