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 examines the creation of some new provinces in Italy in the 1990s to assess whether the reduction in the size of the local jurisdiction led to benefits in terms of local development, human capital and road quality, which are three public goods provided by the Italian provinces in...

Based on the economic literature and international comparison, the paper examines the adequacy of the terms of Italian project financing contracts to build and operate public works, and identifies potential areas for improvement. We analyze the main contractual content of the public works...

We examine the main items on the European and the Italian Digital Agenda and the rules of the Digital Administration Code, in particular on-line payments. We then highlight the part played by the Bank of Italy in overall administrative modernization through its role as provider of the State...

An extensive literature analyses the impact of upper-tier transfers on the spending behaviour of lower level governments. According to the median voter framework, a transfer from the centre should act as a lump sum grant to residents and thus be spent by jurisdictions in the same proportion as...

Tax evasion is a widespread phenomenon and encouraging tax compliance is an important and much debated policy issue. Many studies have shown that tax cheating has to be attributed to a considerable extent to the tax morale of taxpayers. The aim of the present paper is to shed light on the...

We study the magnitude, the determinants and the electoral consequences of pre-electoral fiscal manipulation by incumbent politicians. To this aim, we build a dataset covering all the Italian municipalities. We document several facts. First, there is a clear political cycle in the path of...

Spatial econometric models are now an established tool for measuring spillover effects between geographical entities. Unfortunately, however, when entities share common borders but are subject to different institutional frameworks, unless this is taken into account the conclusions may be...

This paper studies whether the allocation of municipal expenditure in Italy is influenced by female representation in Municipal Councils. Despite the existence of gender-specific preferences in society, we find no clear evidence that the amount of resources distributed among different spending...

This paper analyzes the decline in Italian municipal investments that began in the middle of the last decade. The analysis shows that, organizational methods for service provision budgetary financial conditions being equal, investments declined more sharply in the municipalities subject to the...