Empirical Essays on the Economic Analysis of Social Connections

Social connections represent an important determinant of economic agents’ behaviour. The three chapters of this thesis empirically analyse the effect of different types of networks on several economic outcomes. The first chapter analyses the role played by co-worker networks on immigrants’ employment outcomes. It investigates how immigrants’ job search outcomes are affected by the labour market outcomes of co-workers from the same country of origin. Using matched employer-employee micro data from Italy and an instrumental variables approach, I show that an increase in the employment prospects of socially connected workers improves immigrants’ job search outcomes. The paper also sheds light on the different mechanisms generating the social effect and it highlights the role of migrant networks in explaining immigrant segregation. Chapter 2 employs a unique dataset on articles, authors and editors of the top four economics journals over the period 2000-2006 to investigate the role of social ties in the publication process. Connections between editors and authors are identified based on their academic histories. Regression results show that the existence of a social tie with an editor positively affects publication outcomes of connected scholars. The analysis of citations shows that connected articles receive on average a higher number of citations than non-connected ones. The final chapter focuses on the impact of female managers on female workers’ employment outcomes. Exploiting changes in the share of female managers induced by firms’ takeovers, I find no statistically significant effect of an increase in the presence of female managers on employment outcomes of female workers. However there is an interesting negative effect on wage inequality within the acquiring firm, which may matter for both equity and efficiency reasons.Support from the Fondazione Rodolfo DeBenedetti and the Royal Economic Society is very gratefully acknowledged

Rule Breaking, Honesty, and Migration

Using census data, we study false birth-date registrations in Italy, a phenomenon well known to demographers, in a setting that allows us to separate honesty from the benefits of cheating and deterrence. By comparing migrants leaving a locality with those who remain in it, we illustrate the tendency of Italians to sort themselves across geographic areas according to their honesty levels. Over time, this tendency has modified the average honesty level in each locality, with relevant consequences for the distribution across geographic areas of outcomes like human capital, productivity, earnings growth, and the quality of local politicians and government

Dancing with the Populist. New Parties, Electoral Rules and Italian Municipal Elections

This paper develops a theoretical framework that makes predictions on (a) the conditions under which a populist party decides to run and the policy position it takes and (b) voters\u2019 response under different electoral systems. We test these predictions using data on Italian municipal elections over the 2009-2019 period and focusing on the electoral outcomes of the Five Star Movement. The empirical analysis shows: (i) populists are more likely to run under a Dual Ballot (DB) system and in municipalities where there is a large share of dissatisfied voters; (ii) when the populist runs, turnout increases under both Single and Dual Ballot systems; (iii) in a DB system, the populist candidate who ranked second in the first round has a higher probability of winning than the candidate of traditional party who ranked second by the same margin, as a result of increased turnout in the second round. We finally provide evidence that the low education and the young age of populist candidates are likely to deteriorate the efficiency of the local administration

IZA COVID-19 crisis response monitoring: short-run labor market impacts of COVID-19, initial policy measures and beyond

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has a severe impact on societies, economies and labor markets. However, not all countries, socio-economic groups and sectors are equally affected. For example, occupational groups working in sectors where value chains have been disrupted and lockdowns have had direct impacts are affected more heavily, while the slowdown of hiring activities mostly affects young labor market entrants. As a result, there has been a steep increase in unemployment rates in many countries, but not everywhere to the same extent. Part of this difference can be related to the different role and extent of short-time work schemes, which is now being used more widely than during the Great Recession. Some countries have created or expanded these schemes, making coverage less exclusive and benefits more generous, at least temporarily. But short-time work is certainly not a panacea to “flatten the unemployment curve”. Furthermore, next to providing liquidity support to firms, unemployment benefits have been made more generous in many countries. Often, activation principles have also been temporarily reduced. Some countries have increased access to income support to some extent also for non-standard workers, such as temporary agency workers or self-employed workers, on an ad hoc basis. A major change in working conditions is the broad move towards telework arrangements and work from home. Nonetheless, it appears too early to assess the relative success of national strategies to cope with the pandemic and to revitalize the labor market as well as the medium-term fiscal viability of different support measures. Future monitoring will also have to trace policies to cope with the imminent structural changes that might result from the crisis or might be accelerated by the crisis

Replication Data for: "Social Ties in Academia: A Friend is a Treasure"

Replication Data for: "Social Ties in Academia: A Friend is a Treasure

Rule Breaking, Honesty, and Migration

Using census data, we study false birth-date registrations in Italy, a phenomenon well known to demographers, in a setting that allows us to separate honesty from the benefits of cheating and deterrence. By comparing migrants leaving a locality with those who remain in it, we illustrate the tendency of Italians to sort themselves across geographic areas according to their honesty levels. Over time, this tendency has modified the average honesty level in each locality, with relevant consequences for the distribution across geographic areas of outcomes like human capital, productivity, earnings growth, and the quality of local politicians and government

Rule breaking, honesty, and migration

Using Census data we study false birth date registrations in Italy, a phenomenon well known to demographers, in a setting that allows us to separate honesty from cheating bene ts and deterrence. By comparing migrants and remainers within locality-biennium cells we then illustrate the tendency of Italians to sort themselves across geographic areas according to their honesty. Overtime, this tendency has modi ed the average honesty in each locality, with relevant consequences for the distribution across geographic areas of outcomes like human capital, productivity, earnings growth and the quality of local politicians and government

Nuove tecnologie e scuola: quali investimenti?

L’emergenza del Covid-19 sembra aver accelerato la transizione verso una scuola digitale, stimolando interventi nell’informatizzazione sia da parte dello Stato che delle singole scuole. Un bilancio degli ultimi anni e un confronto con gli altri Paesi dell’Ocse

Minority salience and political extremism

We investigate how the salience of an ethnic minority affects the majority group’s voting behavior. We use the increased salience of Muslim communities during Ramadan as a natural experiment. Exploiting exogenous variation in the distance of election dates to Ramadan over the 1980–2013 period in Germany, our findings reveal an increased polarization. Vote shares for both right- and left-wing extremist parties increase in municipalities with mosques when an election takes place shortly after Ramadan. We use survey data to provide evidence on mechanisms: Ramadan increases respondents’ perceived share of the foreign-born population and emphasizes cultural dissimilarities, ultimately worsening attitudes toward Muslims

Social Ties in Academia: a Friend is a Treasure

This paper employs a unique dataset on articles, authors and editors of the top general interest journals in economics to investigate the role of social connections in the publication process. Ties between editors and authors are identified based on their academic histories. About 43% of the articles published in these journals are authored by scholars connected to one editor at the time of the publication. PhD students and faculty colleagues of an editor also improve their publication outcomes when this editor is in charge of a journal