In this paper, we consider the sentences of constitutional illegitimacy by the Italian Constitutional Court in the First Republic (1956--1992) as a measure of its independence from politicians. We focus on the Court's incidental review and test whether the Court's independence increases when...

This paper considers the impact of the Constitutional Court on legislative output in Italy. Following Tsebelis’ ((2002) Veto Players: Foundations of Institutional Analysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press) veto players model and the stylised facts as regards the Italian Constitutional...

This paper considers the effects of destination vs. origin principles of intermediate commodity taxation on the organisational structure of firms in the presence of imperfectly competitive product and labour markets. The paper considers a unionised monopoly firm producing a final good by using...

This paper studies the effects of product market integration on wage-bargaining institutions. It first shows evidence of a negative correlation between the level of wage bargaining and proxy measures of integration, such as the degree of openness and import penetration, for a macro-panel of 17...

We consider a set-up where two governments have either conflicting or matching preferences on the provision of differentiated (local) goods supplied by a common monopoly bureau. We develop a two-stage game. At stage-1, the two governments decide whether or not to merge into a single institution....

This paper presents the results of two experiments designed to test violations of Subjective Expected Utility Theory (SEUT) within a sample of Italian trade union delegates and leaders. Subjects priced risky and ambiguous prospects in the domain of gains. Risky prospects were based on games of...

This paper presents a counterexample to the Miyagiwa (1991) claim that discriminatorygovernment procurement policy is ineffective as a protectionist device, when the goods are alsoconsumed by the private sector. The procurement sector is a homogeneous product Cournot-Nashduopoly, with a home and...

This article considers the incidence and welfare effects of a specific excise tax in a unionized duopoly model with differentiated products, linear demand and cost curves, and wage bargaining. The article allows for both Cournot and Bertrand competition. The article shows that unionization...

This paper presents the results of two experiments testing reaction to risk and uncertainty of a sample of 66 Italian university students. Risky prospects were based on games of chance, while uncertain lotteries were based on the forthcoming results of either the May 2001 Italian general...

This paper considers the effects of fiscal policy in a two-sector small open economy, with unionized labour markets, and heterogeneous types of imperfect competition in the product markets. By making the marginal propensity to import endogenous, the paper shows that there is no robust or general...