Carluccio Bianchi

A Reappraisal of Verdoorn’s Law for the Italian Economy, 1951–1997

Verdoorn’s Law postulates the existence of a significant positive relationship between the growth rate of labour productivity and that of output, at least in manufacturing. The relationship is generally interpreted to be of a technological nature, reflecting the existence of both static and (mainly) dynamic economies of scale and thus the presence of increasing returns to scale.

Balance of Payments Constraints in the Italian Economy

In Italy the beginning of the 1990’s has been characterized by a few relevant institutional changes in the field of international monetary relations. The lira has finally joined the other main currencies in the narrow band of the European Monetary System, confirming the policy option of a stable exchange rate adopted by the Central Bank earlier in the 1980’s. Administrative controls over capital movements have been completely removed, so as to guarantee complete financial integration with major world markets. Finally the Maastricht Treaty has envisaged the creation, within the end of the century, of a European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), to be realized progressively in a series of rigidly predetermined phases.

On the potential pitfalls in estimating β-convergence by means of pooled and panel data

We show that the use of pooled and panel data in estimating β-convergence across countries (or other territorial areas) may involve some pitfalls, since these techniques cannot properly distinguish between actual convergence and the possibility of decreasing growth rates over time within each country (or territorial unit). We also show how the possible bias in the estimates can be eliminated.

Food Competition in World Markets: Some Evidence from a Panel Data Analysis of Top Exporting Countries

This paper investigates the relationships between export price and income elasticities, average unit values (AUVs) and market shares for the top world food exporters in the time period 1992-2011 using a panel data framework. Emerging countries and Spain show a high price elasticity unlike other advanced countries. Moreover, an inverse relationship between price elasticities and AUVs is found to exist. The overall analysis enables the conclusion that advanced countries can maintain a specialization in low-tech sectors only if high prices, as indicators of high quality, are accompanied by a rigid foreign demand and a satisfactory income elasticity of exports.

Small Sample Properties of Copula-GARCH Modelling: A Monte Carlo Study

Copula-GARCH models have been recently proposed in the financial literature as a statistical tool to deal with flexible multivariate distributions. Our extensive simulation studies investigate the small sample properties of these models and examine how misspecification in the marginals may affect the estimation of the dependence function represented by the copula. We show that the use of Normal marginals when the true Data Generating Process (DGP) is leptokurtic or asymmetric, produces negatively biased estimates of the Normal copula correlations. A striking result is that these biases reach their highest value when correlations are strongly negative, and viceversa. This result remains unchanged with both positively skewed and negatively skewed data, while no biases are found if the variables are uncorrelated. Besides, the effect of marginals asymmetry on correlations is smaller than that of leptokurtosis. We finally analyse the performance of these models in terms of numerical convergence and positive definiteness of the estimated copula correlation matrix.

Neoclassical versus Technological Convergence: Some Evidence from the Recent Experience of the Italian Regions

This paper tests for the existence of neoclassical and/or technological catching up across Italian regions in the last three decades. The test is performed making use of a model based on the decomposition of output growth, similar to that proposed by Dowrick - Rogers (2002). The results imply that while the neoclassical convergence mechanism has occurred, the technological mechanism has failed. A possible explanation of the evidence found is that the regions initially endowed with better technology were subsequently characterised by a greater number of innovations and a higher share of GPD spent on research expenditure, which enabled them to maintain a substantial technological gap. These results suggest the policy conclusion that complete convergence across Italian regions requires the promotion of technological transfers and an increase in R&D expenditure in the least developed regions.

Come misurare l'evoluzione congiunturale a livello locale? Una proposta metodologica

Questo lavoro propone un indicatore coincidente di attivita economica ad alta frequenza, mediante l’utilizzo di un dynamic factor model costruito secondo l’approccio di Stock e Watson (1998a,b). Tale metodologia prevede l’applicazione dell’analisi delle componenti principali per sintetizzare le informazioni contenute in un ampio dataset di base in un numero limitato di fattori capaci di descrivere le alterne fasi cicliche. Attraverso l’algoritmo EM (Expectation Maximization) si e in grado di ricavare dai fattori costruiti una stima della variazione tendenziale del PIL regionale o del valore aggiunto provinciale. Lo studio e applicato alla regione Lombardia e alle province di Milano e Pavia.

Disuguaglianza e crescita: un’analisi empirica applicata all’esperienza recente delle regioni italiane

This paper examines the relationship between inequality and growth in the Italian regions in the period 1990-2004. Our results support the conjecture, formulated by the most recent economic theory, that greater inequality in the distribution of personal incomes reduces real growth. Furthermore, a detailed examination of the possible influence mechanisms of inequality on growth shows that both the credit rationing and the social instability channel are relevant in explaining the empirical evidence considered. Our analysis ultimately suggests that a decrease in income inequality in the Southern regions, achieved through adequate redistributive policies in the area, might contribute to reducing the lag in the economic development of the Mezzogiorno.