The main onus of responsibility for the current global economic predicament is on the financial system, not on a lack of fiscal discipline. Nonetheless, the crisis is having an extremely severe impact on the real economy, which is felt most acutely in the southern Eurozone member states. Since the end of the deepest phase of the crisis in 2009, European governments have committed themselves to fiscal consolidation. The results of these policies have been perverse: the impact of fiscal tightening during a depression may result in depressed output and high unemployment, without lowering the debt-Gross Domestic Product ratio. In light of this, we make a case for restoring growth in Europe without further delay, and discuss the role of the EU budget as an instrument for setting and implementing a real EU growth strategy.

Enhancing productivity and growth in the agro-value chains in developing countries is a fundamental goal of national governments and international development agencies. A large part of the population in developing countries relies on agricultural production, and low productivity and food scarcity due to increasing demographic pressures represent a big challenge to actions aimed at poverty alleviation. In this report we first present a case-study based on a pilot project conducted jointly by UNIDO, FAO and ILO in Ethiopia sponsored by the MDG-Fund. This pilot project, focusing on value chain enhancement of the Ethiopian edible oil sector, highlights the importance and the critical aspects of an integrated approach where a value chain methodology is combined and integrated with a cluster development component and, hence, allows to simultaneously address several constraints which limit the development of the agro food sector in developing countries. In the second part of the report, we briefly discuss the case for a joint model for interventions aimed at promoting agro-value chain development.

Diasporans can contribute to the development of their home countries by investing their capital in existing businesses and/or setting up new ventures in their countries-of-origin. This paper analyzes whether these growingly important investors differ from domestic firms and foreign investors in terms of export behavior. Our results indicate that diaspora firms are more likely to be exporters, to export more intensively and toward more destinations compared to domestic firms; in addition their export performance is not substantially dissimilar to that of MNEs. The presence of diaspora investors and entrepreneurs may contribute to boost the internationalization of developing countries.

This paper investigates the determinants of backward linkages of foreign manufacturing firms in 19 Sub-Saharan African countries. We shed light on the micro and macro level factors which contribute to a higher degree of interactions between foreign subsidiaries and local firms. Our results indicate that the time since entry of foreign firms, the presence of a local partner in the ownership structure and a finalmarket orientation are associated with higher local linkages. Finally, we lend further support to the idea that good institutions and in particular a reliable legal system are pre-conditions for boosting the linkages generated by foreign firms.

Job creation is one of the main challenges for developing countries. The aim of this paper is to analyse the relation between foreign ownership and employment using an original firm-level dataset that covers 19 sub-Saharan African countries. Our results show that although foreign firms are generally larger than local ones, the employment they generate is relatively more unskilled labour intensive compared with that generated by domestic firms. We discover substantial differences between foreign investors from the north and the south, in terms of both skill intensity and wage premiums. We also find that, ceteris paribus, Chinese firms employ more workers (mostly bluecollar workers) and pay lower wages for both skilled and unskilled workers compared with both domestic firms and other foreign investors.

Il presente saggio ha come obiettivo l’analisi del sistema produttivo della meccatronica pugliese; in particolare, della sua evoluzione recente, alla luce della crisi economica internazionale partita nel 2008 e del ruolo svolto dalle politiche pubbliche, sia nella nascita che nella tenuta nel tempo del polo produttivo. Nonostante stia attraversando una fase delicata, il sistema produttivo presenta delle notevoli potenzialità di sviluppo. Un importante ruolo di sostegno allo sviluppo potrà essere giocato dalle politiche pubbliche: da una parte, strumenti finalizzati ad ampliare il numero degli attori; dall’altra, strumenti finalizzati ad aumentare il contenuto tecnologico e la capacità competitiva delle imprese locali.

This article is an original contribution to the understanding of the relationship between fiscal decentralization and public expenditure composition. It studies the effects of the ongoing decentralization process in Italy on the share of different categories of public spending in total expenditure of the Italian regional administrations over the period 1996-2008. The data used allow to go beyond the usual distinction between current and capital expenditures and to present a functional classification of public expenditures. Through a panel data analysis, the paper shows that the level of decentralization influences the expenditure composition.