We exploit a unique dataset merging data on individual socio-economic characteristics and political participation in an Italian municipality to investigate the relationship between ethnic diversity in residential neighborhoods and individuals’ propensity to vote. We document a sizable negative...

We exploit a unique dataset merging data on individual socio-economic characteristics and political participation in an Italian municipality to investigate the relationship between ethnic diversity in residential neighborhoods and individuals' propensity to vote. We document a sizable negative...

In this paper we perform an empirical analysis to investigate the impact of socio-economic heterogeneity on electoral turnout. We exploit a unique dataset on local elections in an Italian municipality, which merges information on socio-economic characteristics of about 370.000 individuals with...

We study the effects of changes in household structure–marriage, divorce, widowhood, and the presence of children of different ages–on individual-level voter turnout. To this end, we assemble a unique voter-level panel dataset spanning four elections in a large Italian municipality. The data...

We empirically investigate whether the persistence of politicians in political institutions affects the innovation activity of firms. We use 12,000 firm-level observations from three waves of the Italian Observatory over Small and Medium Enterprises, and introduce a measure of political...

This paper develops a model of endogenous growth with overlapping generations to investigate the joint determination of social security, public investment and growth in a small open economy. We argue that a pure pay-as-you-go system provides the taxpayers with the incentives to support...

In this paper, we show that the positive estimated coefficient of average social security expenditure, often detected in cross-country growt regression, can not be imputed to reverse causation, that is on economic growth pulling social security expenditure, nor to omitted variables or other...

In this paper we develop an endogenous growth model of open economies, where countries differ with respect to the quality of property rights. Within this context, we analyze two types of reforms. First, we look at growth and welfare effects of removing capital controls, given the degree of...

This paper proposes an explanation for why universal suffrage has not implied larger rich-to-poor transfers of wealth. The main argument is that, in the presence of borrowing constraints, if current taxation finances (at least partially) policies that redistribute future income, the poor, who...

Equally, poor countries display similar compulsory schooling laws but different levels of child labor and school attendance. This paper provides an explanation for the existence of child labor, which relies on the imperfect enforcement of compulsory schooling laws and is consistent with the...