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This article provides a picture of long-term developments in the relationship between population and resources in Northern Italy that takes fully into account climate. It analyzes both the slow underlying development of climatic conditions over the centuries  (in the theoretical framework of the Little Ice Age) and the consequences of short-term periods of heightened instability. The most severe famines are shown to be events triggered by climatic and environmental factors operating at a time when the maximum carrying capacity of the system had been reached or, at least, when the population was exerting considerable pressure on the potential for food production. This is the case of the famine of the 1590s, the greatest demographic catastrophe of a non-epidemic nature to strike Northern Italy since the Black Death and up to the end of the eighteenth century. The article also analyzes long-term paths of agrarian innovation, suggesting that most (but not all) of this was consistent with Boserup's idea of chain-reactions of innovations induced by demographic pressure. These processes, though, were too slow to compensate for a rapidly growing population. Finally, the article provides a periodization in which the period between the famine of the 1590s and the great plague pandemic of 1630 is shown to be the crucial turning point in how population dynamics, climate and agrarian innovation interacted.

We consider the case when it is of interest to study the different states experienced over time by a set of subjects, focusing on the resulting trajectories as a whole rather than on the occurrence ofspecific events. Such situation occurs commonly in a variety of settings, for example in social and biomedical studies. Model‐based approaches, such as multistate models or Hidden Markov models, are being used increasingly to analyze trajectories and to study their relationships with a set of explanatory variables. The different assumptions underlying different models typically make the comparison of their performances difficult. In this work we introduce a novel way to accomplish this task, based on microsimulation‐based predictions. We discuss some criteria to evaluate one model and/or to compare competing models with respect to their ability to generate trajectories similar to the observed ones.

Understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education requires a solid grasp of the impact of student autonomy on learning. In this paper, we estimate the effect of an increased autonomy policy for higher-performing students on short- and longer-term school outcomes. We exploit an institutional setting with high demand for autonomy in randomly formed classrooms. Identification comes from a natural experiment that allowed higher-achieving students to miss 30 percent more classes without penalty. Using a difference-in-difference-in-differences approach, we find that allowing higher-achieving students to skip class more often improves their performance in high-stakes subjects and increases their university admission outcomes. Higher-achieving students in more academically diverse classrooms exerted more autonomy when allowed to.

ABSTRACT Evidence suggests that the significantly higher life expectancy levels witnessed over the past centuries are associated with a lower concentration of survival times, both cross-country and over time. The purpose of this work is to study the relationships that exist among models for the evolution of survival distributions, longevity measures, and concentration. We first study relationships between concentration and cohort longevity through empirical comparisons. We then propose a family of survival models that can be used to capture such trends in longevity and concentration across survival distributions.

ABSTRACT During the demographic transition that in Europe tended to take place from the early 19th to the end of the 20th century, the population in European countries and its overseas offshoots increased by a factor of five or less, which is low compared to the increase now taking place in most other regions of the world. This study provides simulations showing what global and regional population sizes would be if the rest of the world experienced similar population growth patterns as were observed in Europe. European culture distinguished itself through choices that led to the European marriage pattern, characterized by late marriage, significant shares not marrying, low levels of extramarital childbearing, and comparatively low fertility. One important consequence was the relatively low population growth characterizing the cultures, religions, and ethno-linguistic groups where the European marriage pattern was dominant.

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to understand how traditional societies faced a period of general crises and more specifically, which behaviours were adopted to limit the increase of local socio-economic inequality. Thus, this paper focuses on a boundary area (the Geradadda) disputed by Milan and Venice that was constantly crossed and occupied by armies during the long period of the Italian Wars (1494-1559). Analysing the management of local finances, and specifically the local commons, it is possible to show the different ways in which these societies organized themselves and, generally, how economic growth occurred in the early modern period.

ABSTRACT This paper examines how companies’ capital structure is affected by the corporate income tax system. Our analysis employs confidential company-level corporation tax return data in the UK. Our main identification strategy is based on variation in companies␣ marginal tax rates due to the existence of kinks in the corporate tax rate schedule. Using a dynamic adjustment model of capital structure, we find a positive and substantial long-run tax effect on companies' financial leverage. We show that there are considerable discrepancies between estimates of taxable profits reported in tax return data and in financial statements and that the estimated tax effect on capital structure using financial statements is likely to be biased downward. We find that companies adjust their capital structures gradually in response to changes in the marginal tax rate. Moreover, we find that the external leverage of domestic stand-alone companies and of multinational companies responds strongly to corporate tax incentives

Discussion on the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on African Americans has been at center stage since the outbreak of the epidemic in the United States. To present day, however, lack of race-disaggregated individual data has prevented a rigorous assessment of the extent of this phenomenon and the reasons why blacks may be particularly vulnerable to the disease. Using individual and georeferenced death data collected daily by the Cook County Medical Examiner, we provide first evidence that race does affect COVID-19 outcomes. The data confirm that in Cook County blacks are overrepresented in terms of COVID-19 related deaths since—as of June 16, 2020—they constitute 35 percent of the dead, so that they are dying at a rate 1.3 times higher than their population share. Furthermore, by combining the spatial distribution of mortality with the 1930s redlining maps for the Chicago area, we obtain a block group level panel dataset of weekly deaths over the period January 1, 2020-June 16, 2020, over which we establish that, after the outbreak of the epidemic, historically lower-graded neighborhoods display a sharper increase in mortality, driven by blacks, while no pretreatment differences are detected. Thus, we uncover a persistence influence of the racial segregation induced by the discriminatory lending practices of the 1930s, by way of a diminished resilience of the black population to the shock represented by the COVID-19 outbreak. A heterogeneity analysis reveals that the main channels of transmission are socioeconomic status and household composition, whose influence is magnified in combination with a higher black share.

ABSTRACT This research note presents and compares some first findings obtained by the project EINITE-Economic Inequality across Italy and Europe, 1300-1800. The main aim of the project is to investigate long-term trends in economic inequality in Italy and in Europe. Here we compare previously published data for Piedmont with some early findings for Lombardy and Veneto, in order to provide a broad picture of northern Italian inequality. The period we cover is particularly long (13th–early 19th centuries) for Piedmont, while for Lombardy and Veneto a somewhat shorter period is considered (15th–18th centuries). We provide an in-depth analysis of the archival sources usable to study long-term changes in economic inequality in northern Italy, and we provide some key measures of inequality over time (Gini indexes, top percentiles). We find evidence of a tendency for Italian inequality to increase almost everywhere and almost continuously over time, since about 1400 or 1450, confirming what has been suggested by previous studies that focused on Piedmont and Tuscany.

Public procurement outcomes depend on the ability of the procuring agency to select well-performing suppliers. Should public administrations be granted more or less discretion in their decision making? Using Italian data on municipal public works tendered in the period 2009-2013, we study how a reform extending the scope of bureaucrat discretion affects supplier selection. We find that the share of contracts awarded to politically connected firms increases while the (ex-ante) labor productivity of the winning firm decreases, thus suggesting a potential misallocation of the public funds. These effects are concentrated among lower quality procuring agencies.