Suchergebnisse

The economic recession that followed the 2007 crisis has widened the economic gaps between the wealthiest and the relatively poorer regions in Italy. The Great Recession has changed the importance of local economic strengths and hindered the possibilities of economic recovery, especially in the Mezzogiorno of Italy. We seek the local strengths present in Italian regions in the post‐crisis period by comparing two macro areas to observe strong and weak points for intervention. A first analysis using multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) is used to filter the relevant determinants in a large dataset, and a panel data analysis serves to obtain group‐specific results. Some effects of the prolonged recession are confirmed in all regions, while some weaknesses of the South, such as financial markets, play an increasing role in the regional development scenarios.

In this essay, the essential aspects of Welfare Economics are summarized in order to analyse the possible links with Ethics, and consequently to provide useful suggestions for Economic Policy. The Introduction contains the principles of neoclassical Welfare Economics, without considering the circumstances in which the so‑called failures of competitive markets occur. The second part of this paper contains a description of two possible solutions to the problem concerning the integration of Welfare Economics and Ethics. The first solution is the determination of the optimal combination of general competitive equilibrium principles and social ethics ones, without removing the theoretical structure of Welfare Economics. This first proposal, while retaining some economic liberalism principles, assigns a central role to the government, which is delegated to superimpose on the Pareto criterion a distributive justice rule. Another solution, which is suggested by Sen, is essentially directed to modify Welfare Economics by ethical criteria aimed at improving every individual deprivation, and it is based on the distinction between the two concepts of 'utility' and 'agency'. We also proposed exploiting the original considerations written by Smith about social aspects as a useful integration and support to Sen's approach.

AbstractSchool dropout limits the development of human capital, and despite the achievement of a third level degree being a common practice in western economies, the dropout at the secondary level is still a relatively widespread phenomenon in Italy. The household support to young people is relevant in influencing young people's educational opportunities, but nevertheless, this support sometimes is lacking in a country that has historically attributed little importance to advanced education. In Italy, the scarcity of school‐related support mechanisms is one of the causes of a dropout rate of more than 15% after the first year of upper secondary school in some regions. We suggest that another support may be necessary in society, and it could be integrated with family support. We test whether three different forms of social capital can counteract the dropout of young Italians considering regional data and using fixed and random effects models and a two‐stage least squares approach for Centre–North and South Italy. The results suggest that social capital does not function as a mechanism to counteract dropout in Italy, while the family's cultural‐economic background plays an important role, mainly in the Centre–North.

AbstractOur article presents an empirical investigation of the relationship between the export performance of Italian provinces and the quality of their local institutions, specifically the rule of law, over the period 2004–2016. According to the results obtained by different econometric approaches (OLS, FE, SYS-GMM), in general a secure and well-defined legal framework – by reducing transaction costs and uncertainty, facilitating capital accumulation and an increase in the firms' scale of production – is associated with better export performance. Interestingly, when the analysis is replicated at the level of the Italian macro-areas (North, Centre and South), the results indicate that the rule of law has a statistically significant and positive association with export performance only in northern provinces, thus suggesting that the effectiveness of this institutional dimension might depend on the level of development of the socioeconomic and institutional features at the local level, i.e. only when a set of suitable economic incentive mechanisms are already in place.