With the growing pressure from the adverse impact of environmental pollution and climate change, the deployment of renewable sources is becoming one of the economic priorities for governments worldwide. Despite potential gains of renewable sources, little evidence is provided in the literature about the determinants of renewable energy deployment in the MENA region. In particular, whether political

This paper aims to analyze economic and commercial convergence in the three active integration agreements in the region: Central American Integration System, Southern Common Market, and Pacific Alliance. To this end, we estimated the Economic Convergence Index and correlations among the main macroeconomic aggregates. The empirical evidence reveals that, apart from Venezuela, Latin American countries

This work is intended to show that past epidemic scenarios are not suitable to estimate the macroeconomic impact of the new 2019 coronavirus. Using five centuries of macroeconomic data for England and a unique dataset on epidemics and other significant events (i.e., wars and natural disasters), we show that the macroeconomic effect of epidemics reflects the socio-economic features characterizing different

Contrary to the notion of a natural tendency in deindustrialization, this paper, performing a cross-country long-term analysis, documents the existence of a variety of patterns of deindustrialization. Looking at industrial sectors and their technological characteristics, categorised on the ground of the Pavitt (1984) taxonomy, we do find a markedly uneven process of deindustrialization with Science

I expound a model of technological progress, institutional development and growth in the aggregate. I show the model implies that long-run growth depends upon the evolution of institutions; that fixed institutions do not cause growth in the long-run; that fixed institutions can only cause growth in the short-run; and that institutions that inhibit growth are institutions that are not capable of evolution

Social Exclusion is a major concern for EU institutions and several instruments have been devised to counter it. This work aims to assess the role played by policy measures in fighting social exclusion in the EU, distinguishing between national and supranational tools. Given the available data, we run a multilevel model, combining national and regional observations for 20 EU Member States between 2005

This paper investigates the macroeconomic impact of legislative complexity in relation to political corruption on growth rate, welfare level and income distribution. After reviewing economic literature on corruption and legislative complexity, an endogenous model is provided. The main theoretical findings of the analysis are that a high level of legislative complexity, like political corruption, constitutes

India initiated prudent measures voluntarily in the last two decades to combat against excessive carbon emissions. Acknowledging these initiatives, the study conjoins the policy of ‘border carbon adjustment (BCA)’ by the developed countries on Indian export with the ‘domestic carbon adjustment (DCA)’ by India to evaluate its impact on emission reduction and the macroeconomy. The study also raises an

Economic systems are characterised by constant change and evolution. Explanations concerning the properties of economic structures have received sustained interest in economics. The structure of a system and its dynamics can influence each other through feedback effects – a topic studied extensively in the literature on structural change. In this paper we offer a brief survey of how structure plays

In this paper, we analyze time-varying predictability of financial stress due to growth in income inequality of the United States (US) over the annual period of 1913 to 2016. In order to ensure that we remove the asset price effects on income inequality, and provide incorrect inferences regarding the impact on financial stress, we work with capital-gains excluded six alternative measures of top shares

There is a broad consensus that the gold standard was a key element in explaining the Great Depression and the crisis that hit the world economy in the 1930s, spreading protectionism. Against this backdrop, countries had greater difficulty in restoring their external accounts, if needed. Italy in this period represents a perfect case study of a detailed complex of measures taken to defend the country's

This paper analyses the effects of productivity and country size on the extent of trade structure diversification. Using a testable version of the Ricardian model, we show that relative export variety is an outcome of two forces: a relative productivity change (technological progress) and a relative country size change (labour force growth). The model predictions are validated empirically using product-level

Studies have shown that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant drop in carbon emissions in 2020, however, it is an open question whether carbon emissions continue to decline after the COVID-19 pandemic. To forecast the changes in carbon emissions after the pandemic, this study analyzed the long-term relationship between the extreme events and carbon emissions since 1960, and short-term drivers

We exploit the provincial variability of COVID-19 cases registered in Italy to select the territorial predictors of the pandemic. Absent an established theoretical diffusion model, we apply machine learning to isolate, among 77 potential predictors, those that minimize the out-of-sample prediction error. We first estimate the model considering cumulative cases registered before the containment measures

Using European Central Bank restricted-access biannual data on European small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) over the period 2014–2017, we analyze the impact that innovation, financial constraints, and an efficient regulatory environment exert on the probability of switching from the status of nonexporter to exporter and vice versa. We find that either the use of finance for innovation or undertaking

After the 1980s, advanced capitalist economies witnessed a significant decline of the wage share in income. Along with the conventional view, which ascribes this decline to technological factors and international trade, another line of enquiry has endorsed a ‘political economy’ approach and identified several drivers of the wage share erosion. Yet, the role of persistent changes in unemployment has

