This paper examines how business investment responds to investment tax credit, as enacted by Italy's Law 388/2000. To assess whether the programme made investments possible that otherwise would not have been made, it exploits some features of the tax credit scheme, such as the fact that some...

In Italy, Patti Territoriali (Territorial Pacts) are one of the main government-sponsored programmes to foster growth in disadvantaged areas. A territorial pact is an agreement among the local authorities and representatives of civil society (mainly entrepreneurs and trade unions) of a number of...

We examine the impact of natural disasters on GDP per capita by applying the synthetic control approach. Our analysis encompasses two large-scale earthquakes that occurred in two different Italian regions in 1976 and 1980. We show that the short-term effects are negligible in both regions,...

This paper evaluates the impact of rare disasters on the natural interest rate and macroeconomic conditions by simulating a nonlinear New-Keynesian model. The model is calibrated using data on natural disasters in OECD countries. From an ex-ante perspective, disaster risk behaves as a negative...

We study the impact of a 2011 law on the diversity of bank boards. The law required all listed companies in Italy (including banks) to increase the share of female representatives on their boards up to one third of total seats. We look at listed banks (the ones directly targeted by the law), but...

We combine matched employer-employee data with firms’ financial records to study a 2001 Italian reform that lifted constraints on the employment of temporary contract workers while maintaining rigid employment protection regulations for employees hired under permanent contracts. Exploiting the...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the selection process at work before and after compulsory schooling by assessing the determinants of school failures, dropouts and upper secondary school decisions of young Italians. The dataset is built combining individual data by the Labor Force Survey and...

Compared with other European countries, the Italian labour market stands out for the low level of both female participation and fertility. In this paper we focus on the employment patterns of Italian mothers around the time of childbirth. Our hypothesis is that the difficulties involved in...

This paper studies the effects of fiscal policy on private GDP, inflation and the long-term interest rate in Italy using a structural vector autoregression model. To this end, a database of quarterly cash data for selected fiscal variables for the period 1982:1-2004:4 is constructed, largely...

This study investigates inflation perceptions in both qualitative and quantitative terms and their relationship with factors likely to affect them. This has been done in a unified framework through a survey of a representative sample of Italian consumers carried out at the end of 2006. The...