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We conducted a discrete‐choice conjoint analysis on a sample of residents in Italy to explore trade‐offs between human lives, individual freedoms, and the economy that governments and their citizens face while coping with a public health crisis. Our results indicate that people prefer to avoid income losses over reduction in the number of victims by the same percentage. The relative preference for saving income over saving lives widens as the size of losses at stake increases. The duration of restrictions to individual freedoms per se does not appear to have a sizable impact on people's preferences once income and human losses are accounted for. Our study contributes to scholarship on the value of a statistical life and sheds light on morally problematic trade‐offs. Further, we illustrate how conjoint analysis through discrete choice modeling can address public administration and policy issues that are inherently multidimensional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present new wage indices for skilled and unskilled construction workers in Italy. Our data avoid multiple issues pestering earlier wages, making our new indices the first consistent ones for early-modern Italy. Our improved wages, obtained from the St. Peter's Church in Rome, consolidate the view that urban Italy began a prolonged downturn during the seventeenth century. They also offer sustenance to the idea that epidemics instigated the decline. Comparison with new construction wages for London shows that Roman workers outearned their early-modern English counterparts. This suggests that high wages alone were not enough to trigger industrialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates media representations of the European financial crisis in Greece and Italy. We study the Euro crisis as an 'emergency situation' with domino effects, where media played a central role in shaping communication practices at the national level as well as between the two countries. Drawing upon vertical and horizontal dynamics of Europeanization, we map the convergences and divergences in media discourses that surround the period 2011–2015. In doing so, we elaborate a qualitative analysis of newspaper articles focusing, in particular, on the themes of austerity and the fragmentation of Europe. Our argument suggests that national public spheres in times of transnational crisis become increasingly nationalized; yet under certain circumstances such as when the supranational infrastructure is the target of blame, they converge, opening the path toward a transnational discursive dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social frailty is a warring phenomenon in Europe, negatively impacting children's health and nutrition. We present the results of a social programme facilitating access to physical activities for vulnerable children in Italy. 311 school-age children enrolled in the programme between 2015 and 2017 were assessed for health and lifestyle, anthropometric and nutritional status. Data were compared by origin (Italians vs. immigrants) and then immigrants were split into sub-groups: first- and second-generation. Poor socio-economic status exposed children to a lack of access to health services, and drove imbalanced eating behaviour. 20.8% of children were not registered with the National Health Services (immigrants p < .0001); 22% were not fully vaccinated (no differences between groups). A double burden of malnutrition coexisted: overweight was higher for Italians, underweight and poor linear growth for immigrants. Nearly 40% of children had a poor Mediterranean Diet adequacy (KIDMED index). Our findings show that when social programmes, besides their main scope of inclusion and integration, holistically approach their beneficiaries, they can play an important role in monitoring lifestyle conditions and facilitating access to primary health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do ownership networks among business enterprises evolve over time? What roles do corporate governance reforms and privatization programs play in shaping the structural characteristics of these networks? This article addresses these questions by leveraging on small-world analysis techniques applied to the ownership networks among Italian enterprises in 1990 and 2000. Italy underwent a significant program of privatizations over the decade under study, coupled with changes in the corporate law aimed at strengthening the defense of minority shareholders. The data show signs of significant fragmentation of the overall network, but at the same time of stability in the structure of its main component, as measured by small-world coefficients. Further, the role of the key players in the network seems to remain relatively stable despite the major turbulence at the institutional level as well as in the structural characteristics of the complete network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a framework based on microdata and a structural model to gauge credit risk in banks' exposures to non‐financial firms. Sectoral risk factors are accounted for using a multi‐factor model. We use expected and unexpected losses as indicators of credit risk stemming from the corporate sector as a whole, and we put forward a measure of systemic risk relevance of economic sectors. We apply the model to the Italian economy, showing the sensitivity of credit risk indicators to different characteristics of default risk, cyclicality and concentration of economic sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We construct comparable measures of intergenerational mobility (IM) for 103 Italian provinces using the methodology of Güell et al. (2007, 2015a) and explore their correlation with a variety of social and economic outcomes. We find that higher IM is positively associated with economic activity, education and social capital and negatively correlated with inequality. Moreover, there is no clear pattern of correlation with other socio‐political variables. These results are qualitatively similar to Chetty et al. (2014), with the important difference that Italy is a highly centralised state where institutions and policies are ‘de jure’ the same in all provinces. This suggests that something beyond institutional and policy differences also shapes intergenerational mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes advantage of a newly available survey on the Italian industry to analyze the behavior of global value chains (GVCs) in the aftermath of the Great Recession. We design a comprehensive taxonomy of GVC participation modes and explore their impact on firms' innovativeness and performance. Our findings highlight relevant heterogeneities in how GVC participants fared the crisis. While high-skill relational suppliers display a significant propensity to engage in innovative activities and R&D projects, other modes of GVC participation have no premium compared to domestic companies. This heterogeneity is also reflected in differential productivity and sales growth. Compared to the precrisis trends, we document a severe demand shock for low-skill and subordinated firms, while relational GVCs appear to be somewhat sheltered from the effects of the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of sound evidence-based entrepreneurial potential assessment tools is particularly recommended to foster entrepreneurship and to evaluate specific entrepreneurial training initiatives in schools and universities. The present study is aimed at examining construct, convergent and discriminant validity of the Attitude Toward Enterprise test (ATE test) in Italy. Configural and measurement invariance were conducted for testing construct validity using Structural Equation Modeling on three groups of students: high school; university undergraduate; and university postgraduate. Correlational and reliability analyses were conducted to test convergent, discriminant and consistency of the scale. Results show that the Italian version of the scale is a valuable tool for research and practical purposes in Italy. Limitations and suggestions for further research are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The marble mining