Work in Progress

(Preliminary) Successful exporting is certainly the skillful combination of a multitude of factors: some lie within the exporter (i.e., productivity, product), others lies in the market (e.g., market appeal ...). Which is the secret ingredient of German companies that make Germany a world export champion: productivity or market demand for their products? This question is the kick-off of this project...the methodology is centered on TFP structural estimation.

(Preliminary) While off-shoring is often associated to the fragmentation of production chains in low-wage countries to economize on labour costs, trade in value added shows that Global Value Chains are largely shared between developed countries and are driven by `localized knowledge', highly specialized knowledge clustered within few countries or fims (i.e., firm excellence). Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg (2012) show that patterns of outsourcing/off-shoring characterized by `localized knowledge´ follow some regularities. Using value-added based trade statistics to confirm or reject them is the aim of this empirical project.

(Very Preliminary) Is the adoption of greener technology by firm largely driven by stricter environmental standards?

This paper exploits quasi-natural experiments associated with three waves of reforms occurred in Italy in 1992, 2001 and 2004, to establish 8, 4, and 3 new provinces, respectively. Using a difference-in- difference approach, we find evidence of a significant detrimental effect of (further) decentralization on innovation in Northern and Central Italian provinces. We argue that this finding can be rationalized with the costs imposed by the ``mafia transplantation'' phenomenon, as we find that the new provinces that were more exposed to ``mafiosi in confino'' reduced their innovation output extensively. We perform a number of robustness checks that corroborate our main findings.

While quotas can be expressed in tariff-equivalent terms and have identical economic effects under some conditions, they do not share the same welfare implications with tariffs in the presence of a piecemeal reform (second-best). In this paper we show that this non-welfare equivalence persists in perfect competition when countries undergo regional integration. A Pareto improving customs union is nevertheless viable in both protection regimes, but it requires different trade policy adjustments. When we extend the analysis beyond the competitive framework and consider shocks to the economy or imperfect markets, this general desirability of unions is unfortunately lost. But we show that, interestingly, the equivalence between tariff and quota regimes can still arise under particular circumstances, and only quotas provide countries with full insurance from price fluctuations.