A state school system should be expected to reduce income inequality and make intergenerational mobility easier. It is therefore somewhat surprising to observe that Italy, in comparison to the US, displays less inequality between occupational incomes but a lower degree of intergenerational...

This paper documents the existence of striking regional differences in the reported behaviour of employees working within the same firm but in different Italian regions. In particular, the frequency of recorded and punished misconduct episodes is significantly higher among employees working in...

An important component of the long-run cost of a war is the loss of human capital suffered by children in schooling age who receive less education because of the war. This paper shows that in the European countries involved in WWII, children who were ten years old during the conflict were...

In this paper we analyze the relationship between unemployment and consumption. We study this relationship with panel data on households in five countries. Our empirical relsuts indicate that an increase in the duration of unemployment spells of male household heads is associated with smaller...

The rapid growth of the US financial sector has driven policy debate on whether it is socially desirable. I propose a heterogeneous agent model with asymmetric information and matching frictions that produces a tradeoff between finance and entrepreneurship. By becoming bankers, talented...