The 1993 Income Policy Agreements (concertazione) reformed wage setting institutions in Italy. This change introduced a relevant ability in absorbing macroeconomic shocks and a curb in inflation- ary expectations, at the cost of stagnant aggregate real wages. The firm-level wage premia remained...

<em>Competition and transparency in public procurement: a survey</em> - Italy suffers of a chronic lack of modern infrastructures. The market for public works is as a whole not transparent and inefficient in terms of costs and time of completion of the works; greater competition could improve the...

Compared with other European countries, the Italian labour market stands out for the low level of both female participation and fertility. In this paper we focus on the employment patterns of Italian mothers around the time of childbirth. Our hypothesis is that the difficulties involved in...

This paper highlights some drawbacks in the planning of infrastructures and public works in Italy. The major flaws lie in the overlapping of competences and failure to implement effective coordination mechanisms among the different levels of government, together with the lack of a clear...

This paper studies the relevance of the different factors that influence, at the territorial level, efficiency in the market for public infrastructures in Italy.

In the past decade, several countries, notably France, Spain and Germany, have experienced a joint increase in female participation and fertility, mainly because of national policies aimed at balancing work and family life. In Italy, by contrast, fertility has remained relatively stable (after a...

The chapter analyses the broad picture emerging from the 1993 incomes policy agreement in Italy as well as other policy actions (and omissions). The agreement was successful in producing a remarkable moderation of the relative price of labour - despite the reduction of the user cost of capital...

The book brings together a series of research papers presented at the conference entitled "Infrastructure in Italy", held in Perugia on 14-15 October 2010. The papers analyse the relationship between public investment and economic growth; the endowment and quality of infrastructure across the...

In a bank-oriented country such as Italy, bank credit is by far the most important source of external finance for firms. The allocative efficiency of banks is therefore an important element underlying the overall performance of the economy. In this paper we focus on allocation across industrial...

This paper studies what impact liquidity shocks have on liquid assets and domestic and cross-border lending. In particular, we look for differences across banks depending on their international exposure and we account for the effects of the sovereign debt crisis and the ECB's non-conventional...