Italy's problems are primarily structural; the current government is thus exploring more radical reform programmes, such as labour market reform and liberalisation. Compliance with the measures introduced towards achieving a balanced budget and reducing the public debt is a prerequisite to...

This paper studies the role of industrial clusters in stimulating regional innovation and economic cohesion in Europe. Starting from an overview of industrial clusters in the EU, in which we highlight the strengths and weaknesses of agglomerations of firms, we empirically investigate how cluster...

EU New Member States must comply with the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) and the investment requirements implied by the Lisbon Agenda. However, the SGP rules may result in underinvestment or distortions in the allocation of public expenditure. This paper provides new evidence on the effects of...

We study the effects of service offshoring on the wages of Italian workers. To this purpose, we build up a novel data set combining information from two different sources: (1) matched employer-employee data based on administrative records from the Italian National Social Security Institute; and...

This publication consists of the proceedings and of three studies which were presented during the workshop on trade and economic relations with Asia: - Asia as a new global engine: foreign trade and regional cooperation ; - EU external trade strategy vis-à-vis Asia ; - Implementation of the...

This publication consists of the proceedings and of three studies which were presented during the workshop on trade and economic relations with Asia: - Asia as a new global engine: foreign trade and regional cooperation ; - EU external trade strategy vis-à-vis Asia ; - Implementation of the...