THE MORE PUBLIC THE MORE PRIVATE? THE CASE OF THE ITALIAN CHILDCARE

Childcare availability is regarded as an important factor in the evaluation of public policies for both sustaining fertility and increasing women participation to the labour market. However, the recent empirical literature shows that the extension of the public supply of childcare mainly crowds out private providers. Italy is a case of special interest for testing the relationship between the pub- lic and private supply of childcare given that: 1) an increase in public childcare provision can be achieved through broadly conceived forms of out-sourcing; 2) public childcare for children less than 3 years old can be considered as a ser- vice with high redistributive goals, which determines a sorting mechanism of the demand between public and private providers. We use Italian data at the munic- ipality level for the period 2000-2006 to explain the number of registered private providers of childcare as a function of 1) the public coverage of the 0-2 years old population, and 2) the main characteristics of the public service. We show that the public coverage positively a¤ects the number of private providers. When the characteristics of public supply are considered, the e¤ect of a sorting mechanism is con?rmed.Child Care, Italian Municipalities, Private-Public Mix

WOULD YOU TRUST AN ITALIAN POLITICIAN? PRELIMINARY EVIDENCE FROM ITALIAN REGIONAL POLITICS

This paper evaluates the erosion of electoral accountability of the "Governors" of the Italian Regions in three subsequent political moments: 1) the elections; 2) the inaugural speeches of the Governor; 3) their first important policy decision, the long-term regional budget (DPEFR). We use content analysis (Laver et al., 2003) to assess the position of each Governor on a left to right distribution at the moment of the inaugural speeches and of the DPEFR. We then analyze the correlation between the distributions of 1) the electoral results and the inaugural speeches and 2) the inaugural speeches and the DPEFR, under the hypothesis that greater similarity can be interpreted as greater accountability. The analysis detects some erosion of accountability from the elections to the inaugural speeches, and a more serious one from the inaugural speeches to the DPEFR. A series of ANOVA tests suggests that the Region's relative economic position/dependency on transfers from the central governments partly explains such loss of accountability.

Job satisfaction among healthcare workers in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic

: Using a unique survey of more than 7,000 respondents conducted immediately after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy, we investigate potential drivers of the job satisfaction of healthcare workers. Relying on a representative sample of Italian physicians and nurses, we show that, in addition to personal characteristics (e.g., age, gender, health status), contextual factors (i.e., working conditions) play the leading role in explaining variation in the level of satisfaction (58%). In particular, working in a high-quality facility increases worker satisfaction and willingness to remain in the profession, and in the current medical specialization, while working in a province with a perceived shortage of medical personnel yields the opposite result. Direct experience with COVID-19 (e.g., having tested positive) is not significantly correlated with the level of job satisfaction, which is instead significantly reduced by changes in the working conditions caused by the health emergency

Explaining Constitutional Review in New Democracies: The Case of Taiwan

This paper extends the empirical analysis of the determinants of judicial behavior by considering the Taiwanese case. Taiwan is a particularly interesting case because the establishment and development of constitutional review corresponds to a political transition from an authoritarian regime dominated by one party to an emerging democracy. We test the attitudinal hypothesis by making use of a new dataset of ninety-seven decisions issued by the Taiwanese constitutional court in the period between 1988 and 2008. The attitudinal hypothesis is that the Taiwanese constitutional judges respond to party interests, either because their preferences coincide with the appointer or because they want to exhibit loyalty to the appointer. Our econometric analysis does not provide strong evidence for the attitudinal hypothesis. However, we provide an explanation. Faced with a transition from a one-party political regime to a democracy, the Taiwanese Grand Justices needed to assert their independence from the other branches of government and gain credibility, thus dissenting more often, periodically and individually voting against the interests of the dominant party

curb your premium! evaluating state intervention in medical malpractice insurance

