The case-study focuses on the strategies adopted by the Natuzzi Group, world leader of the upholstered furniture sector, located in the Bari-Matera district (Southern Italy), to face increasing global competition and on their effects. In particular we consider the modes and determinants of...

This paper deals with the effects of the transfer of additional funds on the real economy of recipient countries, in particular the European Member States. The intended and unintended effects of additional funds on national public finances and, ultimately, economic performance are discussed....

This paper supports the view that the deep roots of the current global crisis, which has taken the form of a mainly financial crisis, are related to a global fundamental unbalance in income distribution. There are two dimensions of the unbalance. The first one is between capital and labour...

This paper comments an important book by Maurice FG. Scott, «A New View of Economic Growth». The main contribution of the book is to show that capital investment can sustain endogenous growth, as it embodies technical progress. Neoclassical theories of growth are based on an error in...

This note discusses some contributions and ideas on the role of entrepreneurs in Economics, from Adam Smith to the Austrian tradition. The paper observes that there are different forms of entrepreneurship and that realism is needed to understand the social availability of entrepreneurship across...

Discounting enables to express future monetary or socio-economic effects in terms of present values when inter-temporal decisions are to be taken. In the context of the cost-benefit analysis, this allows for directly comparing net benefits expressed in terms of their net present values, and,...

This paper draws and expands from a recent ex-post evaluation carried out for the European Commission aimed at assessing the long term effects produced by a sample of ten major infrastructures in the Transport and Environment sectors and interpreting the key determinants of the observed...

Public enterprises never disappeared in spite of several privatization waves in the last three decades. This paper offers some trends and possible rationales for their resilience. In a sample of the Forbes 2000 top corporations, as reviewed by OECD economists (Kowalski et al. 2013), we show that...

The proposal to use privatization proceeds in order to decrease public debt in Italy is criticized for several reasons. The Italian debt, now more than 133 per cent of the GDP is the outcome of fundamental fiscal unbalances, including large tax evasion. Without targeting such unbalances, the...

This paper discusses some conditions under which the Cohesion Policy of the European Union can effectively contribute to enhance R&I in Europe and the extent to which it offers a relevant framework for devising Research & Innovation policies at regional level overcoming possible tensions and...