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SARS-CoV-2 uses human beings as means of transport. In addition to the general issue that fewer interpersonal contacts reduce the speed of contagion, less attention has been paid to the spatial configuration of such contacts. With respect to Italy, the virus severely affected the most industrialized area of the country, where the high density of economic activities also exhibits dense networks of commuting flows. In this article, we empirically investigate the relationship between the spatial extent of local labour markets, as defined by the structure of the commuting network, and the diffusion of COVID-19. To this end, we compute, for each municipality, the intensive and extensive margins of commuting flows and we measure the spread of the disease by considering excess mortality over the period of January-May 2020. By exploiting a rich and novel dataset, we find that the commuting network played a significant role in placing more connected places at more severe epidemiological risk. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that if commuting patterns were 90% of the real ones, Italy would have suffered approximately 1 300 and 1 000 fewer fatalities in March and April, respectively.

How global warming affects human development is a central question for economists as well as social scientists. While most of the literature has focused on the impact of weather on income, less is known on the relationship between climate and local human development. This paper considers shocks in precipitation, temperature, and an original measure of soil aridity to first exploit the association between climate warming and human development, and second, on its dimensions. We show that while precipitations do not have a significant long-term impact on human development growth, variations in temperature and potential evapotranspiration negatively affect two of the three determinants of the Human Development Index, namely life expectancy at birth and education. These results suggest that other climate indicators, such as the potential evapo-transpiration of the soil, should be considered in addition to the standard indicators, when evaluating the localized economic effects of climate change.

In Italy, in 2011, the Superbollo tax was introduced for newly registered cars exceeding 225 kW (later reduced to 185 kW). Although the aim of the tax was not to decrease CO2 emissions but to increase government revenues in a time of economic crisis, we show that it had significant and unintended impacts on buyers’ behaviour. Using data related to vehicles registered between 2008 and 2017 and a difference-in-difference and regression discontinuity design (RDD) framework, we find that the Superbollo had an important role in reducing CO2 emissions and in increasing the share of cars with low CO2 emissions. In particular, we show that the introduction of the Superbollo has shifted consumers towards greener, though not necessarily less energy-intensive cars (e.g., battery electric cars), resulting in a reduction of CO2 emissions per kilometre driven by newly registered cars with engine power between 150 and 200 kW by an order of magnitude of 5–8% and a reduction of kW by 1–4%.

The aim of this short communication is to estimate the effects of the implementation of more restrictive lockdown measures on pollution levels in Italy. Using a time series of weekly concentrations of PM10, PM2.5 and NO2 for the period 2016–2020 across 71 provinces, we find that the introduction of lockdown measures reduced the air concentration levels of PM10 and NO2 by 17–18%, while their effect on PM2.5 remains unclear. These results indicate that the lockdown had a significant positive impact in terms of lives saved and improved air quality.

For many governments, enacting green policies is a priority, but such policies often impose on citizens substantial and uneven costs. How does the introduction of green policies affect voting? We study this question in the context of a major ban on polluting cars introduced in Milan, which was strongly opposed by the populist right party Lega. Using several inferential strategies, we show that owners of banned vehicles—who incurred a median loss of €3,750—were significantly more likely to vote for Lega in the subsequent elections. Our analysis indicates that this electoral change did not stem from a broader shift against environmentalism, but rather from disaffection with the policy’s uneven pocketbook implications. In line with this pattern, recipients of compensation from the local government were not more likely to switch to Lega. The findings highlight the central importance of distributive consequences in shaping the political ramifications of green policies.

We examine the effects of human-induced desertification on economic growth by exploiting a 56 km-by-56 km grid-cell global dataset on the annual frequency from 1990–2015. We find that areas that experienced large soil aridification are associated with a reduction in GDP per capita. Our results indicate that from 1990–2015, aridification reduced the GDPs of African and Asian countries by 12% and 2.7%, respectively. Our estimates are robust to adding higher-order terms of geo-climatic variables and controlling for country-specific linear trends, which allows us to project future costs of desertification. Our findings show that desertification will generate losses in GDP growth by 16% and 6.7% in Africa and Asia, respectively.

