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...

The general elections held in February 2013 marked an earthquake in Italian politics. The two coalitions on the center-left and center-right that had governed Italy alternately between 1996 and 2011 together lost 11 million votes compared to the 2008 elections. The explanations advanced for this...

This paper aims to analyze phenomena such as the diffusion of non-standard work and the incidence of low-paid work from a distinctive, and generally neglected angle: that of occupations. Much can be gained from a more fine-grained analysis of labour market dynamics that casts light on which...

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...

In all European countries, emergency policy measures have been introduced in order to counteract the employment consequences of the economic crisis. In the context of variously composed anticrisis packages, many European countries have used Short-Time Work (STW) schemes, that is measures to...

This paper will be published in M. Magara and S. Sacchi (eds.), The Politics of Social and Industrial Reform, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, forthcoming in 2013.

This paper analyzes the evolution of employment policy in Italy, focusing on the period from the mid-1990s to the economic crisis started in 2008. Two aspects of the policy change process are taken into consideration: its nature and its dynamics. As regards the former, three dimensions -...