The effect of unemployment on mortality is the object of a lively literature. However, this literature is characterized by sharply conflicting results. We revisit this issue and suggest that the relationship might be non-linear. We use regional (NUTS 2) data from 23 European countries to...

This paper investigates the response of the shadow economy to banking crises. Our empirical analysis, based on a large sample of countries, suggests that the informal sector is a powerful buffer, which expands at times of banking crises and absorbs a large proportion of the fall in official...

Is government size the desirable response to macroeconomic risk, or it is the consequence of distorted political incentives with adverse effects on macroeconomic volatility? This paper reconsiders the mutual interdependence between government size and growth volatility in a large sample of...

In this paper we estimate a model where inflation, a measure of de facto central bank independence and an index of de facto exchange rate regime are simultaneously determined by a set of economic, political and institutional variables. De facto central bank independence is hampered by...

The empirical distinction between de facto and de jure exchange rate regimes raises a number of interesting questions. Which factors may induce a de facto peg? Why do countries enforce a peg but do not announce it? Why do countries 'break their promises'? In this paper we show that a stable...

The empirical distinction between de facto and de jure exchange rate regimes raises a number of interesting questions. Which factors may induce a de facto peg? Why do countries enforce a peg but do not announce it? Why do countries "break their promises"? We show that a stable socio-political...

This paper presents an application of the hedonic approach to measure the monetary price of social relations. We use individual-level data for housing and labor markets in 103 Italian cities to estimate the price of relational amenities and construct monetary indexes of quality of relational...