An increasing body of literature has found a positive and significant impact of airport activities on local economies. However, it is not clear whether this effect is driven by demand factors (passengers arriving and departing with their expenditure) or supply factors (accessibility provision for local firms). By considering the 2008 de-hubbing of Malpensa Airport as a natural experiment, we estimate the impact of a reduction in flight network connectivity on employment in the travel to work areas of Lombardia, Piemonte, Liguria and Emilia Romagna. The de-hubbing decision, in fact, permanently affected the intercontinental accessibility of the airport, with only a temporary effect in terms of passengers. We found that areas characterized by export-oriented sectors suffered from contraction in the degree of connectivity, which decreased as an effect, along with distance from the airport. No effect was found in urban areas and areas characterized by heavy industry sectors.

This article aims to analyse the effects of plague on the long‐term development of Italian cities, with particular attention to the 1629–30 epidemic. By using a new dataset on plague mortality rates in 56 cities covering the period c. 1575–1700, an economic geography model verifying the existence of multiple equilibria is estimated. It is found that cities severely affected by the 1629–30 plague were displaced to a lower growth path. It is also found that plague caused long‐lasting damage to the size of Italian urban populations and to urbanization rates. These findings support the hypothesis that seventeenth‐century plagues played a fundamental role in triggering the process of relative decline of the Italian economies.

The impact of European Cohesion Policy in urban and rural regions. Regional Studies. This paper presents an evaluation exercise on the impact of European Cohesion Policy on the economic performance of the most disadvantaged European areas (Objective 1 regions) for the programming period 2000–06. By performing the analysis at NUTS-3 rather than NUTS-2 level to exploit the exogeneity of the treatment status in the context of a regression discontinuity design (RDD), the analysis shows that European Cohesion funds have positively contributed to generating economic growth in lagging areas. However, their effect is mainly driven by the successful performance of rural areas close to the main urban agglomerates. Favourable geography and the progressive suburbanization of the rural landscape created new opportunities for rural areas close to cities, thus boosting the effect of the policy.

This paper investigates the institutional and socioeconomic determinants of the location of asylum seekers in the case of Italy, where a complex multilevel system of hosting has been established to address the pressure of arrivals. In this system, asylum seekers are allocated to local communities through periodic calls (i.e., with a bottom-up procedure where communities bid for them). This results in an interesting circumstance in which local attitudes can be studied in relation to cultural and political values and economic opportunities. The econometric analysis explores the economic, social and political drivers of such redistribution, finding that social capital is negatively related to the willingness to host asylum seekers, probably due to the desire to maintain cohesive communities.

In this article, we analyse the mechanisms of agenda setting by focusing on the determinants of individual attitudes towards crime and investigating the role played by the media. After a brief literature review supporting the relevance of the selected topic of inquiry and the presentation of our analytical framework, we study the persuasion effects of mass media. More specifically, we investigate how TV exposure can shape individual perceptions of specific issues such as crime, and then focus on the effects of exposure to crime news on voting decisions. Using the Italian 2001 general election as an important case study of TV power concentration, we provide evidence that media-induced agenda setting enhanced the salience of the crime issue in voters’ minds during the 2001 Italian general election and contributed to the victory of the coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi. Interestingly, our results are partially driven by the switch of previous left-wing voters to voting for the centre right because of exposure to crime news.

type="main" xml:lang="es"> En los ultimos anos, un creciente cuerpo de literatura ha comenzado a considerar la posible presencia de una dependencia de la trayectoria en los procesos de desarrollo de los paises. Este fenomeno siempre ha sido reconocido en los estudios regionales y urbanos, porque la trayectoria del desarrollo sigue casi de manera natural una difusion espacial dependiente de la historia e influida por la geografia fisica y la calidad de las instituciones. En este articulo, considero el caso de la concentracion de empresas y empleo en Italia, y su impacto en el desarrollo local. Una literatura copiosa, y en aumento, ha argumentado a favor de los efectos persistentes de las instituciones del pasado sobre los resultados actuales. Por lo tanto, con el fin de identificar el impacto de la densidad de empresas y empleo en los ingresos, he empleado instrumentos de la historia de un conjunto de ciudades italianas: a saber, la presencia de una universidad y su estatus como ciudades-estado independientes durante la Alta Edad Media. En primer lugar demuestro que esas dos variables tuvieron un efecto importante en el proceso de desarrollo urbano entre 1300 y 1861, junto con una serie de condiciones geograficas favorables. A continuacion, cuando empleo estos instrumentos para predecir la densidad de empresas y empleo, encuentro que la elasticidad de los ingresos de las empresas y el empleo se halla en un intervalo de 0,08 a 0,13. Este resultado se interpreta como un aporte de pruebas de la existencia de raices historicas de las economias de aglomeracion en Italia.