We study a policy aimed at reducing the insurance costs paid by local public healthcare providers. The policy is based on enhanced monitoring of medical malpractice claims by the regional government that rules local providers. In particular, we implement a Difference-in-Differences strategy using Italian data at the provider level from 2001 to 2008 to evaluate the impact of monitoring on medical liability expenditures, measured as insurance premiums and legal expenditures. Our results show that this information-enhancing policy reduces paid premiums. This reduced-form effect might arise by both the higher bargaining power of the demand side or by increased competition on the supply side of the insurance market. Empirical evidence on the post-treatment period supports the competition-channel hypothesis, as the policy reduces the Herfindahl-Hirschman index at the insurance company level by about 30%. Validity tests show that our findings are not driven by differential pre-policy trends between treated and control providers

Judicial Independence and Party Politics in the Kelsenian Constitutional Courts: The Case of Portugal

In this paper we test to what extent the Kelsenian-type of constitutional judges are independent from political parties by studying of the Portuguese Constitutional Court. The results yield three main conclusions. First, constitutional judges in Portugal are quite sensitive to their political affiliations and their political party\u27s presence in government when voting. Second, peer pressure is very relevant. Third, the 1997 reform that was enacted to increase judicial independence has had no robust statistically significant effect

Curb your premium! evaluating state intervention in medical malpractice insurance

Using data of Italian public healthcare providers over years 2001 through 2008, we evaluate the impact of two policies adopted by Italian Regions (i.e., States) to cope with increasing medical malpractice costs using a Difference-in-Difference specification. We assess the impact of the policies on premiums paid and legal expenditures. The first policy consisted in collecting information and monitoring both compensation requests and any legal action related to a medical malpractice claim against a public healthcare provider. The second policy is a switch from private to public insurance for damages up to 500,000 euros combined with a centralized-regional contracting out in the private insurance market for damages in excess of 500,000 euros. Both policies represent attempts to cope with multiple agency problems within the public sector. Our results show that the impact of central monitoring in malpractice claims trend can reduce up to 29% the premiums paid for the treated providers, while the effect is obviously stronger for public insurance (41%). We control for the effects of the latter also on the trend of legal expenditures as proxy for common pool behaviors which do not result from our data. Validity tests show that our results are not driven by a decreasing trend affecting the insurance expenditures of the analyzed units before the policies’ introduction

Explaining Constitutional Review in New Democracies: The Case of Taiwan

This paper extends the empirical analysis of the determinants of judicial behavior by considering the Taiwanese case. Taiwan is a particularly interesting case because the establishment and development of constitutional review corresponds to a political transition from an authoritarian regime dominated by one party to an emerging democracy. We test the attitudinal hypothesis by making use of a new dataset of ninety-seven decisions issued by the Taiwanese constitutional court in the period between 1988 and 2008. The attitudinal hypothesis is that the Taiwanese constitutional judges respond to party interests, either because their preferences coincide with the appointer or because they want to exhibit loyalty to the appointer. Our econometric analysis does not provide strong evidence for the attitudinal hypothesis. However, we provide an explanation. Faced with a transition from a one-party political regime to a democracy, the Taiwanese Grand Justices needed to assert their independence from the other branches of government and gain credibility, thus dissenting more often, periodically and individually voting against the interests of the dominant party

Explaining Constitutional Review in New Democracies: The Case of Taiwan

This paper extends the empirical analysis of the determinants of judicial behavior by considering the Taiwanese case. Taiwan is a particularly interesting case because the establishment and development of constitutional review corresponds to a political transition from an authoritarian regime dominated by one party to an emerging democracy. We test the attitudinal hypothesis by making use of a new dataset of ninety-seven decisions issued by the Taiwanese constitutional court in the period between 1988 and 2008. The attitudinal hypothesis is that the Taiwanese constitutional judges respond to party interests, either because their preferences coincide with the appointer or because they want to exhibit loyalty to the appointer. Our econometric analysis does not provide strong evidence for the attitudinal hypothesis. However, we provide an explanation. Faced with a transition from a one-party political regime to a democracy, the Taiwanese Grand Justices needed to assert their independence from the other branches of government and gain credibility, thus dissenting more often, periodically and individually voting against the interests of the dominant party