Recent theories on fiscal decentralization support the view that sub-national governments who finance a larger share of their spending with taxes raised locally by themselves are more accountable towards their citizens. Whilst evidence on improvements in spending efficiency is relatively common,...

We investigate whether the effects of schoolmates' gender and average parental education on educational achievement, employment and earnings vary with individual family characteristics such as the gender of siblings and own parental education. We find that the benefits from exposure to...

We estimate the effect of winning a mayoral election on long-run licit earnings, which plays a key role in the selection of local political leaders. We use Italian administrative social security data from 1995 to 2017 and a sharp regression discontinuity design based on close elections. Over a...