This article studies how distance influences the choice of tourists about their holiday destination during times of economic crisis. In particular, we analyse the specific case of domestic tourism flows across Italian regions during the 2000–2012 period by estimating a gravity model. Our estimations yield the effect of distance year by year. The output suggests that distance gained weight during the years of the Great Recession and therefore confirms, from a macroeconomic perspective, that tourists tend to choose closer destinations in times of crisis.

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In recent times a wide debate has developed in Europe concerning the effect of fiscal consolidations on the evolution of the public-debt/GDP ratio. In the context of the current crisis, fiscal consolidations were meant to reduce the debt/GDP ratio. However, the restrictive effect of a fiscal consolidation on the GDP might well offset the deficit reduction and cause an undesired debt/GDP increase. Past events suggest a positive short-term effect, while the most-relevant medium-term effect seems to be negative. On the whole, savings-based fiscal consolidations are to be preferred in any case.

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The object of this paper is to study the relationship between the border effect and the geographic concentration of production. We explain this relationship through the home market effect and test the robustness of this explanation by using an analysis that considers the European single market. A sectoral gravity equation is estimated with different econometric estimators; in particular, we discuss a recently suggested estimator for log-linear CES models. Overall, our findings suggest a steady relationship between the border effect and the concentration of production. Furthermore, the analysis of concentration through a synthetic index provides us with valuable insights into the structure of the European industry.

We study the contribution of loans, granted to different borrower groups, to economic activity in the United States over the period 1971q1-2018q4. In general, loans to households emerge as the most important driver of economic activity when compared to other borrower groups. Meanwhile, for loans in terms of scope, consumer credit has a prime role. Deep economic recessions occurred during the period considered, we focus on the recent global financial crisis (GFC) to reveal the role of the credit crunch. The analysis confirms that loans had a large negative effect during the GFC when compared to other concurrent shocks. Furthermore, a comparison with other periods in post-war US history points to the specific role that loans played in this last crisis. The results are delivered through a historical decomposition analysis based on the estimation of a large VAR through Bayesian techniques.