Impact of European Cohesion Policy on regional growth: does local economic structure matter? Regional Studies. A growing body of literature has analysed the effect of European Cohesion Policy on regional gross domestic product (GDP) growth. The paper contributes to this literature by discussing Structural Funds and assigning an explicit role to the choice of strategy and the economic structure of regions. In particular, adopting a regression discontinuity design with heterogeneous treatment and using data on NUTS-3 regions makes it possible to identify the causal impact of Structural Funds on regional growth according to the size of the service sector, a sector that accounts for a large share of total Structural Funds expenditure. The paper shows that the larger the sector, the greater the amount of financial resources directed to services and the slower is growth. The interpretation pertaining to policy implications is that higher growth rates can be obtained by promoting the service sector at its early stages, i.e., when it is comparatively small and its potential for productivity growth is higher.

Percoco M. Health shocks and human capital accumulation: the case of Spanish flu in Italian regions, Regional Studies. The impact of health on economic development is a hotly debated issue in the economics literature, with most scholars supporting the idea that the diffusion of diseases is detrimental to development. In this context, pandemics are an important case study given their exogenous nature, which makes identification of the impact of diseases on development clearer than in other cases such as malaria or smallpox. This paper focuses on Spanish flu in Italy, one of the countries with the highest mortality rate due to the pandemic. By exploiting the regional variation in mortality and focusing on the hypothesis of the foetal origins of cognitive abilities, the long-run consequences of influenza exposure in terms of human capital accumulation are estimated. An average reduction of 0.3–0.4 years of schooling for the cohort born in 1918–20 is found. This result points to a small but persisting effect of health shocks on regional productivity through a variation in the rate of accumulation of human capital.

In this note we discuss the sensitivity analysis of the internal rates of return (IRR). We show that the use of partial derivatives can be misleading in the identification of key drivers of an investment project's performance. To remedy this shortcoming, we propose the use of an alternative sensitivity measure called the Differential Importance Measure. The analysis shows that, even if the theoretical conditions for using the Net Present Value or the IRR as valuation criteria apply, the sensitivity analysis results for the two indicators may differ.

Multilevel governance is widely recognized as one of the striking features of local development policy implementation and management. In Lombardia, Italy, this framework has been applied in the context of European Regional Development Fund actions in order to increase the number and quality of projects. As a consequence the governance of regional development policies now has new meta-actors: the Programmi Integrati per lo Sviluppo Locale (PISL) aimed at promoting and soliciting projects to be submitted for funding by the regional government. In this paper we evaluate the impact of this new governance structure by estimating a discrete choice model over a sample of more than 6000 projects submitted for funding to the Regional Government of Lombardia. We find that projects within the context of the PISL have a slightly greater probability of being funded, although we cannot exclude the existence of adverse selection because we also find that those projects are, on average, of lower quality from a purely formal viewpoint. We finally argue in favour of this new governance structure, even though we identify some critical points to be addressed in the next planning period in order to enhance the effectiveness of development policies.

With the 2004 enlargement to the East, the EU regional growth process can no longer be seen in the frame of the traditional core–periphery pattern. This is why this article proposes an innovative methodology to endogenously detect convergence clubs while accounting for spatial autocorrelation across regions. Our model is estimated on 244 EU25 regions over 1991–2003. Our results indicate that four distinctive clubs are present in our sample. In addition, the model we use does not rely on the traditional neoclassical model but on Verdoorn's law, which allows us to account for the presence of increasing returns to scale. Our conclusions give new insights for policy makers interested in convergence and regional policies developed to promote it.

