Since Leeper’s (1991, Journal of Monetary Economics 27, 129-147) seminal paper, an extensive literature has argued that if fiscal policy is passive, i.e., guarantees public debt stabilization irrespectively of the inflation path, monetary policy can independently be committed to inflation...

We consider the optimal factor income taxation in a standard R&D model with technical change represented by an increase in the variety of intermediate goods. Redistributing the tax burden from labor to capital will increase the employment rate in equilibrium. This has opposite e¤ects on two...

With the adoption of a common currency the degree of substitution between financial instruments supplied by EMU Member States to finance their national debts has risen. Providing the market for euro-denominated government securities with a large volume of similar financial instruments is likely...

This paper studies intergenerational transmission of cognitive abilities from parents to children. We create a measure of parental cognitive evolution across time, which combines cognitive tests scores obtained at the age of 16 with the ones at the age of 50. We are thus able to identify...

We investigate factors affecting happiness on a sample of Italian secondary school students. We find that money matters since family’s house ownership, mortgages and (class) relative wealth significantly affect life satisfaction. Other crucial factors are geographical residence (those living...

This paper analyzes the existing relationship between ethnic fractionalization, corruption and the growth rate of a country. We provide a simple theoretical model. We show that a nonlinear relationship between fractionalization and corruption exists: corruption is high in homogeneous or very...

I model an economy featuring two representative firms in two countries, one in each country, where one firm innovates and generates technological unilateral spillovers. I analyze a partial equilibrium model in two different scenarios: in the first one, the innovating firm is under a domestic...

We model an environmental policy problem with two representative firms in two countries (one for each country). Firms are subject to environmental taxation, aimed at reducing CO2 emissions, and a unilateral technological spillover takes place: one of the two countries (innovating country) is...

We empirically study the determinants of intra-household decision power with respect to economic and financial choices using a suitable direct measure provided in the 1989-2010 Bank of Italy Survey of Household Income and Wealth. Focusing on a sample of couples, we evaluate the effect of each...

Natural disasters have been shown to produce effects on social capital, risk and time preferences of victims. We run experiments on altruistic, time and risk preferences on a sample of Sri Lankan microfinance borrowers affected/unaffected by the tsunami shock in 2004 at a 7-year distance from...