We present an empirical investigation of the role of marketing agencies in Google's online ad auctions. By combining data on advertisers' affiliation to marketing agencies with data on bidding in ad auctions, we analyze how changes in the concentration of clients in the same industry under the...

We investigate the impact of public procurement spending on business survival. Using Italy as a laboratory, we construct a large-scale dataset on firms–covering balance-sheet, income-statement, and administrative records–and match it with public contract data. Employing a regression...

This paper quantifies the impact of online vaccine skepticism on pediatric vaccine uptake and health outcomes. We propose a novel methodology that combines Natural Language Processing and an instrumental variable strategy that leverages the intransitivity of the social network's connections. By...

This paper investigates the factors that contributed to the proliferation of online COVID skepticism on Twitter across Italian municipalities. We demonstrate that socio-demographic factors are likely to mitigate the emergence of skepticism, while populist political leanings were more likely to...

We empirically investigate the effect of procurement oversight on contract outcomes. In particular, we stress a distinction between public and private oversight: the former is a set of bureaucratic checks enacted by contracting offices, while the latter is carried out by private insurance...

We empirically investigate the effect of procurement oversight on contract outcomes. In particular, we stress a distinction between public and private oversight: the former is a set of bureaucratic checks enacted by contracting offices, while the latter is carried out by private insurance...