This paper investigates the interplay between cultural traditions and policy effectiveness. It explores the differential impact of a large development program (Cassa per il Mezzogiorno), implemented for four decades, starting in the 1950s, to stimulate convergence between Italy's South and the...

Local Development that Money Can’t Buy: Italy’s Contratti di Programma The paper evaluates the effectiveness of a major Italy’s place-based policy (Contratti di Programma), through which the Government endorses and finances an industrialization plan proposed by private...

The paper uses the consolidation of municipalities brought about by the Fascist dictatorship in Italy during the 1920s to gauge the role of the size of local jurisdictions for economic development. It finds that the consolidation was associated with relevant net welfare gains for the communities...

The paper measures the impact that Wage Zones (WZ) - minimum wage differentials at the province level - had on Italy's local development during the Fifties. By using a spatial regression discontinuity design, it finds that for the industrial sectors covered under WZ there was a large increase in...

Marshallian Labor Market Pooling: Evidence from Italy This paper employs a unique Italian data source to take a comprehensive approach to labor market pooling. It jointly considers many different aspects of the agglomeration labor market relationship, including turnover, learning, matching, and...

This paper considers the “share-altering†technical change hypothesis in a spatial general equilibrium model where individuals have different levels of skills. Building on a simple Cobb-Douglas production function, our model shows that the implementation of skill-biased technologies...

By diminishing the cost of performing isolated economic activities in isolated areas, information technology might serve as a substitute for urban agglomeration. This paper assesses this hypothesis by using Italian household level data on internet navigation, e-commerce, and e-banking....

Recent literature has aimed at evaluating human capital externalities by estimating the effect of human capital on wages at urban level. We argue that this methodology might not identify properly human capital spillovers. We consider a general equilibrium model based on Roback (1982) where both...

Since the second half of the ’90s, investment incentives channelled through the Law 488 have represented the main policy instrument for reducing territorial disparities in Italy. From 1996 to 2003, the total amount of funds distributed to industrial firms has accounted for 16 billion of euro,...