We study how the closeness of electoral race affect the number of invalid ballots under the traditional paper-ballot voting technology. Using a large dataset from the Italian parliamentary elections in 1994-2001, we find a strong positive correlation between the closeness of electoral race and...

Is the decline in voter turnout an indicator of a worse health of a representative democracy? We build a simple probabilistic-voting model with endogenous turnout to address this question. We ?nd that a lower turnout caused by a higher cost of voting implies higher political rents. Contrarily, a...

Mission-driven nonprofi?t organizations compete for donations through fundrais- ing activities. Such competition can lead to inefficient outcomes, if nonpro?fits impose ex- ternalities on each others? output. This paper studies the design of sustainable voluntary cooperation agreements, using a...

Randomized controlled trials (RCT) have become a dominant empirical tool in applied economics. The internal validity of RCTs crucially depends on the (implicit) assumption that the procedure assigning subjects to treatment and control groups has no effect on behavior. We show theoretically that...

We analyze the effects of income support on unemployment and welfare dynamics when stigma is attached to welfare provision. Stigma has been modeled in the literature as a cost of welfare participation; in this paper we analyze the effect of income support on unemployment and welfare dynamics by...

Aim of this work is to evaluate the overall effect of social origins on secondary school track enrolment in Italy, Germany and Netherlands, allowing for consistent cross country comparisons. PISA 2003 is employed. Track choices are assumed to depend on student's ability and social origins; since...

In this paper we propose a non-equilibrium model in order to explain the search behavior of unemployed workers. This modeling strategy, framed in a rational choice paradigm, allows us to investigate the effects of negative duration dependence in the out-of-unemployment hazard rate, accounting...

Negative duration dependence in the exit rate from social assistance is an important issue addressed in the dynamic welfare participation literature. If heterogeneity is properly modelled, the decline of the exit rate is ascribed to a progressive reduction of the capability to get off welfare...

We investigate the effects of income support on unemployment and welfare dynamics when stigma is attached to welfare provision. Stigma has been modelled in the literature as a cost of entry into welfare. Allowing for psychological factors, we assume that with stigma welfare provision leads to...