Italy makes for a very interesting case study of the impact of social variables on economic performance. Across its provinces, differences in social and cultural attitudes seem associated to large differences in economic development. We analyze the importance of some social variables on...

We test if social work norms are important for work absence due to self-perceived sick-ness. To this end, we use a randomized social experiment designed to estimate the effect of monitoring on work absence. The treated were exposed to less monitoring of their eligibility to use sickness...

Immigrants typically perform worse than other students in the OECD countries. We examine to what extent this is due to the population characteristics of the neighborhoods that immigrants grow up in. We address this issue using a governmental refugee placement policy which provides exogenous...

We study the impact of research collaborations in coauthorship networks on total research output. Through the links in the collaboration network researchers create spillovers not only to their direct coauthors but also to researchers indirectly linked to them. We characterize the interior...

We investigate the political impact of entertainment television in Italy over the past thirty years by exploiting the staggered introduction of Silvio Berlusconi's commercial TV network, Mediaset, in the early 1980s. We find that individuals in municipalities that had access to Mediaset prior to...

Does the supply of a welfare state create its own demand? Many economic scholars studying welfare arrangements refer to Say's law and insinuate a self-destructive welfare state. However, little is known about the empirical validity of these assumptions and hypotheses. We study the dynamic effect...

Recent literature on tax evasion emphasizes the importance of moral considerations to explain compliance behavior. As a consequence scholars aim to identify factors that shape this so-called tax morale. However, the causal link between tax morale and actual compliance behavior is not established...

Recent economic literature emphasizes the importance of moral considerations to explain compliance behavior with respect to underground activities such as tax evasion. A considerable amount of research aims to identify factors that affect the intrinsic motivation to comply. However, the causal...

Language serves two key functions. It enables communication between agents, which allows for the establishment and operation of formal and informal institutions. It also serves a less obvious function, a reassuring quality more closely related to issues linked with trust, social capital, and...

We test the assumption that preferences are unchanged throughout a strategic game in the absence of feedback. To do so, we study the relationship between the strategic nature of a game and players' identification in social groups. We present evidence that the strategic nature of the game affects...