We analyse empirically the effects of urbanization on Italian college graduates' work possibilities as entrepreneurs three years after graduation. We find that doubling the population density of the province of work reduces the chances of being an entrepreneur by 2-3 percentage points. This...

To explain the concentration of human capital in cities, urban theory conjectures that the metropolitan scale provides two sources of returns for the more educated; production benefits, both in terms of wages and non-monetary gains, and consumption benefits. By exploiting a unique survey on...

The paper provides an empirical investigation of labor market pooling. The analysis concentrates on Italian industrial districts and shows that there is fragmentary evidence of a widespread wage premium. In particular, there is no evidence of district differentials for the returns to seniority...

The paper evaluates the effectiveness of a major Italian place-based policy (Contratti di Programma), by means of which the state approves and finances industrial projects proposed by private firms. Using the areas to be exposed to the same policy at a later date as counterfactuals, the study...

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 hold up. It also considers labor market pooling from...

The paper uses questions included in the 2010 wave of the Bank of Italy�s Survey on Household Income and Wealth to investigate the role of family transmission of values. It presents three main empirical findings. First, the paper shows that a number of attitudes (generalized and...

The paper investigates the effect of local economic conditions on crime. The study focuses on Italy�s local labor markets and analyzes the short-term response of crime to the severe slump of 2007-2009. It shows that the downturn led to a significant increase in economic-related offenses...

This paper measures the impact of wage zones � minimum wage differentials at the province level � on Italy's local labor markets during the 1950s. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, it finds that for the industrial sectors covered under wage zones there was an increase in...

Transfers can do good; however, they can also result in massive failures. This paper presents a model that highlights the ambiguous nature of the impact of transfers on local endowments of social capital. It then describes an empirical investigation that illustrates that the receipt of EU...

This paper considers the role of preferences in explaining trust. By using the Bank of Italy�s Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW), the paper shows that time preferences and risk preferences are key covariates of self-reported trust. They both predict negatively a measure of...