Theory predicts that the majoritarian electoral system should produce more targeted redistribution and lower rents than proportional representation. We test these predictions using data on the Italian House of Representatives, and address the nonrandom selection into different systems exploiting...

The goal of this paper is to identify and quantify the contribution of a set of covariates in affecting levels and over time changes of happiness inequality. We make use of a recent methodology that allows decomposing the overall change in happiness inequality into composition and coefficient...

In this article we apply quantile regressions to investigate the evolution of Educational Wage Premia (EWP) in Italy from 1993 to 2004. Using the Survey of the Household Income and Wealth (SHIW, Bank of Italy) and different classifications for educational attainments, we show that, in the...

In the last decade the European Employment Strategy strongly recommended reforms of active labour market policies, reforms that have generated a spread of evaluation exercises for most of European countries. This paper fills the gap in the literature concerning the Italian case, assessing the...

This paper documents the evolution of the experience-earnings profiles of private employees in Italy over the first six years of working career across three birth cohorts (1965-1969, 1970- 1974, 1975-1979). We explore the average trends and disentangle how the patterns vary according to...

In this paper we make use of a matched employer-employee database for Italy to look at the spatial distribution of wages. Using this rich database we aim to open up the black box of agglomeration economies exploiting the micro dimension of interaction among economic agents, both individuals and...

In this paper we study optimal choices of self-selection into politics and commitment once in office on the part of citizens with heterogeneous abilities and heterogeneous motivations. Politicians can moonlight, i.e., they can work in the market sector while appointed in parliament. Our...

This paper investigates the dynamics of the distribution of unconditional and conditional on technology wages in Europe, using both industry and individual level data for the period 1995-2007. We find that the unconditional wage distribution shows scant signs of polarization in Europe. On the...

n this paper we evidence the persistent increase in wage dispersion over the past thirty years in many industrialized countries. We then go on to discuss the main determinants of this process identified by the economic literature: (i) the nature of technological change; (ii) deregulation of...

The paper focuses on happiness inequality, an issue rather neglected in the literature. We analyze the increase in happiness inequality observed in Germany between 1991 and 2007 by means of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) database. We make use of a recent methodology that allows...