is very important for the Italian economy and has important traditions, especially in some areas. Among these, there is the area of the Dolomites in Val Venosta, located in Trentino, one of the North-East Italian regions. In many cases, these quarries are very old and often are located in areas with high natural value. This work regards two quarries, which are located within an important national park. The need to reduce the environmental effects related to the traffic of trucks used for the transport of marble from the quarries to the processing plants has led us to make assessments on the methodology to apply. This paper presents the methodological approach identified to determine the best technical solution among several alternatives regarding the transport of marble. The validation of the methodology has its natural outlet in the application to a real case, subject of another article. Some considerations on the replicability of the approach are included too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent economic crisis has brought into focus how even open and highly interdependent economies in the European Union try to govern their economies according to territorially defined interests. The aim of this article is to examine an area, online gambling, with the technological and legal conditions that challenge approaches that favour economic patriotism. The article compares two cases, the United Kingdom and Italy, that represent two different models of economic governance to argue that they are similar in which interests they seek to protect and at which level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we develop a data-driven hierarchical clustering methodology to group the economic sectors of a country in order to highlight strongly coupled groups that are weakly coupled with other groups. Specifically, we consider an input-output representation of the coupling among the sectors and we interpret the relation among sectors as a directed graph; then we recursively apply the spectral clustering methodology over the graph, without a priori information on the number of groups that have to be obtained. In order to do this, we resort to the eigengap criterion, where a suitable number of groups is selected automatically based on the intensity and structure of the coupling among the sectors. We validate the proposed methodology considering a case study for Italy, inspecting how the coupling among clusters and sectors changes from the year 1995 to 2011, showing that in the years the Italian structure underwent deep changes, becoming more and more interdependent, i.e., a large part of the economy has become tightly coupled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A long-standing stance argues the Italian industrial system does not comply with the 'correct development process' because of its innovativeness shortage due to the skewed firm size distribution of its SMEs (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises). Such an approach, backed by innovation statistics, stems from the idea that 'a firm's growth equals innovation, which in turn equals competitiveness'. Yet these arguments both rely on a narrow concept of innovation and fail to match with historical facts. By putting the Italian industrial history into a Langlois's (2003) perspective, this article suggests that 'the Italian exception' actually represents one among several possible outcomes of the co-evolution among knowledge, technological progress, institutional development and aggregate demand dynamics. We further provide an analysis with very recent descriptive statistics showing that, even during the current crisis, 'not so big' has not meant 'not so competitive'. Therefore, innovativeness must be channeled in the right direction, because it concerns all those strategies allowing firms to 'buffer risks'. What the Italian industrial system really lacks is consistent institutional and structural policies facilitating firms' efforts toward new technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 1990s the political economies of Italy and Greece had many characteristics in common that could be expected to contribute to path-dependant resistance to labour market reform. This paper examines the attempts at reform in the two countries during the decade and the factors that contributed to their significantly different outcomes. It argues that the political and economic crises facing Italy triggered an alteration in the orientation of interests and practices of key actors, the new direction being largely defined by the effects of Europeanization. In Greece, by contrast, the absence of path-altering factors reinforced the status quo and thus resulted in stalemate for years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests the use of statistical analysis, based on revenue data, to measure institutional diversity. The financial statements of universities in Italy and in England are thoroughly examined in order to emphasize the levels of diversity within these two different university systems; to understand the causes of the variations; and to verify, from a longitudinal perspective, the behaviour of the universities in terms of differentiation. The aim of this paper is mainly methodological; that is, to demonstrate the potential of revenue data analysis for investigating institutional diversity. For exploratory purposes, this paper will also introduce additional considerations to the ongoing debate on institutional diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of the ‘ low-learning scar ’ is borrowed from recent labour economics literature in which concepts such as ‘ unemployment scarring ’ , ‘ wage scarring ’ and ‘ scarred generation ’ are increasingly used for the interpretation of problems (the NEETs problem, for instance) which presently plague all Western economies/societies, especially those within the Mediterranean area. In this article, the ‘ scar ’ is observed in a 15-person sample of Italian low-skilled adults, aged 25 – 41 years, interviewed regarding events which affected their lives, starting from their abandonment of the educational path soon after the lower middle school level. These events significantly impacted nearly all of the interviewee ’ s pursuit of employment, successful or not, and influenced their own concerns, projects and life practices. For most, coping with the low-learning scar required high levels of resilience in order to rise above difficult living conditions and devise appropriate personal strategies, particularly those regarding adult education. ‘ Resilience ’ is not defined here as resistance to or recovery from unfavourable situations, but as a higher level adult meta-competence, a ‘ reflexive resilience ’ applied to life strategies. In particular, the research demonstrates the importance of reflexive resilience in fostering and governing the personal drive towards the development of competency, as well as the need for formal and informal learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a characterization of an aggregate measure of growth that takes into account the initial economic conditions of individuals. Our measure is a weighted average of individuals' income growth with weights that are decreasing with the rank of the individual in the initial income distribution. We apply our theoretical framework to evaluate the growth processes experienced by the Italian population. Even when we correct for the differences in mean income growth, and focus on the distribution of growth only, the 2008-2010 growth process was the worst of the last decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study evaluates the effectiveness of a major Italian place-based policy (Contratti di Programma), by means of which the state approves and finances investment projects proposed by private firms. Using the areas to be exposed to the same policy at a later date as counterfactuals, the study finds little evidence of it having had a positive effect. It estimates a limited impact on plant and employment growth rates, which is confined to a small area (a single municipality) and likely crowds out the economic growth of the surrounding areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]