In a decentralized setting, are policy targets imposed by the central government on local elected officials effective? And when? We address these questions in Italy, where the central government has set a target for childcare coverage at the municipal level for Southern regions since 2007. We...

In order to analyze the civil justice congestion problem, we propose a model in which institutional elements are considered to shape different forms of the payoff function of risk neutral agents who have to decide whether or not to file a suit. Our approach is twofold. First, we use a model with...

This paper is an empirical survey on both the provision and the funding of childcare services in Italy. To this purpose, national financial laws, regional laws as well as Italian municipalities’ budgets are analyzed. First of all we describe the funding mechanism of the service pointing out...

Childcare availability is regarded as an important factor in the evaluation of public policies for both sustaining fertility and increasing women participation to the labour market. However, the recent empirical literature shows that the extension of the public supply of childcare mainly crowds...

In a decentralized setting, are policy targets imposed by the central government on local elected officials effective? And when? We address these questions in Italy, where the central government has set a target for childcare coverage at the municipal level for Southern regions since 2007. We...