The paper uses the consolidation of municipalities brought about by the Fascist dictatorship in Italy during the 1920s to gauge the role of the size of local jurisdictions for economic development. It finds that the consolidation was associated with relevant net welfare gains for the communities...

Marshallian Labor Market Pooling: Evidence from Italy This paper employs a unique Italian data source to take a comprehensive approach to labor market pooling. It jointly considers many different aspects of the agglomeration labor market relationship, including turnover, learning, matching, and...

Local Development that Money Can’t Buy: Italy’s Contratti di Programma The paper evaluates the effectiveness of a major Italy’s place-based policy (Contratti di Programma), through which the Government endorses and finances an industrialization plan proposed by private...