We present JAS 2, a new Java platform which aims at providing a unique simulation tool for discrete-event simulations, including agent-based and dynamic microsimulation models. JAS 2 is not released as a self-contained stand-alone application for model development. With the aim to develop...

This paper exploits a national university reform, introduced in Italy with an exogenous timing and an unintended delay of treatment scheme, to identify the impact on higher education participation of shortening the degree duration of the first-tier university studies. Using a degree-specific...

Theoretical considerations suggest that workers holding temporary contracts should accumulate more general human capital than workers under permanent contracts. Using matched employer-employee data, we find empirical support for this hypothesis, by showing that dismissed temporary workers are...

Agent-based (AB) models are considered a promising tool for macroeconomic analysis. However, until estimation of AB models become a common practice, they will not get to the center stage of macroeconomics. Two difficulties arise in the estimation of AB models: (i) the criterion function has no...

We develop a theory of endogenous regimes transitions (with a focus on democratic consolidation), which emphasizes the role of political culture and of its interaction with political institutions. Political culture re?flects the extent of individual commitment across citizens to defend democracy...

The goal of this paper (in Italian) is to assess the impact of consumers’ incentives to building renovations – introduced in Italy in 1997 by means of tax reimbursements – on construction sector’s economic activity. Our analysis – which absent any sectional variability in the policy...

This paper frames and summarises the main contributions of a book-length project that aims to explain the recent rise of Spain’s firms in complex service sectors, and the parallel fall in skill- and capital-intensive manufacturing sectors, through an analysis of the institutional structure...

Using declassified Federal Bureau of Narcotics records on 800 US Mafia mem- bers active in the 1950s and 1960s, and on their connections within the organized crime network, I estimate network effects on gangsters’ economic status. Lacking information on criminal proceeds, I measure economic...

We use twenty years of Italian administrative panel data, a uniquely rich source of information on internal migration experiences, to identify the role of unobserved worker characteristics in the selection and returns to migrants. We propose and implement a novel iterative estimation method for...

We propose a simple test that uses information on workers’ mobility, wages and firms’ profits to identify the sign and strength of assortative matching. The basic intuition underlying our empirical strategy is that, in the presence of positive (negative) assortative matching, good workers...