In this paper we investigate the relationship between economic and population growth in an endogenous growth model driven by human capital accumulation à la Lucas (1988). Since we allow for endogenous population growth, we adopt the population criterion Relative Critical Level Utilitarianism...

In a decentralized setting, are policy targets imposed by the central government on local elected officials effective? And when? We address these questions in Italy, where the central government has set a target for childcare coverage at the municipal level for Southern regions since 2007. We...

During negotiations, parties plan an exchange that will occur in the future and that implies a high level of uncertainty, regarding both contract conditions and final outcome. In this phase, parties are requested, according to country-specific legal framework, to act in good faith. As a matter...

This paper describes the rebirth of the utilitarian approach, with the social welfare function a là Bentham, after the crisis due to the emergence of the ordinalist microeconomic analysis. It is shown that Vickrey in 1945 had already anticipated the themes developed earlier by Harsanyi and...

The taxation of the owner-occupied house – the “principal dwellingâ€â€“ was a recurrent central issue in the political and economic debate in Italy especially in the last 15 years. It may be useful, therefore, to address this issue, by both examining the theoretical aspects...

Il contributo affronta il delicato tema della valutazione della manovra finanziaria 2015 da parte della Commissione europea, nell’ambito del sistema di governance europea introdotto a seguito della grave crisi economico-finanziaria. In particolare, dopo aver descritto la posizione assunta...

Exit strategies referred to specific industry characteristics have been widely studied in the economic literature (Harrigan, 1980; Ghemawat et al., 1985, 1990; Lieberman, 1990; Reynolds, 1988; Fundenberg et al., 1989; Baptista et al., 2006). These studies show that exit dynamics – by setting new boundaries...

In this work we analyse the issue of optimal taxation and of policy changes in an endogenous growth model driven by public expenditure, in the presence of endogenous fertility and labour supply. While normative analysis confirms the Chamley-Judd result of zero capital income tax, positive...

This report examines the structure of optimal commodity tax rates in a many-person many-goods static computational model using segmented LES utility. One of the major findings is that with non-linear Engel curves and linear income tax, optimal commodity tax rates tend to be progressive and...