This unique and fascinating book illustrates that the ‘credit crunch’ and the ensuing financial and economic crisis of 2007–2009 did not only strike hard at the economy in the Western world, but also at its policymakers, at economics as a scientific discipline and, more...

Is international migration an adaptation strategy to sudden or gradual climatic shocks? In this paper we investigate the direct and the indirect role of climatic shocks in developing countries as a determinant of out-migration flows toward rich OECD countries in the period 1990-2001. Contrarily...

The aim of this paper is to describe the recent evolution of the Apulian aerospace cluster and critically analyze the role of regional industrial policies in a "global" industry. Industrial policy at the regional level shows some shortcomings, and could serve for a second-best solution in the...

The importance of human capital as a key source of value added, innovation and economic growth is widely acknowledged by both economists and policy-makers. Local governments can directly affect individuals’ decision making by subsidising human capital formation. The ability of a regional...

How should industrial policy be designed in developing countries? Should industrial policy be targeted to a few sectors or be more broad based and therefore more neutral? Our theoretical analysis demonstrates that access to foreign markets is key to answering this question. We show that in a...

In this paper we show that highly skilled illegal migrants may be more likely to return home than migrants with low or no skills when illegality causes "skill waste," i.e. reduced ability of making use of individual capabilities both in the labor and the financial markets. This result is in...