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In this paper we use a newly constructed dataset following 30,000 Italian individuals from high school to labor market and we analyze whether the gender composition of peers in high school affected their choice of college major, their academic performance and their labor market income. We leverage the fact that the composition of high school classmates (peers), within school-cohort and teacher-group, was not chosen by the students and it was as good as random. We find that male students graduating from classes with at least 80% of male peers were more likely to choose “prevalently male” (PM) college majors (Economics, Business and Engineering). However, this higher propensity to enroll in PM majors faded away during college (through transfers and attrition) so that men from classes with at least 80% of male peers in high school did not have higher probability of graduating in PM majors. They had instead worse college performance and did not exhibit any difference in income or labor market outcomes after college. We do not find significant effects on women.

How does pay-for-performance (P4P) impact productivity, multitasking, and the composition of workers in mission-oriented jobs? These are central issues in sectors like education or healthcare. We conduct a laboratory experiment, manipulating compensation and mission, to answer these questions. We find that P4P has positive effects on productivity on the incentivized dimension of effort and negative effects on the non-incentivized dimension for workers in non-mission-oriented treatments. In mission-oriented treatments, P4P generates minimal change on either dimension. Participants in the non-mission sector – but not in the mission-oriented treatments – sort on ability, with lower ability workers opting out of the P4P scheme.

In this study we review the literature on the origins and implications of family structure in historical perspective with a focus on Italian provinces. Furthermore we present newly- collected data on three of the main features of family structure: female mean age at marriage, the female celibacy rate, and the fraction of illegitimate births. The data are collected at the provincial level for 1871, the year of Italy's political unification. The analysis of the data allows us to confirm and quantify the geographic differentiation in family patterns across the country. We also illustrate the links between family structure and a set of socio-economic outcomes, in the short, medium, and long run.

In this paper we set up a simple two-type optimal nonlinear income tax model where the single-crossing condition is violated, and we characterize the properties of a second-best optimum by considering the entire second-best Pareto frontier. The violation of single-crossing is generated by the assumption that agents dier both in terms of market abilities and in terms of their needs for a work-related good. Our analysis highlights several non-standard features of a second-best optimum. In particular, we show that a nonlinear income tax may allow the government to convert a pooling laissez-faire equilibrium into a separating equilibrium, that the second-best Pareto frontier may be discontinuous, and that a second-best optimum may not preserve the income ranking prevailing under laissez-faire. Finally, we also show that at a second-best optimum the labor supply of some agents might be distorted even though no self-selection constraint is (locally) binding in equilibrium.

ABSTRACT In this paper we allude to a novel role played by the non-linear income tax system in the presence of adverse selection in the labor market due to asymmetric information between workers and firms. We show that an appropriate choice of the tax schedule enables the government to affect the wage distribution by controlling the transmission of information in the labor market. This represents an additional channel through which the government can foster the pursuit of its redistributive goals.

This paper integrates efficiency wage setting in the theory of optimal redistributive income taxation. In doing so, we use a model with two skill-types, where efficiency wage setting characterizes the labor market faced by the low-skilled, whereas the high-skilled face a conventional, competitive labor market. There are two types of jobs in this economy; a low-demanding job which can be carried out by everybody, and a high-demanding job which can only be carried out by the high-skilled, meaning that a potential mimicker may either adopt a conventional income-replication strategy or a job-replication strategy. In this framework, we show that the marginal income tax implemented for the high-skilled is negative under plausible assumptions. The marginal income tax facing the low-skilled can be either positive or negative in general, even if employment-related motives for policy intervention typically contribute to an increase in this marginal tax. An increase in the unemployment benefit contributes to relax the binding self-selection constraint (irrespective of the strategy adopted by a potential mimicker), which makes this instrument particularly useful from the perspective of redistribution.

We use the theory of planned behavior to investigate the role of attitudes, norms and perceived behavioural control on short-term and long-term fertility intentions, using data from Norway (N = 1,307). There is some evidence that, net of other background variables, positive scores on these factors makes it easier to establish concrete childbearing plans, especially among parents. Subjective norms are particularly important among both parents and childless adults, while perceptions of behavioural control have no additional effect once the actual life situation is taken into account. Attitudes are not important in decisions about the timing of becoming a parent, probably because the main issue for childless adults is not the timing, but the decision to have a child or not.

ABSTRACT We investigate the electoral effects of early exposure to Silvio Berlusconi’s commercial television network, Mediaset, exploiting its staggered expansion across Italian munic- ipalities during the 1980s. We find that municipalities with access to Mediaset prior to 1985 exhibited greater support for Berlusconi’s party in 1994, when he first ran for office, and in the four following elections. This effect cannot be attributed to pro- Berlusconi news bias since no news programs were broadcast on Mediaset until 1991, when access to the network was already ubiquitous. We discuss alternative channels through which exposure to non-news content may have influenced Mediaset viewers’ political attitudes.

The history of prices has played a key role in the economic history of the preindustrial world. In this field, Allen’s paper (2001) set a milestone by proposing the calculation of a welfare ratio that would allow a comparison among different areas of the world and different times. Nevertheless, we consider that this method as is has reached its limits and needs major improvements. We therefore propose a change of scope that would allow the establishment of the real consumption-possibility frontier of families—the actual unit of production and consumption in Early Modern times. We also revise the barebone baskets that have been used until now, replacing them with consumer baskets that approach, to a greater degree, the true consumption patterns of different kinds of families. By focusing on two widely documented cases—Madrid and Mexico City—we conclude, first, that consumers had regular access to a wider array of products than previously assumed; second, that in the 18th century prices evolved in Madrid in a relatively similar way to the large cities of Western Europe, even if Madrid constituted an exception in the Castilian context, where inflation was more intense during the second half of the aforementioned century; and, third, that volatility in the consumer price index was around 10% higher for unskilled workers than for skilled workers. However, the volatility deduced from our price indices is significantly lower than the one calculated using the typical barebone method.

The study of network representations of physical, biological, and social phenomena has developed rapidly in recent years. This paper presents a review of important results and methods of the science of networks with an application to the field of socio-economic systems. The basic definitions and computational techniques are described and the effects of a networks topology on its dynamic properties are examined and illustrated using a tourism destination as a case study (Elba, Italy). A static structural characterization of the network formed by destination stakeholders is followed by a dynamic analysis of the information diffusion process. The outcomes and the implications of this analysis for improving destination management are discussed.