We explore how electoral rules and cultural traits (namely, the degree of civicness) interact in shaping elected officials' behaviour. We use a dataset that includes the expenditure proposals sponsored by members of the Italian Senate from 1993 to 2012 (as well as other individual and district...

This paper analyses the contribution of human capital, measured using the share of residents holding a college degree, to urban growth, gauged by the growth in employment, between 1981 and 2001. According to our estimates, starting with a ten per cent higher share of college-educated residents...

We investigate the consequences of public employment on local economies. We start by presenting a spatial-equilibrium framework, to highlight that the housing market is an important channel through which a variation in public employment affects private employment. We then provide empirical...

We use the last two waves of the Italian Time Use Survey to analyse the intergenerational transmission of reading habits. This can be explained by both cultural and educational transfers from parents to children and by imitative behaviour. Imitation is of particular interest, since it suggests...