The choice of an appropriate social rate of discount is critical in the decision-making process on public investments. In this paper we review concisely the literature on social discounting and refer explicitly to a recently growing field of related research, that is, individual time preference....

Sensitivity analysis has become an important tool to test the robustness of estimated economic models. In this paper we propose the use of simulation-based sensitivity analysis to identify the fundamental structure of the economy. To show the possibilities of this technique, we provide empirical...

Abstract With the 2004 enlargement to the East, the EU regional growth process can no longer be seen in the frame of the traditional core–periphery pattern. This is why this article proposes an innovative methodology to endogenously detect convergence clubs while accounting for spatial...

This article aims at analysing the effect of temporal aggregation in space-time autoregressive models. By means of a simulation experiment, it is shown that, the greater the spatial dependence in time series, the lower the bias due to temporal aggregation. However, the ratio between the average...

The aim of this article is to verify whether public investment in infrastructure is effective in terms of growth. While there is extensive literature analysing the effect of public capital stock on development and growth, comparatively less attention has been devoted to the contractual...

In recent decades, owing to a series of public debt crises and constraints on government expenditure, infrastructure investment has dropped significantly in both developed and developing countries. To counterbalance this trend, Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) schemes have been increasingly...

Social capital has remained relatively underexplored in innovation literature. Existing studies have failed to reach a consensus on its impact on local innovative performance: some empirical analyses emphasize a positive effect, others speak about a ‘dark side’ of social capital. This paper...

The paper examines the role of demography on the growth perspectives of European metropolitan areas. Our findings are in support of the key role played by the demographic structure of the population in determining the economic prospects of European cities. Regions and cities with higher levels...

In this paper we study the real estate markets in modern age in the city of Milan over the period 1570-1670. In particular, by using a unique dataset of more than 1,000 rental contracts signed over the period, we estimate a hedonic price index for the housing market which allows us to identify...

The paper aims to analyze the effects of plague on the long-term development of Italian cities, with particular attention to the 1629-30 epidemic. By using a new dataset on plague mortality rates in 49 cities covering the period 1575-1700 ca., an economic geography model verifying the existence...