The wage paid to politicians affects both the choice of citizens to run for an elective office and the performance of those who are appointed. First, if skilled individuals shy away from politics because of higher opportunities in the private sector, an increase in politicians' pay may change...

We evaluate the effect of relaxing fiscal rules on policy outcomes applying a quasi-experimental research design. In 1999, the Italian central government introduced fiscal rules aimed at imposing fiscal discipline on municipal governments, and in 2001 the rules were relaxed for municipalities...

The paper studies the effect of additional government revenues on political corruption and on the quality of politicians, both with theory and data. The theory is based on a version of the career concerns model of political agency with endogenous entry of political candidates. The evidence...

This paper examines whether access to information enhances political accountability. Based upon the results of Brazil's recent anti-corruption program that randomly audits municipal expenditures of federally-transferred funds, it estimates the effects of the disclosure of local government...

Gender stereotypes are well established also among women. Yet, a recent literature suggests that learning from other women experience about the effects of maternal employment on children outcomes may increase female labor force participation. To further explore this channel, we design a...

Previous empirical literature has shown that technological change can be considered the main cause of the skill bias (increase in the number of highly skilled workers) exhibited by manufacturing employment in developed countries over the last decades. However, recent papers have also introduced...

In spite of relatively generous public subsidies and a reputation for high quality, only a very limited proportion of Italian families use public child care. In this paper we explore the significance of various factors on the choices made between different types of child care. In part one, we...

We investigate public-private pay determination using French, British and Italian microdata. While traditional methods focus on parametric methods to estimate the public sector pay gap, in this paper, we use both non-parametric (kernel) and quantile regression methods to analyse the distribution...

The age at which children leave the parental home differs considerably across countries. We present a theoretical model predicting that higher job security of parents and lower job security of children may delay emancipation. We then provide aggregate evidence which supports this hypothesis for...

Using microdata on the 1995 cohort of Italian high school graduates, this paper studies the relationship between the type of high school attended (general versus technical; private versus public) and indicators of subsequent performance. Simultaneity issues that potentially bias this type of...