The vulnerability of health sector to corruption lies in the complex interaction between the social environment and the institutional setting of health systems. We investigate this interaction in the case of Italy, speci�cally looking at the impact of corruption on health expenditure. In Italy...

In this paper we examine the relationship between air pollution and hospital admissions for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in Italy, at province level, over the period 2004- 2009. To this end, we use information on annual mean concentrations of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide,...

Recent research suggests that some countries may be unable to use productively their schooling output because of the scope of cronyism or corruption. We investigate further and demonstrate that, in a stylised model, cronyism in the labour market, (e.g. the ability to exert influence to gain high...

In Italy, the corruption is a social phenomenon affecting the health sector. In this paper we show that the impact of corruption on Italian health expenditure is positive, along with ageing population, technological change and supply factors inducing demand in pharmaceuticals and...

In the face of past ambiguous results on growth effects of education when measured through school attainment, some papers suggest that some countries may be unable to use productively their schooling output because of the scope of cronyism. We dig deeper and demonstrate that, in a stylized...

This study examines the development of rural tourism in Italy, highlighting the wide range of activities undertaken on rural tourism farms. Currently, rural tourism is presented as an enterprise parallel to traditional farming activities that generates additional income and fosters greater...

This paper provides additional insights on the relationship between government size and trade openness using a panel of countries drawn from the World Development Indicators and the Penn World Tables 7.0 from 1962 to 2009. It is shown that the compensation hypothesis proposed by Rodrik (1998)...

This paper provides empirical evidence of the relation between trade openness, capital openness and government expenditures in a cross sectional time-series context. It is shown that capital openness is significantly and negatively related to government expenditures in line with the conventional...

This paper introduces social considerations into the calculation of the price index. To this purpose, recourse is made to the concept of distributional characteristic. It is shown how an aggregate price index can be expressed as a weighted average of commodity-specific prices, with weights that...

This module illustrates how Generalised Lorenz (GL) Curves can be used to identify the best income distribution on social welfare grounds, within a set of alternative income distributions generated by different policy options, in many of the cases where ordinary Lorenz curves fail to work After...