How do wage and other financial benefits affect the set of candidates for political office? In this theoretical paper, we answer the question by studying self-selection into politics of individuals with heterogeneous skills and heterogeneous motivations. Our predictions are in line with the...

This paper studies the impact of size on labor cost and productivity for Italian manufacturing firms. The distributions of both labor cost and productivity display a wide support, even when disaggregated by sector of industrial activity. Further, both labor cost and productivity, when considered...

This paper proposes a new Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model with credit frictions and a banking sector, which endogenizes loan-to-value (LTV) ratios of households and banks by expressing them as a function of systemic and idiosyncratic proxies for risk. Moreover, the model...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the extent to which local budget spending composition reacts to fiscal rules variations. I consider the budget of Italian municipalities and exploit specific changes in the Domestic Stability Pact’s rules, to perform a difference-in-discontinuities...

In this paper, we model business investment distinguishing between ICT (communication equipment, hardware and software) and Non-ICT (machinery and equipment, and nonresidential buildings) components and taking into account asset specific characteristics potentially affecting the reactivity of...

State building and state competition during the 16th century triggered a creative moment in the history of public finance. Recent scholarship has clearly identified the Papal States and their communities as active participants both in the state building process and the reorganization of public...

We investigate how cooperative firms reacted to the current crisis. This allows us to compare the behavior of cooperative and conventional firms facing exogenous shifts in demand. After a short survey of a stream of theoretical literature, we analyze a large group of Italian production...

This paper offers a formal analysis of the relationship between changes in government primary balance and debt-to-GDP ratio. it establishes the conditions under which a fiscal consolidation increases - instead of decreasing - the stock of government liabilities relative to aggregate output. A...

In this paper we develop a model in which students choose their university coursework based on both investment and consumption incentives. We show that these education decisions are socially inefficient. This result is driven by the fact that students do not consider an externality in the...

Norms of cooperation and punishment differ across societies, but also within a single society. In an experiment with two subject pools sharing the same geographical and cultural origins, we show that opportunities for peer punishment increase cooperation among students but not in the general...