Social capital has remained relatively underexplored in innovation literature due to the lack of consensus on the most suitable operationalisation for the analysis of innovative dynamics. This paper aims to fill this gap by looking at social capital as propensity towards civicness and prosocial behaviour that facilitates the circulation of nonredundant knowledge among otherwise disconnected groups. The quantitative analysis of the innovative performance of Italian provinces shows that social capital—proxied by blood donations and participation into voluntary associations—is an important predictor of innovative performance after controlling for ‘traditional’ knowledge inputs (R & D and human capital). In addition, instrumental variable analysis makes it possible to identify clear causal links between social capital and innovation, suggesting that social norms play an important role in shaping the incentives for knowledge generation, circulation, and accumulation. Keywords: innovation, social capital, knowledge transfer, regional development

Existing studies have failed to reach a consensus on the impact of social capital on local innovative performance: some empirical analyses emphasize a positive effect while others speak about a ‘dark side’ of social capital. This chapter aims to shed new light on the differential role of ‘bonding’ and ‘bridging’ social capital in innovation dynamics. The spatial economic analysis of the innovative performance of the Italian provinces suggests that social capital is an important predictor of innovative performance. However, only ‘bridging’ social capital-based on weak ties-can be identified as a relevant driver of the process of innovation while ‘bonding’ social capital is shown to be non-significant for innovation.

A wealth of literature has focused on the effectiveness of cohesion policy for regional development. However, most studies have neglected the heterogeneous nature of such interventions. In this article, we study such heterogeneity by identifying different development strategies put in place by regional governments. In particular, by using expenditure allocation by region and by item over the period 2000–2006, we identify regions with similar development strategies. Moreover, we find that policy performance is not correlated to the strategy chosen, rather it depends on the country to which the region belongs. Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.

Social capital has remained relatively underexplored in innovation literature. Existing studies have failed to reach a consensus on its impact on local innovative performance: some empirical analyses emphasize a positive effect, others speak about a ‘dark side’ of social capital. This paper aims to fill this gap by shedding new light on the differential role of ‘bonding’ and ‘bridging’ social capital. The quantitative analysis of the innovative performance of the Italian provinces shows that social capital is an important predictor of innovative performance after controlling for ‘traditional’ knowledge inputs (R&D investments and human capital endowment) and other characteristics of the local economy. However, only ‘bridging’ social capital – based on weak ties – can be identified as the key driver of the process of innovation while ‘bonding’ social capital is shown to be negative for innovation. Instrumental variable analysis makes it possible to identify clear causal links between bridging (positive) and bonding (negative) social capital and innovation.

Geography has long been considered as a fundamental prerequisite for economic development and growth. In recent years, a growing number of papers have considered the role of physical geography as a determinant of regional growth and development by considering it as a source of “intrinsic advantage”. Malaria is considered to be strictly related to poverty and its geographically-related origin is now widely recognized, i.e. it is endemic only in certain areas of the globe whose environmental and climatic characteristics are ideal for the proliferation of mosquitoes which are the vector for the transmission of the disease. The World Health Organization is currently setting a series of policies aiming to eradicate the disease from Africa, with the specific goals to preserve human lives and possibly to boost economic growth in those areas. Among the several malaria parasites, the worst, Plasmodium falciparum, has infested Italian regions for centuries until the complete eradication occurred in the period 1945-1950. In this paper I provide an empirical assessment of the economic outcomes of malaria eradication in Italian regions. By making use of both macroeconomic and microeconomic data, I found support to the hypothesis that malaria eradication boosts productivity growth and that in the long run it leads to an increase in human capital. In particular, I found that the presence of malaria reduced significantly regional growth over the period 1891-1961, while its eradication increased the years of schooling for both males and females respectively, although my evidence points at a larger support for a very long run impact of eradication actions through an intergenerational spillover effect.

In recent years a growing body of literature has begun to consider the possible presence of path dependence in the development processes of countries. This phenomenon has always been recognized in regional and urban studies because the path of development almost naturally follows a history-dependent spatial diffusion influenced by both physical geography and the quality of institutions. In this paper, I consider the case of firm concentration in Italy and its impact on local development. A large and growing literature has argued in favour of persisting effects of past institutions on current outcomes. Hence, in order to identify the impact of firm density on income, I use instruments from the history of a set of Italian cities: namely the presence of a university and status as a free-city state in the Early Middle Ages. I first show that those two variables had an important effect on the process of urban development between 1300 and 1861, together with favourable geographic conditions. Then, when I use these instruments to predict firm density, I find that the elasticity of income to firm density is close to 0.1. This result is interpreted as providing evidence of the historical roots of agglomeration economies in Italy.

