The paper uses the consolidation of municipalities brought about by the Fascist dictatorship in Italy during the 1920s to gauge the role of the size of local jurisdictions for economic development. It finds that the consolidation was associated with relevant net welfare gains for the communities...

In a dynamic market, the city has become a main source of competitiveness, along with financial and economic benefits. Due to the processes of digitalization, a new concept has been developed, namely smart cities. This concept delivers economic and financial potential, not only to cities, but...

The basic objective of the work was to verify the hypothesis regarding the existence of the correlation between the income potential of the municipalities and the efficiency (relative) of their activity. The basis for such a hypothesis were some concerns as to the validity of the assumed system...

We exploit the introduction of an open data online platform - part of a transparency program initiated by the Italian Government in late 2014 - as a natural experiment to analyse the effect of data disclosure on mayors' expenditure and public good provision. First, we analyse the effect of the...