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...

The paper estimates the local effects of urban regeneration policies by using evidence from interventions that took place in small and medium-sized cities in the Centre and North of Italy over the period 2008-12. By using an Oaxaca-Blinder reweighting estimator, we find little support for the...