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We develop a statistical discrimination model where groups of workers (males-females) differ in the observability of their productivity signals by the evaluation committee. We assume that the informativeness of the productivity signals depends on the match between the potential worker and the interviewer: when both parties have similar backgrounds, the signal is likely to be more informative. Under this “homo-accuracy” bias, the group that is most represented in the evaluation committee generates more accurate signals, and, consequently, has a greater incentive to invest in human capital. This generates a discrimination trap. If, for some exogenous reason, one group is initially poorly evaluated (less represented into the evaluation committee), this translates into lower investment in human capital of individuals of such group, which leads to lower representation in the evaluation committee in the future, generating a persistent discrimination process. We explore this dynamic process and show that quotas may be effective to deal with this discrimination trap. In particular, we show that introducing a “temporary” quota allows to reach a steady state equilibrium with a higher welfare than the one obtained in the decentralized equilibrium in which talented workers of the discriminated group decide not to invest in human capital. Finally, if the discriminated group is underrepresented in the worker population (race), restoring efficiency requires to implement a “permanent” system of quotas.

We develop a method for the derivation of expert-based stochastic population forecasts. The full probability distribution of forecasts is specified by expert opinions on future developments, elicited conditional on the realization of high, central, low scenarios. The procedure is applied to forecast the Italian population, using scenarios from the Italian National Statistical Office (ISTAT) and the Statistical Office of the European Union (EUROSTAT).

We analyze the relationship between natives' attitudes towards citizenship acquisition for foreigners and trust. Our hypothesis is that, in sub-Saharan Africa, the slave trade represents the deep factor behind contemporary attitudes toward citizenship, with more intense exposure to historical slave exports for an individual's ethnic group being associated with contemporary distrust for strangers, and in turn opposition to citizenship laws that favor the inclusion of foreigners. We find that individuals who are more trusting do show more positive attitudes towards the acquisition of citizenship at birth for children of foreigners, that these attitudes are also negatively related to the intensity of the slave trade, and that the underlying link between trust and the slave trade is confirmed. Alternative factors - conflict, kinship, and witchcraft beliefs - that, through trust, may affect attitudes toward citizenship, are not generating the same distinctive pattern of linkages emerging from the slave trade.

ABSTRACT This paper reassesses the relationship between tax structure and long run income, using as indicators of tax structure both a new series of implicit tax rates based on Mendoza et al. (1997) and tax ratios, adopting a dynamic panel estimation strategy, and explicitly accounting for cross-section dependence in the panel. When implicit tax rates are used, the paper shows, the link between tax structure and long run income per capita is not robust to the adoption of different assumptions on observable and unobservable heterogeneity across countries. When tax ratios are used, there is some evidence of a negative impact of labour taxation on long run income, but this result is shown to capture non-fiscal effects coming from the evolution of the labour share. Turning to the short run, the research presented here finds strong evidence of a positive effect on per capita income of a tax shift from labour and capital taxation towards consumption taxation, which provides support for fiscal devaluations.

The paper provides a framework of how culture affects citizens' subjective well-being. According to self-determination theory, well-being is driven by the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs: autonomy, relatedness and competence. We assess if and to what extent generalized trust and the values of obedience and respect influence the Europeans’ satisfaction of these needs, controlling for income and education. We find positive impact of generalized morality (i.e. high trust and respect, low obedience). Results are robust to different checks for endogeneity, including instrumental variable regressions at country, regional and individual level as well as to panel-data estimations.

This paper shows and explains lower wealth inequality in East Asia than Western Europe over the very long-run, 1300-2000. A rich new dataset of village censuses in Japan, 1640-1870, and secondary evidence suggest Gini coefficients of wealth inequality in the East were 0.4-0.5 relative to 0.7-0.9 in the West preceding industrialization. Such regional patterns also precede the black death so any explanation must predate this. I propose the demographic institution of adoption as one such explanation. Adoption prevented the failure of male lines through which wealth was inherited. Adoption was practiced across Eurasia until the 5th century when the church began preaching against it. This increased household extinctions in Europe causing wealth concentration among surviving male lines. In contrast, the Japanese data suggest adoption prevented household extinctions and kept wealth in the family. Simulations show that this mechanism can explain much of the gap in regional wealth inequality.

I examine the post-war economic development of two regions in southern Italy exposed to mafia activity after the 1970s and apply synthetic control methods to estimate their counterfactual economic performance in the absence of organized crime. The synthetic control is a weighted average of other regions less affected by ma a activity that mimics the economic structure and outcomes of the regions of interest several years before the advent of organized crime. The comparison of actual and counterfactual development shows that the presence of ma a lowers GDP per capita by 16%, at the same time as murders increase sharply relative to the synthetic control. Evidence from electricity consumption and growth accounting suggests that lower GDP reflects a net loss of economic activity, due to the substitution of private capital with less productive public investment, rather than a mere reallocation from the official to the unofficial sector.

This paper relates social mobility and social stratification to higher education policy. We show that higher‐education policy which leads to differences in quality and per‐student expenditure as well as in admission procedures between standard and elite universities, is a key factor in generating permanent social stratification and social immobility. We develop an intergenerational model which shows that a two‐tier higher education characterised by a division between elite and standard universities can be a key factor in generating permanent social stratification, social immobility and self‐reproduction of the ‘elite’. In our approach, low mobility is essentially explained by the differences in quality and in selection between elite and standard universities. A key result is that the wider the quality gap and the difference in per‐student expenditures between elite and standard universities, the less social mobility. This is because a larger quality gap reinforces the weight of family backgrounds at the expense of personal ability. Our simulations show that this impact can be large. These findings provide theoretical bases for the impact of higher education policy on social mobility.

In this paper, we show that unemployment increases child neglect in the United States during the period from 2004 to 2012. A one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate leads to a 20 percent increase in neglect. We identify this effect by instrumenting for the county-level unemployment rate with a Bartik instrument, which we create as the weighted average of the national-level unemployment rates across each of twenty industries, where the weights are the county-level fraction of the employed working-age population in each industry at the start of the sample period. An important mechanism behind this effect is that parents lack social and private safety nets. The effect on neglect is smaller in states that introduce longer extensions to unemployment benefits, and is greater in counties where an initially larger fraction of children are not covered by health insurance. We find no evidence that the effect is driven by alcohol consumption or divorce.

Although the European Union allows citizens from member countries to migrate freely within its confines to facilitate integration, it may be alienating public support for Europe. This paper investigates this by extending group threat theory to explain how internal migration influences mass public support using annual data from 1998 to 2014 across 15 Western European countries. We find that increases in the presence of foreigners from new member countries in Central and Eastern Europe have raised collective concerns about EU membership and there is some evidence that it may have eroded trust in European institutions as well. The results also show that this effect is exacerbated during an economic downturn. Our findings imply that collective opinion has responded ‘rationally’ to contextual changes in Europe’s internal migration patterns. The study concludes by discussing how group threat theory is relevant for understanding collective sentiment about the European Union.