When are strategic appointments useful in curbing policy bias from ex-post negotiation between state agencies and special interest groups? Bertelli and Feldmann (Jnl. of Public Admin. Research and Theory, 2007) provide an insightful analysis of the issue within a full information model of...

Multiple bank lending creates an incentive to overborrow and default. When creditor rights are poorly protected and collateral value is volatile, this incentive leads to rationing and non-competitive interest rates. If banks share information about past debts via credit reporting systems, the...

When the government provides public services necessary to production tax evasion results in some degree of income redistribution which may imply an higher or a lower level of aggregate income in the longrun. The outcome mainly depends on the burden of …scal pressure. If the tax administration...

We analyze the effects of judicial errors on the innovative activity of firms. Successful research investment allows to take a new action that may be ex-post welfare enhancing or welfare decreasing (illegal). Deterrence in this setting works by affecting both the incentives to invest in research...

Stricter laws require more incisive and costlier enforcement. Since enforcement activity depends both on available tax revenue and the honesty of officials, the optimal legal standard of a benevolent government is increasing in per-capita income and decreasing in officials’ corruption. In...

We model an enforcement problem where firms can take a known and lawful action or seek a profitable innovation that may enhance or reduce welfare. The legislator sets fines calibrated to the harmfulness of unlawful actions. The range of fines defines norm flexibility. Expected sanctions guide...

We analyze optimal policy design when firms' research activity may lead to socially harmful innovations. Public intervention, affecting the expected profitability of innovation, may both thwart the incentives to undertake research (average deterrence) and guide the use to which innovation is put...

During the first half of the 1990s a pool of Italian judges carried out an investigation, named Mani Pulite (literally clean hands), that led many public officials to be prosecuted and convicted because of bribery and embezzlement. The impact of Mani Pulite was so much influential that since...

During an English auction, bidders' behaviour conveys information on their valuation of the prize. So whenever valuations are not independent, a bidder's strategy depends on the price at which his competitors drop out before he does. A ring of bidders can strategically manipulate the information...

Calls for tenders are the natural devices to inform bidders, thus to enlarge the pool of potential participants. We exploit discontinuities generated by the Italian Law on tender’s publicity to identify the effect of enlarging the pool of potential participants on competition in public...