Many employment relationships concede rents to workers. Depending on the political institutions, the presence of such rents allows employers to use the threat of withdrawing them to control their workers' political behavior, such as their votes in the absence of secret ballot. We examine the...

Engagement in non-agricultural activities in rural areas can be classified into survival-led or opportunity-led. Survival-led diversification would decrease inequality by increasing the incomes of poorer households and thus reduce poverty. By contrast, opportunity-led diversification would...

Il saggio (work in progress) tratta della necessità di potenziare nel nostro paese le attività di miglioramento della regolazione (better regulation), anche attraverso crescenti iniziative di valutazione d'impatto della stessa. In particolare, l'autore si sofferma sull'analisi delle...

It is now stylized that, while the impact of ownership on firm productivity is unclear, product market competition can be expected to have a positive impact on productivity, thereby making entry (or contestability of markets) desirable. Traditional research in the context of entry has explored...

Political corruption is a concern of many modern democracies. It weakens democratic institutions, restricts public services, and lowers productivity undermining economic development. Yet despite its importance, our understanding of what determines corruption is limited. This paper uses a novel...

It has been recently argued that the informal sector of the labor market in a developing economy shows a dual structure with one part of it being competitive to the formal sector and another part being the result of market segmentation. To test this hypothesis we formulate an econometric model...

By using official time series of the Italian evaded VAT base (Ministry of Finance) for the period 1980-2004 we investigate empirically the long-run characteristics of tax evasion and the relationship with the tax burden. We focus on three important issues not analyzed so far. First, using...

Conventional wisdom suggests that lobbying is the preferred mean for exerting political influence in rich countries and corruption the preferred one in poor countries. Analyses of their joint effects are understandably rare. This paper provides a theoretical framework that focus on the...

How heterogeneous are countries with respect to economic freedom? This is an interesting empirical question since, if we can discover different groups of countries according to their economic freedom indicators, we will be able to identify which steps are required to foster convenient...

The article examines the specific conditions and characteristics, which underlie the development of the informal economy and competitiveness and their interrelation in transition economies. A system of competitiveness indicators has been defined, which were subsequently, taking into account the...