Organized crime is a worldwide, widespread phenomenon, which affects developing as well as developed countries, and entails deep economic and social consequences. The purpose of this study is to enhance our understanding of organized crime activities. By using an innovative data set on Sicilian...

In response to recently growing literature investigating the relationship between environment and institutions, this study investigates how rule of law influences the level of income at the turning point of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). Using an alternative specification of EKC that...

The impact of political institutions on policy outcomes has gained much attention in the literature over the last years. The aim of this paper is to test whether the impact of constitutions on economic outcomes is direct. By introducing citizens' political participation, rather than politicians'...

This paper uses a fundamental Q model of investment to consider the role played by financing frictions in agricultural investment decisions, controlling econometrically for censoring, heterogeneity and errors-in-variables. Our findings suggest that farmer's investment decisions are not driven by...

The decoupling of direct payments from production, introduced in the recent reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is expected to make production decisions more market-oriented and farmers more productive. However, ex-post analyses of the productivity of farms have yet to uncover any...

It is difficult to estimate the impact of geographic clustering on productivity because of endogeneity issues. I use birthplace-cluster distance as an instrumental variable for the incidence of clustering of prominent classical composers born between 1750 and 1899. I find that geographic...

The relationship between conflict and artistic output is ambiguous. This paper proposes an explanation for the contradiction in research, which we term the war-art puzzle. We employ a global sample of 115 prominent classical composers born after 1800 and link their annual productivity with the...

In this paper we explore whether, and to what extent, the incidence of war affects the migration intensity of 164 prominent classical composers born after 1800. We model the aggregate stock of composers in a country and find that periods of war correspond negatively with the number of artists....

In this article we explore to what extent the incidence of war affects the probability to emigrate of 164 prominent classical composers born after 1800. This study provides first insights on the decision making process of the forced migrant, the associated dynamics of conflict-induced migration...

We analyze the determinants and dynamics of a highly protected housing market. Based on Swiss data for the time period 1990 to 2009 we model house prices and construction activity. We find that house prices exhibit a positive association with construction price, working age population as well as...