This paper has two goals. 1) To evaluate the sustainability of Italian public deficits according to the methodology developed by Trehan and Walsh (1988, 1991) and Bohn (2004); 2) To analyze how the determinants of debt creation evolved in the years following the Maastricht Treaty and how this...

Based on the literature on public procurement regulation, we use an Agent-Based Model to assess the performance of different selection procedures. Specifically, we aim at investigating whether and how the inclusion of reputation of firms in the public procurement selection process affects the...

In this paper, we aim to assess how a specific socio-institutional environment, identified according to the level of corruption, may affect the access to credit for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Using a sample of 68,115 observations - drawn from the ECB-SAFE survey -...

This paper investigates the impact of corruption on economic growth in the Italian Regions. We estimate a dynamic growth model for the period 1980-2004 addressing both the potential bias of the measures of corruption and the endogeneity between corruption and economic development. We find strong...

Empirical tests of the theories on the relationship between political competition and economic performance generate a puzzle: data tend to support the theory at the lower levels of government, but not in panels of countries. We argue that the larger set of policy instruments reduces the tax...

Understanding corruption is at the heart of treating the dysfunctionality of many countries' public sectors. Yet, most corruption research suffers from one common problem: There is no "objective" measure of public-sector corruption for a cross-section of countries. Most studies on the...

Understanding corruption is at the heart of treating the dysfunctionality of many countries' public sectors. Yet, most corruption research suffers from one common problem: There is no "objective" measure of public-sector corruption for a cross-section of countries. Most studies on the...

We examine whether and to what extent political institutions explain different performances in income redistribution across countries. In particular, we first review available sources of data and measures of income redistribution, discussing the pros and cons of each one. Second, we outline a...