The literature on development has pointed out some deeply-rooted determinants of current economic development. Most research on the field has been devoted to developing countries or specific to single countries. We focus on deeply-rooted determinants of development of European regions, in particular on the influence of human capital. Following an identification strategy using instrumental variables, we approach the historical links between current human capital and the presence of universities and trade guilds in medieval times. We show that human capital is an important determinant of income disparities across European regions, and that trade guilds and universities at 1500 are good instruments to track the exogenous influence of the current levels of human capital. This finding shows robustness to several econometric specifications.

We reassess the impact that robotization has on wages and employment, using a database on US commuting zones from 1990 to 2007. Using an argument based on the transitional dynamics we show that the negative displacement effects of robotization can be surpassed by productivity and reallocation effects, leading to positive effects on employment after a certain level of penetration in industry. In fact, we confirm this effect through regressions that are subject to different robustness checks. Previous evidence according to which robotization always decreases employment and wages are thus not confirmed.

This paper describes WISER CD (Welfare Intervention by the State and Economic Resilience - Comprehensive Dataset) a cross-country panel dataset that includes relevant indicators for the analyses of the relationship between the welfare state and aggregate macroeconomic performance, highlighting human capital and inequality as the channels of transmission. WISER CD covers 36 OECD countries over the period 1980-2017 resulting in 1085 variables from primary sources and five constructed variables for the measurement of human capital. We gathered data from a range of primary data sources that were grouped in six relevant dimensions: economic growth; welfare state; human capital; inequality; control variables; government size and financing. Two additional datasets were generated with no missing values, although at the cost of a shorter time coverage and more limited cross-country availability. The former broaden the options faced by researchers in terms of econometric methodologies (and others) for the investigation of the relationship under analysis.

We look at data for Management and Skills demand of firms in existing databases and we highlight the strong positive relationship between both variables. We devise a model that explains this relationship and calibrate it in order to present quantitative results and compare those results with the estimated ones. We discover that a simple model with Management as Technology can replicate well the estimated influence of Management in the skills demand of firms. We also present evidence of the influence of the subitems of Management on skills’ demand and discovered that aside from the talent component of Management, target and performance components greatly influence the demand for skills.

The impact of food prices on food security and short-term economic cycles has recently come into focus due to global supply shortages caused by the Black Sea blockade and the war in Ukraine. We compiled a comprehensive database of prices and output to estimate the short-term effects of food prices on the business cycle both before and during the war. Our findings indicate that price increases do not necessarily lead to economic downturns, even in the face of supply shocks—challenging conventional wisdom.