Using data on a panel of 56 democratic countries in the period 1975-2004, we find evidence of a negative association between political stability and economic growth which is stronger and empirically more robust in countries with high bureaucratic costs. Motivated by these results, which contrast...

We empirically investigate whether the persistence of politicians in political institutions affects the innovation activity of firms. We use 12,000 firm-level observations from three waves of the Italian Observatory over Small and Medium Enterprises, and introduce a measure of political...

In this paper we perform an empirical analysis to investigate the impact of socio-economic heterogeneity on electoral turnout. We exploit a unique dataset on local elections in an Italian municipality, which merges information on socio-economic characteristics of about 370.000 individuals with...

This paper studies the determinants of immigration policy in an economy with entrepreneurs and workers where a trade union has monopoly power over wages. The presence of the union leads a benevolent government to implement a high level of immigration and induces a welfare loss not only from an...

We exploit a unique dataset merging data on individual socio-economic characteristics and political participation in an Italian municipality to investigate the relationship between ethnic diversity in residential neighborhoods and individuals' propensity to vote. We document a sizable negative...

Differently from Atkinson and Morelli (2011) who detect no clear link between increases in income inequality and systemic banking crises, we show that a large majority of crises occurred between 1982 and 2008 have been preceded by persistently high levels of income inequality. Such association...

Taxation of bequests and donations is an important determinant of real estate prices. We show that, ceteris paribus, a decrease in taxes on inter vivos donations and bequests brings about an increase in real estate prices. We provide a general equilibrium rationalization in the context of OLG...

This paper studies the impact of Muslim rule on human capital development. Using a unique novel dataset containing yearly data on Muslim presence in the period 711-1492 and literacy rate in 1900 for about 7500 municipalities in Spain, we estimate the local impact of the length of Muslim rule in...