The main objective of this paper is to investigate the way subsidization mechanisms affect the cost efficiency of public transit systems, taking into account the role played by the environmental characteristics of each network. A cost frontier model is estimated for a seven-year panel of 44...

In this paper we investigate the economic rationality of the bed downsizing process, characterising the hospital industry worldwide in the last decades, as a measure to control public health care expenditure. Considering a sample of Italian hospitals, we provide fresh evidence on the factor...

In Italy, as in other countries around the world, recent reforms share the goal of increasing the fiscal autonomy of lower tiers of governments, from Regions to Municipalities, in order to align spending with funding responsibilities and increase the efficiency in the provision of essential...

In this paper we study the incidence of specific taxes in the Italian fuel markets, and exploit these findings to simulate the effects of fiscal policies aimed at mitigating oil price fluctuations. We estimate several reduced-form specifications, using as dependent variables the equilibrium...

The objective of the paper is to study the disciplining role of both market forces and regional governments own resources in the provision of educational services. The historical evolution of school regulation in Italy and Spain (in particular regarding the funding of private schools run by...

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 shadow economy by proposing a reinterpretation of the traditional Currency Demand Approach (CDA) a là Tanzi. In particular, we introduce three main innovations. First, we take a direct measure of cash transactions (the flow of cash...

All over the world, recent legislative reforms share the goal of increasing fiscal autonomy of lower tiers of governments. The aim of this policy is to reduce vertical fiscal imbalance (VFI) and enhance the efficiency in the provision of public services, via increased accountability of local...