We contribute to the debate on how to assess the size of the underground or shadow economy with a reinterpretation of the traditional Currency Demand Approach (CDA) � la Tanzi. We introduce three main innovations. First, we take as dependent variable in the money demand equation a direct...

The paper surveys different approaches to the estimation of the underground economy. First, the focus is on the methodologies adopted by the Italian and French Statistical Institutes, respectively based on the exhaustive estimate of the labour input and on tax compliance data. Secondly, we...

The paper proposes a measure of countries' welfare based on individuals' lifetime utility and applies it to a large sample of countries in the period 1960-2000. Even though welfare inequality across countries appeared stable, the distribution dynamics points out the emergence of three clusters....

Direct and country-specific measures of technical progress are used in order to analyse the effects of technology shocks on output fluctuations in the G7. Technology shocks are measured as the unpredicted component in the dynamics of innovation, on the basis of patent statistics provided by the...

Regulatory complexity and bureaucracy inefficiencies increase the time needed and the cost of starting a business and therefore reduce the competitiveness of a country. Since the early 1990s Italy, in the same way as other developed countries, has been trying to introduce some reforms to boost...

We quantify the private returns and social costs of political connections exploiting a unique longitudinal dataset that combines matched employer-employee data for a representative sample of Italian firms with administrative archives on the universe of individuals appointed in local governments...

This paper studies how the independence and conservatism of a central bank relate to the structure and stability of the median voter preferences. This is done by means of a model of endogenous delegation in which an opportunistic policy-maker chooses the monetary regime (independence and...

This paper studies how the independence and conservatism of a central bankrelate to the structure and stability of median voter preferences. This is done by means of a model of endogenous delegation in which an opportunistic policy-maker chooses the monetary regime (independence and...

The paper discusses the economic problem and the institutional features underlying the Nimby syndrome, and illustrates preliminary empirical evidence for Italy. It argues that siting procedures taking local preferences into account should be preferred when the heterogeneity in preferences across...

In this paper we propose and validate cheating in standardized tests as a new indirect measure of social capital. Given the low-stakes nature of most of the tests examined here, we interpret the widespread presence of cheating as a signal of limited trustin central education authorities....