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This paper measures technical efficiency in local public transport industry by estimating stochastic efficiency frontier of the cost function. After proposing some data concerning the great importance of local transportation systems in Italy, I apply efficiency estimation techniques to a cross section of 99 State owned firms. A bad degree of cost efficiency is found. Finally, I propose a regulating mechanism by efficiency incentives to minimise costs.

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 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.

Analysis of convergence has centered on movement of indices such as per capita incomes or welfare for countries or regions within countries. In this paper, the analysis focuses on the structure of economies in terms of the distribution of production across sectors and explores the implications of convergence of structure for a subset of EU countries. To assist in the exploration, some new methodology is introduced, based on the notion of a field of influence of change. A set of sensitivity indices and an associated importance matrix are constructed for a set of intercountry input-output tables. The results find that sectors at the European level are become more similar than the national economies as a whole.