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Sustainable development is increasingly recognized for its reliance on grassroots, bottom-up practices embedded in local communities. The economic literature has tested various influencing factors on household behaviors, such as culture or social cohesion, often considering proxies of so-called "intangible capitals" separately. This article aims to jointly consider the pivotal role of three of these potential capitals that could have a trigger effect on pro-environmental behaviors, specifically, social capital (sc), human capital (hc), and institutional quality (iq). In particular, our study, by adopting a PVAR approach, analyzes if and to what extent sc, hc, and iq influence the priority goal of increasing waste-sorting practices in the 20 Italian regions. Additionally, rooted in a robust theoretical framework, we present an in-depth analysis, with the trend of impulses from statistically significant variables—having observed the important roles played by hc, sc, and particularly iq, as well as the control variables GDP per capita and population density—in increasing the percentage of waste sorting. This impulse analysis suggests for policy interventions that there would be immediate effects (1–2 years) due to the improvement of our intangible capitals, but also a short duration. This suggests the need for lasting and structural interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Italy has the highest rate of individuals Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET) in Europe, and its NEET has the highest gender bias in Western Europe. A marked heterogeneity, however, accompanies the age sub-groups, and women's conditions become systematically worse with advancing age. Using data from 2019, we investigate the association between the probability of being NEET and a set of individual and regional (socioeconomic and institutional) characteristics, examining whether and to what extent the role of these determinants varies depending on gender within two distinct age groups: young (15–24) and adult (25–34) NEETs. In general, we find clear evidence that women are at a relative disadvantage compared to men and, as age increases, both positive and negative determinants show relations that tend to weaken for men and to worsen for women. The results of our analyses also suggest that social/family obligations affect men and women differently, to the detriment of women, and that this disparity widens with age. The contrast between the position of men and women within marriage is empirically confirmed and perfectly captured by marginal effects with opposite signs. The policy implications of our analysis are discussed in the concluding section of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internal migration in Italy has been characterised by deep changes in its composition, because of the growing share of high-skilled migrants (the emigration of which contributes to widening the internal brain drain) and the decreasing proportion of low-skilled migrants. Furthermore, recent interest in the literature in the role played by noneconomic elements in affecting migration decisions has highlighted the importance of a nonpecuniary factor, namely social capital (SC). For these reasons, this paper empirically investigates the role played by SC in interprovincial selective migration, considering migrants according to two education levels using data on 103 Italian provinces (2004–2012). The main findings reveal that provincial SC mainly contributes to reducing the migration flows of low-skilled individuals, albeit while also deterring the emigration of high-skilled individuals. Control variables confirm that better income conditions represent an important determinant of high-skilled migrants most likely because they seek to earn more, while better socioeconomic conditions such as labour market efficiency mostly influence those with a lower level of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The local source for competitiveness is vital to achieve static and dynamic economies of scale for firms; it is useful to interact with the aim of learning and innovating. The local system can create benefit by opening to international markets and it should be a good source of knowledge and technology. Nowadays, the concept of industrial district, usually characterized by the spatial proximity of the involved firms, may evolve into firms network; this may emphasize the advantages deriving from cooperation, without the need of spatial proximity. Firms networks may represent the evolution of industrial districts, where territoriality is overcome by the dissolution of borders. The importance of firms networks is increased since they intensify information exchange, continuous learning, stimulate economies of scale, allow economic development and give more market opportunities. Firms networks share different aims, resource, common interests and factors, like material and immaterial inputs and outputs. This new form of cooperation may allow to overcome physical distance and replicate knowledge and information. Firms networks may represent a success organizational forms that may give impetus to development in an economy. They are based on mutual trust between partners and are created over time to facilitate information circulation, knowledge dissemination and innovation. Trust reduces uncertainty and transaction cost and limits the opportunistic behaviour by free-rider agents. The aim of the paper is to assess the determinants for firms networks training in the Italian context using regional data. Particularly, the firms networks development needs key factors such as ICTs diffusion, high rate of social security, open capability, RxD activities. These factor constitute the basis for a new kind of capital, the so called “network capital”. It consists of collaborative practices in a network as the result of cooperation in the ICTs era. Network capital may be considered as social capital evolution in a globalized context. The entrance in the knowledge economy era, in which technological advancement runs very quickly and the pace of innovation is intensified, significantly reduces the exploitation of competitive advantages. Industrial districts, therefore, should develop, improve and change their shape in a new competitive environment, where the globalization of markets cancels the boundaries of many firms that collaborate beyond national boundaries. The paper analyzes the firms networks determinant for Italian regions and the role of network capital as pre-condition for their development. The multidimensional scaling analysis it the chosen methodology that allows us to identify the relations among Italian regions in terms of proximity/distance with respect to considered determinants, and to provide a spatial representation of them.