The paper analyses the role of Port Authorities as cluster managers able to generate resources for investments with benefits for the intermodal transport chain as a whole. Assessment is made of Port Authority initiatives to foster the development of intermodality and the creation of dry ports. The framework proposed is then applied to the case of the Ligurian ports, which compete less as individual structures than as nodal points within integrated logistic chains. We argue that the integration of the land logistic interface may prove beneficial to the Ligurian ports, and that this can be achieved only if the Port Authorities act as cluster managers.

The paper reviews urban transport policies in Italian cities and their impact on the concentration of NO2 and PM10. Using parametric and non-parametric techniques, it finds no significant effect of the policy actions currently implemented. Further, it finds evidence of a weak positive impact of plans adoption. These results are interpreted as evidence of positive externalities among actions. Finally, by also discussing case studies, the paper points out the absence of economic instruments and argues that significant welfare gains would derive from their adoption.

The paper examines the role of demography on the growth perspectives of European metropolitan areas. Our findings are in support of the key role played by the demographic structure of the population in determining the economic prospects of European cities. Regions and cities with higher levels of dependency ratios are found to show lower growth rates, in the long run. This evidence supports earlier findings on the relevance of population age on both aggregate productivity changes and the human capital stock of the local labour force.

The choice of an appropriate social rate of discount is critical in the decision-making process on public investments. In this paper we review concisely the literature on social discounting and refer explicitly to a recently growing field of related research, that is, individual time preference. The consideration and analysis of behavioural factors of individuals in the definition and use of an appropriate social discount rate are critical for balanced decision-making, for example, in the field of environmental policy. The empirical literature shows quite some variation in the estimated values of individual discount rates. Therefore, we present results from a meta-analysis conducted over more than 40 experimental and field studies reporting individual discount rate estimates. We find that the experimental design of a study has a great impact on these estimates and conclude that our meta-regression function has a low transfer value.

This paper aims at providing empirical evidence of the impact of Structural Funds on the economies of Italian Objective 1 Regions (the "Mezzogiorno"). In particular, we consider the effect in terms of economic growth of the 1994-1999 Community Support Framework by using a simple supply-side model estimated with a panel of regional data over the period 1970- 1994. We find a high volatility in the level of growth rates induced by Structural Funds expenditure in six Southern regions (namely, Molise, Campania, Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria and Sardinia).

Following the seminal work by Bullard and Sebald [Effects of Parametric Uncertainty and Technological Change on In put-Out put Models, Rev. of Ec. And Stat., vol. 59,75-81], in this paper we present an innovative approach to sensitivity analysis in Input-Out put model. In particular, we propose a statistical model capable to compute a sensitivity index associated to each technical coefficient. We call the ordered set of these indices Importance Matrix. Finally, in order to show a simple example for this methodology, we consider the case of the Chicago economy. Keywords: Input-Out put Models, Sensitivity Analysis, Importance Matrix JEL Classification: C15, C67, D5

The aim of this paper is to present an alternative methodology for discounting far distant future externalities generated by an investment project; time-declining discount rates. First I present the experimental evidence on Individuals' time-inconsistency. Second I consider the theoretical justification for using hyperbolic discounting in a simple uncertainty framework where marginal social utility is discounted hyperbolically if the investing Government believes that social wealth might increase or decrease over future period with a small probability that wealth will deteriorate below its current level.

In this paper we apply a moment-independent sensitivity analysis technique to the Inoperability Input-Output Model to identify the most effective preparedness strategies.

City distribution plays a key role in supporting urban lifestyles, helping to serve and retain industrial and trading activities, and contributing to the competitiveness of regional industry. Despite these positive effects, it also generates negative (economic, environmental and social) impacts on cities worldwide. Relatively little attention has been paid to these issues by researchers and policymakers until recently. The analyses found in City Distribution and Urban Freight Transport aim to improve knowledge in this important area by recognizing and evaluating the problems, with a focus on urban freight transport systems.