We analyze the task-content of occupations operating in about 600 sectors of the economy with a focus on the dimensions that expose workers to contagion risks during the COVID-19 epidemic. We do so in the Italian context, leveraging extremely detailed and granular information from ICP, the Italian equivalent of O*Net (the survey that describes the task content of US occupations). We find that several

This paper aims to investigate whether a wealth endowment, such as an inheritance or a gift, can increase the chances of getting divorced, using Dutch panel data for the period from 2002 to 2016. According to the literature, different factors may lead to the breakdown of a marriage; however, the role played by inherited wealth has never been explored so far. Starting from the idea that the receipt

In this paper we study the direct and indirect contributions of firms to the co-movements between Italian business cycle and those of the 10 main trading partners. In doing so, we follow the approach developed by di Giovanni et al. (Am Econ Rev 108(1): 82–108, 2018) considering the 2005–2017 period, during which Italian economy experienced two different crises. Moreover, we propose a refinement in

We investigate the relevance of targeting behavior in the labor supply decisions of New York City Taxi drivers using exogenous and transitory positive changes in labor demand. Exploiting high-frequency variations in taxi demand due to subway service disruptions, we show that drivers work more when earnings opportunities are greater both when they are above and when they are below their income target

We consider local jurisdictions where rent-seeking administrators undertake identical infrastructure projects, choosing between two contractual arrangements: traditional procurement (TP) and public-private partnership (PPP). A yardstick competition mechanism is triggered through retrospective voters’ electoral decisions. A regime with TP in one jurisdiction and PPP in the other is likely to arise when

Many estimates of the effect of the common currency on trade have been made, although a clear answer has yet to be given. This work analyses the trade effect of the euro by providing a twofold contribution. First, one of the main stylised facts that has emerged from the recent literature is that trade flows in gross terms can differ substantially from those measured in value added terms. Accordingly

According to official statistics, the incidence of absolute poverty in Italy has sharply risen from 3.6 in 2005 to 7.7 percent in 2020, and this number is likely to rise in the post-pandemic period. However, standard poverty measures only consider the monetary aspect of poverty, neglecting the multidimensional nature of the phenomenon. The last decades have offered solid empirical evidence to guide

We examine how banking supervisors affect credit at the local level by charging fines to individual banks. Using a macro approach to capture the direct effect on the fined bank and the indirect effect on the other banks operating in the local credit market, we estimate reputational, reallocation and balance sheet effects on Italian provinces over the period 2005–2016 by a fixed effects model and instrumental

This paper provides a simple model of hierarchical education to study the political determination of public education spending and its allocation between different tiers of education. The model integrates private education decisions by allowing parents, who are differentiated according to income and human capital, to top up public expenditures with private transfers. We identify four groups of households

A recent reform in the Italian labour market has modified the permanent contract by reducing firing costs. Using a discontinuity in the application of the reform, we evaluate its effect on the probability of being still employed about three and a half years later. In contrast with theoretical predictions, we find that the job survival probability is not smaller for the treated and even significantly

This paper shows that the co-movement of public revenues in the European Monetary Union (EMU) is driven by an unobserved common factor. Our empirical analysis uses yearly data covering the period 1970–2014 for 12 selected EMU member countries. We have found that this common component has a significant impact on public revenues in the majority of the countries. We highlight this common pattern in a

Today’s European wine policy is centered on a system of appellations, implemented as geographical indications (GIs), that entail significant technological regulations—restricting the varieties that may be grown, while imposing maximum yields per hectare and other rules regarding grape production and winemaking practice. This paper outlines the historical development of European wine policy under the

Sen (J Polit Econ 78:152–157, 1970) has shown the possible contrast between the social preferences of individuals and their choices. This contrast prevents, in many situations, a social choice that satisfies both Pareto-optimality and liberalism. What liberalism can mean in the field of social choice and the relevance of social organization are briefly discussed. Sen's example, using game theory, determines

In this paper we present a dynamic discrete-time model that allows to investigate the impact of risk-aversion in an oligopoly characterized by a homogeneous non-storable good, sticky prices and uncertainty. The continuous-time limit of our formulation nests the classical dynamic oligopoly model with sticky prices by Fershtman and Kamien (Econometrica 55:1151–1164, 1987) and extends it by accommodating

As alcoholic beverages play a significant role in social and economic contexts, the taxation of alcohol and its policy regulations are an inevitably complex matter. This note pays a small tribute to the great contribution made by Anderson (J Wine Econ 15(1):42–70, 2020), with a specific focus on the EU wine sector. This text is far from exhaustive but provides a starting block for a more in-depth analysis

