We study the effect of electoral systems on openness to immigration. According to the literature, in our model plurality systems induce a rent-seeking policymaker to get re-election through locally provided public goods rather than through transfers, whereas the opposite occurs under...

This paper aims to the analysis of the rules electoral effects on fiscal policy, respect to the Italian case: in fact Italy, since 1861 until nowadays, modified several times its electoral system, switching from the majoritarian to the proportional system. In particular here we focus on the...

We build on earlier studies regarding Central Bank independence (CBI) by relating it to political, institutional and economic variables. The data suggest that CBI is positively related to the presence of federalism, the features of the electoral system and parties, the correlation between the...

The paper presents a theoretical model for analysis of the imperfect observability of central bank preferences by the private sector on the decisions taken by the monetary authority, and therefore on the infation rate. It examines in particular the connection which, in the presence of a time...

We test some positive implications of the commitment hypothesis for the design of monetary institutions in open economies, by studying the determinants of Central Bank independence on a sample of 55 countries, for the period 1980-1989. We document fairly consistent empirical evidence in support...

A well-established result in the theoretical literature on labour market flexibility is that the employment should be more volatile in "flexible" labour markets. Over the last 35 years, Italy gives a good example of a transition from an over-regulated labour market into a quite more flexible...

Decisions on joint funding of continuous public goods between two agents often involve heterogeneous targets. We introduce loss functions in a contribution game in order to study the effect of this conflict. Unlike Varian (1994), joint contribution occurs only if the players’ targets are...

According to the Lisbon Treaty the increasing cost of enforcing the European border against immigration shall be shared among the EU members. Nonetheless, the Treaty is rather vague with respect to the "appropriate measures" to adopt in order to distribute the financial burden. Members who do...

European labour markets have undergone several important innovations over the last three decades. Most countries have reformed their labour markets since the mid-1990s, with the liberalization of fixed-term contracts and temporary work agencies being the common elements to such reforms. This...