The international economic crisis of 2007 has had long-lasting negative effects on the financial markets and the real economy of many countries. The occurred uncertainty and the complications of the balance sheets of many banks, due to the strong international connections, particularly impacted on the ability and willingness of financial market, on granting credit to consumer households and companies. Credit, and the financial system in general, represent according to the economic literature, one of the determinants of economic development and, particularly, its efficiency determines the speed of growth and the potential level. The difficulties in the transmission of monetary policy and the structural inefficiency have worsened the negative effects of the economic crisis in many European countries, including Italy, where large differences in the socio-economic context of the various macro-areas still persist. The role of banks is to exploit tools and knowledge to the best addressing of funds, by subjects in excess to those in deficit, or towards who may exploit them for productive purposes. In addition, banks are locally a guidance to entrepreneurs and an entity aware of the local needs and potentials. In this paper we combine several variables on the credit and the quality of banking contracts, in addition to real economic and R&D variables, with reference to the Italian regions. The aim is to identify structural differences among the Italian regions in terms of financial and economic development, and in addition to observe the discrepancy between the various macro areas, even considering the effects of the international financial crisis broken out in the U.S. in 2007. We consider data over sufficiently long periods before and after the advent of the crisis and the long subsequent period of economic recession. The detail of the analysis is regional, in order to have a sufficient number of contexts that are grouped into homogeneous groups, helping to clarify and explain the dynamics of the socioeconomic differences that still exist. We use a Multidimensional scaling analysis with the aim of exploring the relationship between credit and socioeconomic development in the different Italian areas, observing in particular the structural differences that could lead to a deeper distance of the wellbeing of the poorest regions in the South compared to that of North-central.

The granting of credit, whose excessive diffusion was one of the causes of the economic and financial crisis of 2007, has suffered profound changes during the following period of economic recession. The granting of credit to households and businesses has been strongly influenced by the effects of the economic downturn, the banks’ choices and the intervention of the supervisory authorities. The credit, however, is also an instrument of monetary policy through which governments and central banks try to stimulate the economic growth. There are, nevertheless, several and complex limitations to the actions of banks and other financial intermediaries, information asymmetries and structural limits of the credit market. Should also be considered that in many Countries the economic recession had a strong influence on the choices and opportunities for all economic agents, making it difficult to lay the foundations for economic recovery. In the previous years, the lowering of standards of borrowers and the presence of low interest rates, setting the conditions for the so-called housing bubble. The subsequent reactions, the general worsening of the economy, the lack of funding and liquidity, in addition to the strict rules imposed by the supervisory authorities, have led banks to tighten securely controls on the characteristics of borrowers, being also obliged to put more attention on the composition of the balance sheet. Under these conditions, have risen subjects that do not meet the requirements to receive funding, and at the same time increased the difficulty to repay loans and interest. In this paper a multidimensional scaling analysis is used to observe the situation of credit in the Italian regions before and after the outbreak of the crisis, considering the average values for nine variables and for two different period, before and after 2007. Searching for dissimilarity between areas of the Country, is highlighted a clear separation before the crisis and remained essentially unchanged between northern and southern regions. Furthermore the analysis of time series showed that the granting of credit has declined slightly, but above all has changed destination, from productive purposes and investments, to support consumption.

The traditional analysis of unemployment in relation to real output dynamics is based on some empirical evidences deducted from Okun’s studies. In particular the so called Okun’s Law is expressed in a linear mathematical formulation, which cannot explain the fluctuation of the variables involved. Linearity is an heavy limit for macroeconomic analysis and especially for every economic growth study which would consider the unemployment rate among the endogenous variables. This paper deals with an introductive study about the role of non-linearity in the investigation of unemployment dynamics. The main idea is the existence of a non-linear relation between the unemployment rate and the gap of GDP growth rate from its trend. The macroeconomic motivation of this idea moves from the consideration of two concatenate effects caused by a variation of the unemployment rate on the real output growth rate. These two effects are concatenate because there is a first effect that generates a secondary one on the same variable. When the unemployment rate changes, the first effect is the variation in the level of production in consequence of the variation in the level of such an important factor as labour force; the secondary effect is a consecutive variation in the level of production caused by the variation in the aggregate demand in consequence of the change of the individual disposal income originated by the previous variation of production itself. In this paper the analysis of unemployment dynamics is carried out by the use of the logistic map and the conditions for the existence of bifurcations (cycles) are determined. The study also allows to find the range of variability of some characteristic parameters that might be avoided for not having an absolute unpredictability of unemployment dynamics (deterministic chaos): unpredictability is equivalent to uncontrollability because of the total absence of information about the future value of the variable to be controlled.

