Did Keynes Go to Developing Countries?

- This work examine the nature of the relation between Keynesianism and the theories of development economics, pinpointing the consistencies and differences existing between them. In this respect a Keynesian heritage is unquestionable and can even be discerned in the vicissitudes of many development economists' lives. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that some foundational concepts of the development debate cannot be ascribed to any Keynesian genealogy, and must rather be traced back to classical categories. The eclecticism of early development economics makes the so-called label of Keynesian consensus too narrow a concept.

Infrastrutture e sviluppo locale in Italia

- This study suggests the possibility of developing an analysis of Italian infrastructures on the basis of municipal data analysed through the use of multivariate statistical techniques. The empirical results of this work confirm some well-known characteristics of the infrastructural Italian system and identify some less obvious features. In fact, while on the one hand there emerges the usual picture of a country characterised by a North-South dualism, on the other hand, various clusters are identified within each macro-region North-West, North-east, Centre and South which give a more complex picture. This article also provides a comparative analysis with earlier studies.

Una nota sulle origini remote dell'arretratezza del Sud d'Italia

- In this paper we try to analyze the remote causes that led to the backwardness of the South of Italy. We argue that the difficulties of historians to fully reconstruct this process are mainly due to the fact that they have not taken into account the economic theory of underdevelopment and dependency. By connecting materials provided by historians and guided by economic theory, we investigate the origins of the negative process which has withheld the economy of the South of Italy.

Lavoro domestico e immigrazione nel Mezzogiorno d'Italia tra complementaritŕ e competitivitŕ

- The aim of this paper, consisting of a theoretical as well as an empirical analysis, is to show how the international mobility of labour may affect the spread of domestic workers in Italy and particularly in Mezzogiorno, where there is a high level of unemployment. In this perspective, our purpose is to understand, through an empirical analysis, whether migrating labour is a competitive or a complementary resource with respect to Italian workers

Capitale Sociale Civile: una nota sulla robustezza dell'evidenza empirica del legame con la crescita economica

- This paper offers an overview of the main literature on civil social capital and its impact on economic growth to point out, following Durlauf (2002a), the econometric issues useful to improve empirical studies of social capital.

The theoretical-historical foundations of paradigms' and ‘national systems of innovation': the contributions of Adam Smith and Charles Babbage

- The notions of ‘paradigm' and ‘national system of innovation' have experienced a rather hectic period in economics in the 1990s, particularly within the evolutionary school of thought, where they have been first applied. Often these notions are jointly used to explain path dependence and cumulative growth processes, or the context in which different capabilities are developed. If the use of these analytical tools is quite recent, the origins of the notions themselves are not. The main aim of the present work is to look extensively at the works of two ancient economists which have anticipated these concepts, namely to Adam Smith and Charles Babbage, and point out some of the analogies which can be drawn between theirs and more recent notions.