Working papers results

This paper studies whether the Heckscher-Ohlin models condition for factor price equalization holds. For this purpose information on national factor endowments and sectoral income shares is used to construct a theory based quantitative criterion. In the context of two production factors, capital and labor, it is shown that the whole world cannnot be a unique diversification cone, since the factor endowments of countries vary too much relative to the factor intensities of industries. The factor endowments of OECD countries instead are such that they can be under factor price equalization. These results cast doubts on the validity of the FPE model in a favor of the complete specialization model both concenrning empirical research on the net factor content of trade, and as an analyticial workhorse to study many aspects of international trade, economic growth, etc. for large cross-sections of countries.

In this paper we jointly estimate a forward-looking reaction function for the three-month rate alongwith a term structure relationship linking the six-month interest rates to current and expected future three-month rates. In our empirical model the response of the six-month interest rates to current and future three-month interest rates is allowed to depend on uncertainty on monetary policy. The expectations theory cannot be rejected in periods of low uncertainty on monetary policy.

The poor favor redistribution and the rich oppose it, but that is not all. The "prospect of upward mobility" (POUM) hypothesis implies that social mobility may make some of todays poor into tomorrows rich and since redistributive policies do not change often, individual preferences for redistribution should depend on the extent and the nature of social mobility. We estimate the determinants of preferences for redistribution using individual level data from the US, and we find that individual support for redistribution is negatively affected by the likelihood of moving above mean income relative to moving below the mean. Furthermore, people who believe that the American society offers equal opportunities to all oppose redistribution; instead those who do not believe that equal opportunities really exist and, therefore, regard the upward mobility process as biased, do not see social mobility as an alternative to redistributive policies.

This paper studies the border between shadow employment and unemployment, and argues that the two macroeconomic phenomena are two faces of the same coin, in the sense that any policy aimed at reducing the former will increase the latter. Theoretically, it proposes and solves a matching model of the labor market, where shadow employment emerges in equilibrium as the endogenous response of firms and workers who fell overburdened by taxes and regulations. While the model we propose neatly rationalize the labor market trade off implied by "shadow reducing policies", it suggests that economies with low unemployment turnover should be characterized also by low turnover along the shadow margins. Empirically, the paper uses matched records across LFSs (Labor Force Survey) to assess whether turnover over shadow employment is more stagnant in the high unemployment region of the Italian Mezzogiorno. Since existing estimates of shadow employment are silent on labor market flows and on the relation between shadow activity and main labor market aggregates, we perform original empirical work on the border between employment, unemployment and inactivity, and we find that Italian shadow employment has longer duration in regions with lower unemployment turnover.

This paper studies the impact of public infrastructure on economic perfor-mance. We employ three different methodologies to estimate the returns to public investment. First, we relate growth in total factor productivity to accumulation of public capital. Second, we assess the role of public capital as an input to production. Third, we evaluate the reduction in costs that can be attributed to the presence of public infrastructure. Using regional data for Italy, we find that the aggregate impact of public capital is positive and significant under the first approach, slightly negative under the second, and virtually zero under the third. More coherent results obtain when disaggregating by geographical area and time period: under all three approaches, the effectiveness of public investment seems to be increasing over time and to be higher in Central and Southern regions than in Northern ones.

The recent dismal performance of overall job creation has left Italy, as of the end of the 90s, with very low participation and high unemployment rates. Moreover, Italy exhibits a large regional dispersion of those variables when compared to similar European Union economies. The present paper, using Census data on employment from 784 Local Labor Systems (LLSs), covering the whole Italian territory, analyzes job creation and its determinants for the 1981-1996 period. Local characteristics (inputoutput linkages, pool of local workers, technological spillovers), technological diffusion and infrastructure provision affect productivity in each LLS and, lacking wage flexibility, they determine differences in job creation across them. We analyze those characteristics across Italian LLSs and regions, developing measures for each of them and then we estimate their impact on job creation. The sizable (0.8% a year) difference in employment growth between the Northeast and the Southwest, as well as the overall differences across LLSs are explained up to one third by those characteristics. In particular, strong local input-output linkages across industries and fast growing transport infrastructures are shown to be important determinants of job creation. The southern Italian economy emerges in this analysis as rather differentiated within itself. Some parts of the Southeast show current characteristics compatible with good job creation, particularly if helped by investment in infrastructures. Most of the Southwest, on the other hand, is still lacking local characteristics for self-sustained job creation and has been strongly penalized by the cut in public investment in the 90s.

This paper provides evidence on the behavior of public debt managers during fiscal stabilizations. Such episodes provide valuable information on the way debt instruments are chosen because they allow to overcome the problem that policymakers expectations of interest rates are generally not observable. We find that governments increase the share of fixed-rate long-term debt denominated in the domestic currency the higher is the conditional volatility of short-term interest rates, the lower are long-term interest rates, and the stronger is the fall in long-term rates that follows the announcement of the stabilization program. By contrast, conventional measures of the relative cost of issuing long-term debt, such as the long-short interest-rate spread, are not significant. This evidence suggests that debt managers tend to prefer long to short maturity debt because they are concerned about the risk of refinancing at higher than expected interest rates. However, when long-term rates are high relative to their expectations, they issue short maturity debt to minimize borrowing costs.

We contribute a novel approach to the existing literature on the effects of restructuring on R&D investment by focussing on a single industry, chemicals. The chemical industry is very research intensive and has experienced thorough restructuring since the early 1980s. By focussing on a single industry we are able to identify the technological and R&D features of its segments. This is important, since there is evidence that restructuring affects R&D differently in businesses with different technological features. However, no study so far has provided a systematic inquiry into this link. Using a panel of 535 European, American, and Japanese firms for the years 1987-1997 we find restructuring to be an important component in the observed changes in R&D intensity. We show that restructuring affects R&D both through changes in size and through changes in the composition of business portfolios, and that these effects differ across industry segments.

We combine growth theory with US Census data on individual schooling and wages to estimate the aggregate return to human capital and human capital externalities in cities. Our estimates imply that a one-year increase in average schooling in cities increases their aggregate labor productivity by 8 to 11 percent. We find no evidence for aggregate human capital externalities in cities however. Our main theoretical contribution is to show how aggregate human capital externalities can be identified when workers with different human capital are imperfect substitutes in production.

Since its the creation in 1997, more than 400 European firms have been listed on Euro.NM, the circuit of stock exchanges targeted at the financing of innovative firms in high-tech industries. We collect a unique database from the listing prospectuses and annual reports of these firms. We characterize their ownership and financial structures, and their economic activity. We show the existence of significative heterogeneity across firms and across the national segment of the Euro.NM circuit. Such differences persist also when we study the relationship between venture capital and the going-public process. We conclude that Euro.NM is far from providing a pan-European stock market for innovative, high-growth companies.