In this paper Okun’s law is tested for six European selected countries in order to compare the responsiveness of unemployment to economic growth over the period 1981-2010. In the first section there is a survey of scientific works that have observed the empirical relationship between growth and unemployment. The countries selected are representative of different socio-economic contexts today existing in Europe, i.e. EU member countries, countries that adopt the Euro, and others which are candidates to join the EU or that although EU members have chosen not to adopt the Euro. Finally, we also refer to the U.S. and Canada, which are country-systems where the regularity of Okun’s rule of thumb was conceived. In particular, we intend to represent the data of the macroeconomic variables GDP and unemployment rate in their annual variations for a time series sufficiently long to show the occurrence of the supposed regularity, and then to investigate specific cases, which represent changes compared to the expected variations. In addition to any changes occurred over time in the studied relationship, these empirical observations, along with the reported literature, will help to draw conclusions about the differences regarding the inflexibility and responsiveness to changes in the aggregated output by the labor market of the countries involved in the study.

This work is based on the analysis of the public and private support to education and human capital development in two specific national contexts: the U.S. and Italy. Recent researches have firmly demonstrated the value of higher levels of education for socio-economic development, poverty reduction, higher incomes, employment and eliminating child labour, gender equality. The increased competition and globalization of economic activity, acceleration in technological and scientific knowledge, information revolution and more recently the worldwide economic recession continue to raise the value of education and training in preparing individuals for future employment, upgrading skills for greater workplace mobility, and underpinning wealth creation and economic development through human capital formation. The International Labour Organization (2010) has pointed out the key role played by higher levels of education and skills training in employment and social protection policies. In the Western world, the education industry is complex and diverse. It combines a dominant public sector of schools and universities and community colleges which educate the majority of students; a varied private sector mainly consists of nonprofit organizations that encompass some of the world's most elite education and scientific institutes. The importance of education for economic growth and development is well documented from a historical and economic standpoints. In this research we examine some evolving relationships between the marketplace, the state, and education institutions, knowing that the context of these relations has evolved strikingly in recent years, which have seen three major developments: a growing system differentiation, changing governance patterns, and a diminished direct involvement of governments in the funding and provision of education. Therefore, we are interested in understanding on one hand the possible evolution of the studied phenomenon, and on the other if the experience of a leading country as the U.S. may represent a useful starting point of imitation. So that, our analysis is focused on the investigation, through a period of ten years, of students enrollment according to the willingness to invest in education, independently of the resources needed. In particular, we use the Box-Jenkins methodology to fit data by using an ARIMA model and in order to achieve more information about the phenomenon. Our findings show a similar trend over time both for public and private enrollments although backgrounds and rules are very different in the two nations considered.

A large part of the economic literature is unanimous in believing technological progress and openness to foreign trade are key variables to trigger the processes of stable and persistent economic growth. An in-depth analysis of these factors, thus, becomes necessary both to meet the challenges of the international market, and to strengthen the European integration process. This paper aims to provide an empirical analysis of the interaction between foreign trade and technological progress by performing a multidimensional scaling. This technique is used to produce a graphical representation of the 27 EU member states, in accordance to the degree of similarity or dissimilarity between them. The indicators used, and the indexes calculated, reflect the different degree of internationalization of each countrys economy, the regulation of trade flows, investment in specific RD and technological progress.

It is ten years after Lisbon and in the year dedicated to poverty alleviation that this paper is written in order to investigate the implications of the decisions regarding poverty reduction taken by the EU. We present a simple comparison of the risks of poverty in European countries in 2000 and 2008, before and after transfers, and our finding is a positive effect of the policies towards poverty alleviation, even if the risk of poverty is increasing. By studying the correlation between percentage of people that fall below the poverty line and GDP per capita, we do not observe a whole diverse situation in Europe, with only few minor differences between rich and poor countries. We also discuss the importance of alternative approaches in estimating poverty, by means of a multidimensional method which considers a multitude of aspects in the quality of life.

Historic cultural institutions are known to predict local inequality, but the moderating effect of modern cultural attitudes has not been thoroughly elucidated. Our hypothesis is that local inequality is determined by a moderating mechanism based on the balance between cultural heritage and living culture. We use a unique panel dataset for Italian regions, covering the period 2007–16, and observe that regional inequality decreases where cultural heritage interacts with a more altruistic modern living culture. A finite mixture model suggests spatial clustering of inequality, dividing Italy into three areas. This reveals cultural capital-driven frictions in the spatial redistribution of human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]