In this paper we analyze the fairness of the 2007 reform proposal concerning the apportionment of the seats between the regions for the Italian Senate. Theory of power indices is used to compare the actual case with the proposed one. Two scenarios are proposed, senators belonging to the same...

Italy has the lowest labor force participation of women among OECD countries. Moreover, the participation rate of married women is positively correlated to their husbands' income. We show that a high tax schedule together with tax credits and transfers raise the burden of two-earner house-...

This paper proposes a two-regime Bounce-Back Function augmented Self-Exciting Threshold AutoRegression (SETAR) which allows for various shapes of recoveries from the recession regime. It relies on the bounce-back effects first analyzed in a Markov-Switching setup by Kim, Morley and Piger [2005]...

In the United States, the president is elected by the Electoral Col- lege (EC) and not directly by individual voters. This can give rise to a so-called referendum paradox in which one candidate receives more popular votes than any other, but this candidate is not elected. The 2000 election is an...

Economic theory states that on market with imperfect competition, per unit consumption taxes should induce a larger increase of prices than ad valorem consumption taxes. It implies that consumers bear a larger share of the tax burden for per unit consumption taxes than for ad valorem consumption...

This paper analyzes the eect of spillovers and congestion of local public services on the segregative properties of endogenous formation of jurisdictions. Households choosing to live at the same place form a jurisdiction whose aim is to produce congested local public services, that can create...

Cette recherche a pour objectif de vérifier et de compléter les résultats des travaux de Damak (1996) qui montraient l’existence, chez les femmes, d’une relation de congruence ou de complémentarité entre l’image corporelle et les préférences de design de produits (en fonction de la...

We build a theory of political turnover in autocracies where citizens can only express their political preferences to remove the autocrat through costly mass protest. The disenfranchised are imperfectly informed about the autocrat's choice of economic institution. Workers only observe economic...

This paper considers the role of asymmetric information in a political agency theory of autocratic economic policy-making. Within the context of a static game, we analyze the strategic interaction between a self-interested elite ruling class, who may extract rent ineciently through hidden...

The invasion of native species by exotic species is one of the most serious threats to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Despite a number of empirical and theoretical studies, there is still no general model about why or when settlement becomes invasion. The purpose of this work is to test...