Research

Doctoral Thesis

Abstract. This doctoral thesis focuses on the spatial distribution of productive factors and provides new original evidence about the role that spatial frictions - costs related to distance - have for it and for its degree of allocative efficiency, meant as the output maximizing optimal distribution of scarce resources across users. This dissertation is motivated by the high policy and research relevance of the spatial distribution of productive factors in presence of distance related costs. The thesis analyses three research questions in as many chapters: i) the spatial distribution of risk-capital and the role of proximities in reducing regional equity gaps, in Chapter 1; ii) the distribution of workers across-cities as influenced by the adoption of remote-work arrangements, in Chapter 2; iii) the spatial disparities in firms’ ability to efficiently allocate human and physical capital, and the productivity and output losses that these entail, in Chapter 3. By working across these three research questions, the thesis aims at reaching two main objectives. Firstly, it aims at adding to the research at the frontier about how to investigate the influence that spatial frictions and their mitigation have on the mobility and spatial distribution of productive factors. Secondly, it aims at providing new estimates of the magnitude of the welfare and productivity losses that this interplay determines.


Working Papers 

Job Market Paper.  Available at SocArxiv, https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/krnzq 

Abstract. The Covid-19 pandemic outbreak brought remote work under the spotlight, as firms were forced to adopt it in an effort to maintain business continuity. This turn fed the debate, especially among regional and urban economists, on the effects of extensive adoption of remote-work in terms of location choices, city sizes, welfare and productivity. The aim of this article is to take part in the debate by analyzing the effects of extensive remote-work’s adoption on the size of US cities. In particular, it evaluates the counterfactual changes in population distribution across cities for different telework adoption levels, through the lenses of a Quantitative Spatial Economics model with shipping and commuting costs. The model offers insights on one of the many questions about the potential long-term effects of this pandemic: will smaller cities become more attractive?

Currently resubmitted (R&R, R1) at Papers in Regional Science .  WP version available at SocArxiv, https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/hqrj7.

Abstract. This paper aims to investigate the role that different forms of proximity have in the access to Venture Capital (VC) by Innovative Startup Companies (ISC).  By referring to the population of Italian innovative startups, we find that tangible (spatial) proximity account for this matching, but more in functional than in geographical terms. Industrial proximity between the two actors matters too, and makes the role of functional proximity less binding for the matching. The greatest correlation emerges with respect to a relational kind of proximity, due to the closeness between partners in organisational and social terms. 

Discussion paper in Regional Science & Economic Geography, No. 2023-06. ISSN 2724-3680. Available here.

Abstract: This study investigates the spatial heterogeneity that factors misallocation reveals in nine EU-member countries (Germany, France, Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Poland) during the years 2011-2020. Misallocation, as in the degree of efficiency with which inputs are allocated across firms, is increasingly regarded as one main source of aggregate productivity and income differences across countries.  Nevertheless, its within-country regional dimensions are still largely overlooked, notwithstanding numerous reasons for allocative efficiency to vary across different administrative units. This study aims at filling this gap by firstly performing an illustrative analysis of allocative efficiencies at different levels of territorial aggregation (NUTS0, NUTS1, NUTS2 and NUTS3). Secondly, it provides evidence of the fact that cross-regional disparities in allocative efficiency account for large shares of aggregate misallocation in all the examined European countries  (up to 27\% at NUTS3 level). Finally, it tests the hypothesis that variations in local institutional quality contribute to explain regional differences in allocative efficiencies. 


Abstract: The paper investigates the heterogeneity that the relationship between regional productivity and factors' misallocation reveals in two structurally similar countries, Italy and Spain. The aim is to analyze the within-country spatial distribution of allocative efficiencies, and to identify the degree at which the respective and differential aggregates are explained at the local level. The time frame of the analysis, up to the year 2020, will allow some preliminary considerations of the short-run Covid-19's implications in terms of labor and capital misallocation in the two countries.  


Working Papers