In most modern democracies elected officials can work in the private sector while appointed in parliament. We show that when the political and market sectors are not mutually exclusive, a trade-off arises between the quality of elected officials and the effort they exert in political life. If...

The diffusion of Temporary Work Agency (TWA) jobs originated a harsh policy debate and ambiguous empirical evidence. Results for the US, based on quasi-experimental evidence, suggest that a TWA assignment decreases the probability of finding a stable job, while results for Europe, based on the...

The wage paid to politicians affects both the choice of citizens to run for an elective office and the performance of those who are appointed. First, if skilled individuals shy away from politics because of higher opportunities in the private sector, an increase in politicians' pay may change...

This paper exploits the available empirical evidence in order to shed light on the take-o. of temporary employment in Italy. This kind of non-standard employment was recently legalized by the law 196/1997. The national data set of “Manpower” -one of the leading agencies in the Italian...

This paper studies the effect of production volatility on the duration of temporary contracts. A simple theoretical model is developed, in order to depict the choice of contract duration made by a firm recruiting temps to deal with activity peaks. Assuming that the hiring of a new temp is...

This article presents a Stata program (sensatt) that implements the sensitivity analysis for matching estimators proposed by Ichino, Mealli, and Nannicini (Journal of Applied Econometrics , forthcoming). The analysis simulates a potential confounder to assess the robustness of the estimated...

Theory predicts that the majoritarian electoral system should produce more targeted redistribution and lower politicians’ rents than proportional representation. We test these predictions using micro data for the mixed-member Italian House of Representatives, which allow us to sidestep the...

It is commonly argued that crises open up a window of opportunity to implement policies that otherwise would not have the necessary political backing. The argument goes that the political cost of deep reforms declines as crises unravel structural problems that need to be urgently rectified and...