The United States currently incarcerates a higher share of its population than any other country in the world. We calculate that a reduction in incarceration rates just to the level we had in 1993 (which was already high by historical standards) would lower correctional expenditures by $16.9...

The book brings together a series of research papers presented at the conference "The Economy of the North East of Italy", held at Fondazione CUOA in Altavilla Vicentina on 23-24 November 2010. The papers analyse economic developments in the region and look for possible explanations of the poor...

The book brings together a series of research papers presented at the conference entitled "Infrastructure in Italy", held in Perugia on 14-15 October 2010. The papers analyse the relationship between public investment and economic growth; the endowment and quality of infrastructure across the...

The book brings together a series of research papers presented at a workshop on "Economic integration between the Mezzogiorno and the Centre North", held at the Bank of Italy in Rome on 15 March 2011. The workshop assessed the degree of economic integration between the two areas from several...

Participatory Democracy is a process of collective decision making that combines elements from both Direct and Representative Democracy: Citizens have the power to decide on policy and politicians assume the role of policy implementation. The aim of this paper is to understand how Participatory...

The book brings together a series of research papers presented at the conference on "The Mezzogiorno and regional policies", held in Perugia on 26-27 February 2009. The analyses refer to various aspects of the regional economies: wages, bargaining and prices; environmental diseconomies; public...

The volume brings together the papers presented at the Conference on "The Mezzogiorno and Italian economic policy " held in Rome on 26 November, 2009. The analysis focuses on social capital, the difficulties that businesses face in working in the South, the role of the financial system, the...

Does additional government spending improve the electoral chances of incumbent political parties? This paper provides the first quasi-experimental evidence on this question. Our research design exploits discontinuities in federal funding to local governments in Brazil around several population...

This paper provides regression discontinuity evidence on long-run and intergenerational education impacts of a temporary increase in federal transfers to local governments in Brazil. Revenues and expenditures of the communities benefiting from extra transfers temporarily increased by about 20%...

This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact of additional unrestricted grant financing on local public spending, public service provision, schooling, literacy, and income at the community (município) level in Brazil. Additional transfers increased local public...