We have assembled a new dataset and we have empirically investigated the effects of subcontracting on the bidding price in auctions for the awarding of public contracts in Italy. The required qualification for firms aiming to bid for Italian public contracts determines different subcontracting...

In this paper, we study bidding behavior by firms in beauty-contest auctions, i.e. auctions in which the winning bid is the one which gets closest to some function (average) of all submitted bids. Using a dataset on public procurement beauty-contest auctions in Italy and exploiting a change in...

In this paper we investigate how tightening fiscal constraints (e.g., through intergovernmental transfer cuts) can lead local governments to postpone investments’ payments. We first provide a simple model showing how local governments can use arrears to relax their short-run financial...

We study differently framed incentives in dynamic laboratory buyer-seller relationships with multi-tasking and endogenous matching. The experimental design tries to mitigate the role of social preferences and intrinsic motivation. Absent explicit incentives, effort is low in both tasks. Their...

We study differently framed incentives in dynamic laboratory buyerseller relationships with multi-tasking and endogenous matching. The experimental design tries to mitigate the role of social preferences and intrinsic motivation. Absent explicit incentives, effort is low in both tasks. Their...

This paper presents new estimates of the economic benefits from economic and political integration. Using the synthetic counterfactuals method, we estimate how GDP per capita and labour productivity would have behaved for the countries that joined the European Union (EU) in the 1973, 1980s, 1995...

This article investigates the effects of different job categories on households' likelihood of experiencing financial distress. Given imperfect financial markets and the absence of unemployment subsidies, households with less secure jobs are likely to experience drops in income more frequently...

This paper presents new estimates of the economic benefits from economic and political integration. Using the synthetic counterfactuals method, we estimate how GDP per capita and labour productivity would have behaved for the countries that joined the European Union (EU) in the 1973, 1980s, 1995...

This paper uses the case of Italy to investigate the effects of local financial and socio-institutional development on productivity. The analysis employs firm-level productivity data and exploits variations in banking sector development, judicial enforcement, and social capital across Italian...

This study investigates employment growth in the business activities supported by the European Cohesion Policy. We examine cross-industry, cross-regional variations in a sample of fourteen manufacturing industries and seventy European regions (in Germany, Italy and Spain) and take advantage of...