We investigate the nexus between TV watching and the general public opinion about the impact of immigrants on the economies of destination countries using evidence from the European Social Survey. We find, as expected, that low skilled workers and less educated respondents have a more negative view, likely due to the stronger competition threat they suffer from immigrants. Second, and more surprising

The Italian wine supply chain has performed well in recent decades both in terms of profitability and success on the domestic and international markets. This is despite the fact that it is fragmented in terms of products, prices and consumption context, and, in particular, despite the fact that it is characterised by an organisation that hinders the full exploitation of economies of scale. This paradox

This short literature review on wine economics introduces the Special Issue on wine of the Italian Economic Journal. Its goal is to provide non wine experts with an overall picture of recent trends of the wine sector and of major developments of the economic literature devoted to wine markets. As the wine market deeply changed through the last decades, the first section quickly outlines these changes

This paper deals with the relationship between regulatory compliance, bureaucratic corruption, lobbying and the industrial structure of a country. We show that lobbying and bureaucratic corruption can coexist at the macro level when we allow for heterogeneity in firm size. Countries with similar level of development are often characterized by very different industrial structures: we show the implications

This paper uses learning methods and optimization techniques to investigate the determinants of shock propagation in the Euro area for the period 2001–2015. First, principal component analyses are used with country bond yields to identify sub-periods and country groups; second, influencing factors for country bond yields are investigated with random forest models; lastly, shock propagation among groups

This paper sets an endogenous fertility model with a two-sector model: one for the final goods sector and the other for child care service sector. Results of theoretical analysis indicate that the subsidy for children raises the labor share of the child care service sector and that it can increase fertility. An aging population reduces fertility and the labor share of the child care service sector

The objective of this paper is twofold: firstly, it analyzes the evolution of frauds in the Italian wine value chain over the period 2007–2015, and then, using a properly disaggregated social accounting matrix (SAM) of the Italian economy, it simulates the impact of wine frauds on the national economy in terms of growth, employment, value added and income. The wine industry is the sector most exposed

This paper provides a simple example of the utility function with two consumption goods which can be calculated by hand to produce a Giffen good. It is based on the theoretical result by Kubler et al. (Am Econ Rev 103:1034–1053, 2013). Using a model of portfolio selection with a risk-free asset and a risky asset, they showed that there always exists a parameter set which assures that the risk-free

The main objective of this paper is to study indicators of individual wine reputation and how they may affect the price of wines in Friuli Venezia Giulia. The analysis is built on the assumption that consumers base their wine purchase decisions on easily available information such as expert quality ratings and reputation builds on past awards for a wine. We estimate a hedonic pricing model using a

This paper investigates the international wine trade based on a new sophistication index (called C-Consy) focused on import flows. We posit that the sophistication level of destination countries provides relevant information on the kind of competition a product is going to meet in the final market. The sophistication level for the clients of the major world exporters is assessed for the 2006/07–2016/17

The aim of this paper is to explore how debt contracts are affected by investment in asset specialization and by the dynamics of the secondary market for collateralized productive assets. Before applying for a loan, financially constrained firms face a specificity trade-off: asset specialization increases firms’ project returns, but decreases the liquidation value of assets in the secondary market

This paper analyzes Total Factor Productivity (TFP) in five European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and UK), the USA and Japan between 1954 and 2017. It uses the common trend– common cycle (CTCC) approach to decompose series in trends and cycles. We find that the seven economies are structurally different and differently affected by similar shocks. We show that trend and cycle innovations

We build a framework to forecast out-of-sample any asset price movement in a tight window around the release of any macroeconomic indicator. As a case study, we examine the predictability of the EUR/USD exchange rate conditional on the market-based surprise in the first 60 min after the release of the United States Non-Farm Payrolls and ISM manufacturing index. We empirically investigate whether the

In this paper we provide fresh evidence on TFP performance in the Italian economy since 1995, taking into account the changing composition of primary inputs across different capital goods and employment skills, as well as technical progress embodied in different vintages of the productive assets. We first estimate a technical depreciation rate by using individual data on Italian industrial firms. We

I review recent developments in the economic analysis of crime, focusing in particular on organized crime and corruption. I first discuss the main challenges to the empirical identification of causal relationships—namely, measurement error due to endogenous reporting of crime and the fact that randomized controlled trials are rarely an option when studying crime. I then discuss recent advancements

Using a one-sector, discrete-time Ramsey model, we analyze and compare the implications for welfare, capital accumulation, and speed of convergence to the steady state of two classes of utility functions that represent Gorman preferences, namely homothetic and Stone–Geary preferences. For identical economies, we show that the preference structure does not affect only the capital dynamics and social

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