To identify the effect of social capital on financial development, we exploit the well-known differences in social capital and trust (Banfield (1958), Putnam (1993)) across different parts of Italy, using microeconomic data on households and firms. In areas of the country with high levels of...

The prevalence of shirking within a large Italian bank appears to be characterized by significant regional differentials. In particular, absenteeism and misconduct episodes are substantially more prevalent in the south. We consider a number of potential explanations for this fact: different...

I study the selection and economic outcomes of Italians in Argentina and the US, the two largest destinations during the age of mass migration. Prior cross-sectional work finds that Italians had faster assimilation in Argentina, but it is inconclusive on whether this was due to differences in...

Income volatility and wealth volatility are central objects of investigation for the literature on income and wealth inequality and dynamics. Here we analyse the two concepts in a comparative perspective for the same individuals in Italy and the U.S. over the last two decades. Contrary to our...

Using hourly offer curves from the Italian day-ahead market and the real-time re-dispatch market for the period January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2018, we show how thermal generation unit owners are able to profit from differences between a simplified day-ahead market design that ignores system...

As a consequence of missing data on tests for infection and imperfect accuracy of tests, reported rates of population infection by the SARS CoV-2 virus are lower than actual rates of infection. Hence, reported rates of severe illness conditional on infection are higher than actual rates....

When wage contracts are relatively short-lived, rent sharing may reduce the incentives for investment since some of the returns to sunk capital are captured by workers. In this paper we use a matched worker-firm data set from the Veneto region of Italy that combines Social Security earnings...

This paper examines the relationship between drug price and drug quality and how it varies across two of the most common regulatory regimes in the pharmaceutical market: minimum efficacy standards (MES) and a mix of minimum efficacy standards and price control mechanisms (MES+PC). Through a...

We estimate the degree of 'stickiness' in aggregate consumption growth (sometimes interpreted as reflecting consumption habits) for thirteen advanced economies. We find that, after controlling for measurement error, consumption growth has a high degree of autocorrelation, with a stickiness...

We estimate peer effects for fourth graders in six European countries. The identification relies on variation across classes within schools. We argue that classes within primary schools are formed roughly randomly with respect to family background. Similar to previous studies, we find sizeable...