Davide Piacentino

Tourism in Balance (TiB) is a European project aimed at promoting cities’ sustainability and mitigating the negative effects of overtourism. An important strategy to support TiB is the promotion of “multi-destination trips”, i.e. attracting tourists to the most popular destinations and then encouraging them to disperse towards nearby areas. This paper uses Italian microdata to measure regional competitiveness within the TiB framework by estimating the probability of foreign tourists to undertake a multi-destination trip within the same NUTS3 region. Moreover, the analysis investigates how regional public investments in culture and tourism, as well as in transport and mobility, influence tourists’ decisions. The results highlight the strategic role of investments in transport and mobility in increasing the likelihood of multi-destination trips. However, the effect is not linear: investments generate a positive impact only once a certain threshold of investment intensity has been reached.

Tourism in Balance (TiB) is a European project aimed at promoting cities’ sustainability and mitigating the negative effects of overtourism. An important strategy to support TiB is the promotion of “multi-destination trips”, i.e. attracting international tourists to the main destinations and then encouraging their dispersion towards nearby secondary destinations. This paper uses Italian microdata to measure the regional competitiveness in TiB by estimating a probability model of foreign tourists’ preference to visit more than one destination within the same NUTS3 region during the trip. Moreover, the analysis looks at the impact of regional public investments in tourism and mobility, over both short- and long-term horizons, on tourists’ multi-destination decision. Results point out the important role of mobility investments to support TiB. The effects that emerge are positive but not linear over time, i.e. they are initially negative and become positive only after ten years from the investment.

This study explores the effect of bailout capital and digital diversification by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on their propensity to survive during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a random sampling of 5469 SMEs from 16 European countries, collected by the World Bank Enterprise Survey in May 2020, January 2021, and May 2021, we conduct a two-stage estimation to examine factors that first affected the propensity of SMEs to access bailout capital, and second, factors that increased the propensity of SMEs to survive longer during and after crises. Two key findings emerge. Diversification of government financial aid and the adoption of various digital tools to leverage the effect of shock by SMEs increase their propensity to survive by sized firms. Moreover, government financial aid does not moderate the effect of digital tool adoption on the propensity to survive. Policy insights and implications are also discussed.

Research on firm survival has primarily focused on input and outcomes. We shift the conversation by performing a systematic analysis of moderating role of firm size in the relationship between firm survival and strategic adaptation. After establishing a theoretical framework, we empirically assess the impact of strategic adaptation through digital transformation and public financial aid on the likelihood of firm survival. We find that smart working helped small firms, while home delivery and e-commerce had no effect on their survival. In contrast, liquidity support from the government and deferral of credit benefited micro firms. Our study emphasizes the importance of analyzing survival probabilities by differentiating firms by size, with the ultimate goal of exploring how selection or strategic adaptation processes may variably impact them.

Doctoral graduates represent the pinnacle of education. While the importance of increasing their number has been recognised by the Italian government and there has been a huge increase in the number of publicly funded PhD scholarships, doctoral graduates still struggle in the labour market to find employment commensurate with their skills and competencies. It is against this backdrop that the role of migration becomes crucial. Exploiting Italian microdata at the census level, this study aims to investigate how human capital migration, occurring at different ‘times’ of individual's life and across different regions, could mitigate the potential education–job mismatch, which is measured here from a multidimensional perspective by looking at overeducation, overskilling and satisfaction. Our findings reveal some positive effects of migration on reducing this mismatch. Moreover, the study highlights two relevant gaps, the first between domestic and foreign workers and the second between genders.

Rural areas still suffer from a lack of sustainable development, and the diversification of farms may be a step in the right direction. The paper provides a detailed picture of the diversification of Sicilian farms into tourism services. Specifically, we propose a simple indicator of localization intensity of agritourism farms and explore their spatial distribution at municipality level. Our study highlights that Sicilian farms rarely diversify into tourism services, despite being situated in attractive areas. That said, some significant spatial clusters of municipalities where agritourism farms are highly concentrated do emerge from the study.