The upward trend in the incidence of caesarean deliveries is a widespread stylised fact in many countries. Several studies have argued that it does not reflect, at least in part, patients' needs but that it is also influenced by other factors, such as providers/physicians incentives. Not...

The aim of this work is to identify the determinants of health spending differentials among Italian regions, which could highlight the existence of potential margins for savings. The analysis exploits a dataset for the panel of the 21 Italian regions starting in the early 1990s and ending in...

The aim of this work is to identify the determinants of health spending differentials among Italian regions, which could highlight the existence of potential margins for savings. The analysis exploits a dataset for the panel of the 21 Italian regions starting in the early 1990s and ending in...

The quality of the institutional environment is a crucial issue in understanding the effective outcome of fiscal decentralization initiatives. However, there has been so far very little work on the subject. In this paper we contribute to fill this gap by considering the municipalities belonging...

We contribute to the debate on how to assess the size of the underground or shadow economy with a reinterpretation of the traditional Currency Demand Approach (CDA) à la Tanzi. We introduce three main innovations. First, we take as dependent variable in the money demand equation a direct...

Anti-money laundering regulations have been centred on the “Know-Your-Customer” rule so far, overlooking the fact that criminal proceedings that need to be laundered are usually represented by cash. This is the first study which tries to provide an answer to the question of how much of cash...

The presence of extensive housing subsidies characterises the current tax systems as inefficient. In this paper, we study whether inefficiency is the price to be paid to improve equity, by assessing the actual distributive impact of housing taxation on Italian households. We concentrate on the...