This paper examines the impact of inward foreign direct investments (FDIs) on the industrialisation process in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Furthermore, the underlying analysis is investigated under consideration of the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) penetration. The paper uses a data sample from 47 countries from 1996 to 2017. Results indicate that FDIs negatively

Using data on more than 13000 European establishments over the 2009–2013 period, we analyze the relationship between discharge regulation and industrial actions. We empirically answer the question as whether stricter dismissal laws make EU establishments experience more frequent and intense industrial actions (work-to-rule, strikes and occupation). We find that a change from employment at-will to a

In this paper, we assess whether attracting higher amounts of FDI induces a greater level of economic complexity in a country. Using a panel of 117 countries and 22 years, from 1995 to 2016, we test for the causal relationship between inward FDI and economic complexity using a panel VAR approach and Impulse Response Functions. We find that accumulating a higher stock of inward FDI per capita Granger-causes

This study seeks to ascertain whether the Multi-Sectoral Balance of Payments Constrained Growth model is suitable to explain Nigeria's growth experience from 1981 to 2018. The paper explicitly incorporates the effects of intermediate imports and relative prices into the analysis. We employ the autoregressive distributed lag econometric procedure for the analysis. The outcome of the study shows that

Tourism appears as a catalyst for growth and development; however, recent studies have documented that this sector heavily depends on energy sector and as a consequence, entire tourism industry has been blamed for CO2 emissions. This study aims to investigate the impact of tourism develop, renewable energy and real GDP on CO2 emissions for G20 economies during the period of 1995-2015. In the presence

In 2002, Professor Luigi L. Pasinetti gave a keynote address at the Raffaele Mattioli Foundation and Library in honour of their acquisition of a rare third edition of François Quesnay’s Tableau Économique. This lecture subsequently appeared as a chapter in Italian in the conference volume edited by Giancarlo De Vivo in 2009. In honour of Luigi Pasinetti’s 90th birthday, Professor Coffman has offered

The drivers of wage growth in Europe are insufficiently understood. I argue that the institutional structure of labour markets – particularly labour market dualities – improve our understanding of the determinants of wage growth. This also helps to understand the period of a secular decline in wage growth after the crisis. Using data for the member states of the EU from Q1 2004 to Q4 2016, I demonstrate

This article explores the relationship between the introduction of Industry 4.0 automation systems, the organisation of the work process, and the implications for employment, skill composition, power relations, and workers’ intervention authority. We investigate the undergoing technological and organisational transformation in three high-tech automotive factories in Italy and we find that the push

This paper examines the uneven impact of the Great Recession on firm-level employment growth across firm size and age classes. Based on firm-level data from ten Eurozone countries, we show that, notwithstanding the negative impact of the crisis, young firms were the most dynamic group of firms and prime contributors to net job creation even during the recession. However, conditional on survival, young

This study investigates the time-varying determinants of Italian sovereign risk using a Markov-switching structural vector autoregression, estimated on 1990–2018 monthly data. Sign restrictions are used for identification, and allow macroeconomic fundamentals and confidence-related factors to be characterized as separate and regime-dependent drivers of risk. We show that the latter becomes relevant

While work within many industries increasingly involves competition and cooperation with workers in other countries, we show that national labor markets have not necessarily globalized very fast. This is because the most globally intertwined industries have tended to shed workers to less globally connected industries, creating a de-globalizing, between-industry countertrend. We characterize between-

We use geographical detectors to quantify the interactive influence of impact factors on gross domestic product (GDP) density changes on rural poverty, for identifying the differentiation mechanism in rural poverty. The optimal characteristics of the main factors that benefit GDP density growth were determined. We proposed poverty alleviation policies and measures for different types of poverty-stricken

An important question in alternative economic theories has to do with the relationship between the functional income distribution and the growth rate of labor productivity. According to both the induced innovation hypothesis and Marx-biased technical change, labor productivity growth should be an increasing function of the wage share. In this paper, we first discuss the shortcomings of both theories

The present study explores the important contributors of energy efficiency in OECD countries, by taking the energy intensity and carbon intensity as a proxy of energy efficiency. Notably, we study the role of three indicators of export diversification (export product diversification, extensive margin and intensive margin) for energy intensity and carbon intensity in 29 OECD countries, which further

Firms’ ability to compete in the global market crucially depends on their ability to innovate and to introduce new products or processes into the market. This typically requires more complex and structured business organization and ultimately the ability to grow. We use a representative panel of Italian manufacturing firms to investigate whether their pattern of growth entails such an ability. Although