This paper investigates the impact of the public smoking ban which came into effect in Italy on January 2005 on individual smoking behaviour. Current empirical evidence supports the existence of a negative effect of the Italian ban on smoking prevalence and consumption in the general population....

We investigate the relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (hereafter CSR) and I/B/E/S analysts' earnings per share (EPS) forecasts using a large sample of US firms for the 1992-2011 period. Based on literature findings we decompose the CSR effect into four factors: accounting...

We examine the historical dynamics of government debt in post-unification Italy, from 1861 to 2009. Unit root tests for the debt-GDP ratio are unable to reject either the non-stationarity or the stationarity null hypothesis. Controlling debt dynamics for fiscal feedback policies of the...

Many papers have highlighted that some macroeconomic time series present structural instability. The causes of these remarkable changes in the reduced form properties of the macroeconomy is a debated argument. In literature this issue is handled with three main econometric methodologies:...

The paper deals with the estimation of monthly indicators of economic activity for the Euro area and its largest member countries that possess the following attributes: relevance, representativeness and timeliness. Relevance is obtained by referring our monthly indicators to gross domestic...

Idiosyncratic volatility (IV) is regarded as a measure of firm specific information and has been shown to be correlated with ex post lower stock returns. We explore the nexus between IV and corporate social responsibility (CSR) and document that IV is positively correlated with net aggregate CSR...

Efficiency wages theories argue that the threat of firing, coupled with a high unemployment rate, is a mechanism that discourages employee shirking in asymmetric information contexts. Our empirical analysis aims to verify the role of unemployment as a worker discipline device, considering the...

We provide empirical support for an analytical DSGE model with nominal wage stickiness where growth is driven by learning-by-doing and money shocks and their variance are allowed to impact on long-run output growth. In our theoretical model the variance of monetary shocks has a negative effect...

Using data from BRIGHT, an integrated program that aims to improve school participation in rural communities in Burkina Faso, we investigate the impact of school subsidies and increased access to education on child work. Regression discontinuity estimates demonstrate that, while BRIGHT...

We propose a two-sided model with two competing Internet platforms, and a continuum of Content Providers (CPs). We study the effect of a net neutrality regulation on capacity investments in the market for Internet access, and on innovation in the market for content. Under the alternative...