Isotope variations were studied in necropolises of the early (6th to 7th century CE) and central (10th to 11th century CE) medieval period located in Fruili-Venezia Giulia (Northeastern Italy). The two periods each shortly followed two great barbarian invasions that changed the politics and economy of Italy: the arrivals of Langobards in 578 CE and the Hungarian incursions from the end of the 9th to the first half of the 10th century. These events had a tragic effect on the economy of Friuli-Venezia Giulia: severe depopulation and the partial abandonment of the countryside with fall of agricultural production.

This paper reconsiders the effects of fiscal federalism on the size of government: the Leviathan hypothesis, suggesting a negative relationship between fiscal decentralization and government growth, has been recently enriched by theoretical and empirical research that points out at the importance of distinguishing between grants and own resources to gauge the effects of fiscal decentralization on public sector size; moreover, several additional economic, demographic and political control variables have been proved to be empirically relevant. This paper improves on this literature by distinguishing long from short run relationships by means of appropriate panel cointegration techniques.JEL code: H11, H53, H77

This paper investigates the impact of corruption on economic growth in the Italian Regions. We estimate a dynamic growth model for the period 1980-2004 addressing both the potential bias of the measures of corruption and the endogeneity between corruption and economic development. We find strong evidence of a negative correlation between corruption and growth. Moreover, since government intervention has been traditionally used to reduce income differentials between the Northern and the Southern regions, we also analyze the interaction between corruption and government expenditure. Our results indicate that corruption undermines the positive impact that public expenditures have on economic growth.

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This article proposes refined econometric estimates of effective marginal income tax rates for 23 OECD countries from 1951 to 1990. Panel regressions find such measures negatively correlated with economic growth. These results are consistent with endogenous growth theories and opposite to those of most empirical literature, which relies on measures of effective average tax rates. The negative correlation is also robust to consideration of other growth determinants. (JEL H21, O11)