We exploit the introduction of an open data online platform - part of a transparency program initiated by the Italian Government in late 2014 - as a natural experiment to analyse the effect of data disclosure on mayors’ expenditure and public good provision. First, we analyse the effect of the...

We investigate yardstick competition between local jurisdictions in which pure rent-seeking incumbents undertake an identical infrastructure project choosing be- tween two contractual arrangements with different financing profiles, namely traditional procurement (TP) and public-private...

We consider a public-private partnership in an infrastructure project, which requires specialised expertise during the construction stage for the infrastructure to operationalise. This entails that, after an investment is made to begin building the infrastructure, its construction is completed...

We model EU countries' bank ratings using financial variables and allowing for intercept and slope heterogeneity. Our aim is to assess whether 'old' and 'new' EU countries are rated differently and to determine whether 'new' ones are assigned lower ratings, ceteris paribus, than 'old' ones. We...

The harmonized European value-added tax (VAT) is anything but a modern consumption tax that taxes all goods and services at a uniform rate. As exemplified by an analysis of the Dutch version, some 60% of the base is exempted, that is, not taxed on output but on inputs. This has serious...

This paper discusses lessons that other regions could learn from European Union's effort to implement carbon pricing through EU Emission Trading System (EU ETS). Our lessons are, first of all, that a cap-and-trade system like EU ETS is very helpful in guaranteeing a credible and binding...

This paper develops a decomposition framework to study the importance of different stabilization channels of an unemployment re-insurance scheme for the euro area. Running counterfactual simulations based on household micro data for the period 2000–16, the paper finds that the re-insurance...

We study the evolution of EC merger decisions over the first 25 years of common European merger policy. Using a novel dataset at the level of the relevant antitrust markets and containing all merger cases scrutinized by the Commission over the 1990-2014 period, we evaluate how consistently...

We explore the effects of the ECB's unconventional monetary policy on the banks' sovereign debt portfolios. In particular, using panel vector autoregressive (VAR) models we analyze whether banks increased their domestic government bond holdings in response to non-standard monetary policy shocks,...

Preferences about the vertical distribution of power in federal systems are not well understood. I argue that negative historical experiences with higher-level governments can plausibly raise demands for exit strategies and a devolution of power. But integration, for instance delegating power...