Loredana Mirra

The Determinants of Inward Foreign Direct Investment in Business Services across European Regions

Castellani D., Meliciani V. and Mirra L. The determinants of inward foreign direct investment in business services across European regions, Regional Studies. The role of forward linkages with manufacturing sectors and other service sectors as attractors of business services foreign direct investment (FDI) is studied at the regional level. Using data on 146 NUTS-2 regions, it is found that regions specialized in those (manufacturing) sectors that are high potential users of business services attract more FDI in the business services than other regions. Results are robust to the inclusion of the traditional determinants of foreign investments at the regional level as well as to controls for spatial dependence. The results suggest that regional policies aimed at attracting foreign investors in the business service industry might prove ineffective in the absence of a pre-existing local intermediate demand.

A spatial analysis of growth and convergence in Italian provinces: the role of road infrastructure

ABSTRACT A spatial analysis of growth and convergence in Italian provinces: the role of road infrastructure. Regional Studies. The role of road infrastructure in reducing economic disparities is debated in both Europe and the United States. During the 1960s, huge investments in highways significantly reduced the time run between north and south Italy. A spatial analysis of convergence is performed. Results show that the effect of road infrastructure investment was significant but accompanied by a strong polarization between north and south (also emerging from non-parametric analysis) that it failed to prevent, possibly because investment in the south was not large enough to close the accessibility gap with the centre–north, a gap that appears to persist during the subsequent years.

Financial Literacy and Bank Runs: An Experimental Analysis

We set up an experimental coordination game among bank depositors a la Diamond and Dybvig (1983). We elicit subjects’ financial literacy and study the impact of revealing this information on the coordination problem typical of this game with multiple equilibria. We find that when no information is revealed the likelihood of runs increases with bank size, while when information on financial literacy is disclosed it increases in small banks and decreases in large ones. Over all banks’ dimensions, the probability of coordinating on the inefficient equilibrium is lower when the average financial literacy revealed to the group is higher.