Redistribution and Reelection under Proportional Representation: The Postwar Italian Chamber of Deputies

We study incumbency advantage and the electoral returns to pork and patronage over ten legislative periods from 1948 to 1992 for two political parties — the Christian Democrats (DC) and the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) — in Italy’s lower house of representatives, the Chamber of Deputies. Adapting a regression discontinuity design to Italy’s open-list system of proportional representation, we show that parliament comprised two groups: a small elite, whose members enjoyed an incumbency advantage, and the average deputy, who benefitted from no such incumbency advantage. Elite legislators affiliated with Italy’s two main parties of government received significantly more preference votes when pork and patronage were steered to their districts, although the effect is small. We interpret this to indicate that their incumbency advantage was linked to their ability to claim credit for these allocations. We also show that the two parties won more list votes when districts received more resources and that when districts received more resources, the abilities of these parties to persuade their electors to use preference votes improved. This form of electoral mobilization, in turn, enlarged the number of ministerial positions secured by the district. Our analysis depicts a political environment severely segmented between a small, powerful elite group of deputies and backbenchers.incumbency effect, distributive politics, patronage, proportional representation, Italy, regression discontinuity

Pork Barrel Politics in Postwar Italy, 1953–1994

This paper analyzes the political determinants of the distribution of infrastructure expenditures by the Italian government to the country’s 92 provinces between 1953 and 1994. Extending implications of theories of legislative behavior to the context of open-list proportional representation, we examine whether individually powerful legislators and ruling parties direct spending to core or marginal electoral districts, and whether opposition parties share resources via a norm of universalism. We show that when districts elect politically more powerful deputies from the governing parties, they receive more investments. We interpret this as indicating that legislators with political resources reward their core voters by investing in public works in their districts. The governing parties, by contrast, are not able to discipline their own members of parliament sufficiently to target the parties’ areas of core electoral strength. Finally, we find no evidence that a norm of universalism operates to steer resources to areas when the main opposition party gains more votes.pork barrel; distributive politics; electoral systems; Italy; public spending; infrastructure

Pork Barrel Politics in Postwar Italy, 1953-1994

This paper analyzes the political determinants of the distribution of infrastructure expenditures by the Italian government to the country’s 92 provinces between 1953 and 1994. Extending implications of theories of legislative behavior to the context of open-list proportional representation, we examine whether individually powerful legislators and ruling parties direct spending to core or marginal electoral districts, and whether opposition parties share resources via a norm of universalism. We show that when districts elect politically more powerful deputies from the governing parties, they receive more investments. We interpret this as indicating that legislators with political resources reward their core voters by investing in public works in their districts. The governing parties, by contrast, are not able to discipline their own members of parliament sufficiently to target the parties’ areas of core electoral strength. Finally, we find no evidence that a norm of universalism operates to steer resources to areas when the main opposition party gains more votes

International Business Cycle: Does Trade Matter?

This paper addresses the question of whether trade interdependencies are significant in explaining the international synchronization of business cycles, or "international business cycles". Using an econometric framework that combines the concept of separate cointegration (Granger an Konishi, 1992) with that of common feature analysis (Engle and Kozicki, 1993; Vahid and Engle, 1993), we are able to formulate meaningful ways of characterizing the links between trade flow dynamics and international output dynamics. We conclude that trade interdependencies do have an effect in explaining the international business cycle

Productivity and Infrastructure in the Italian Regions

We address the issue of whether public infrastructure play an important role in determining factor productivity in Italy, and we show that the evidence is mixed. Public capital is significant in explaining output in most cases. However, whenthe attention is drawn on the long-run properties of the data, or when care is taken to rule out contemporaneous short-run effects, then public capital results to be either non-significant, or significant but of negligible importance. Weconclude that the influence of infrastructure on output is probably due, to a great extent, to short-run demand-side phenomena

The Reputational Budget and its Uses

I introduce the concept of the reputational budget, to consider its possible uses within a Reputation-based Governance (Rebag) framework. The concept is illustrated using an application to the management of public works, where firms help public administrations in building public infrastructure. The reputational budget has several interesting applications. In particular, it provides objective criteria to use reputational information in public procurement, and it may alleviate the moral hazard problem that arises in the life-cycle of bureaucrats

Il "capitale mancante" nel Mezzogiorno italiano

Il confronto tra indici di infrastrutturazione basati sulla consistenza fisica degli stock, e misure derivate da stime degli stock ottenute per mezzo della tecnica dell’inventario permanente, permette di giudicare l’efficienza relativa di diverse unita’ territoriali nel trasformare risorse economiche in opere finite. Un’analisi di questo tipo sul capitale pubblico nelle regioni italiane, indica la presenza di un ampio divario tra il Nord e il Centro, piu’ efficienti, e il Mezzogiorno