Spillover effects in local public spending

This paper investigated the fiscal interactions between Italian municipalities over the period 2001–11 and found a positive horizontal interdependence in spending decisions. The results are robust to different specifications of the spatial neighbours and are confirmed by a natural experiment (an earthquake in the Abruzzo region of Italy in 2009) that creates an exogenous variation in the neighbours’ spending. Furthermore, there is no evidence of yardstick competition when one considers political effects, while a negative relationship is found between spatial interaction and the size of the municipality. Thus, it can be concluded that spillover effects drive the strategic interactions in spending decisions

Spatial interaction in local expenditures among Italian municipalities:evidence from Italy 2001-2011

We estimate a spatial autoregressive dynamic panel data model, using information on 5,564 Italian municipalities over the period 2001-2011, exploiting their border contiguity as a measure of spatial neighborhood. We find a positive and statistically significant effect of neighboring expenditures on total, capital and current expenditures of a given municipality. We do not find any evidence of yardstick competition when we take account of political effects, while we do find a negative relationship between spatial interaction and the size of the municipality for current expenditure. Thus, we conclude that spillover effects drive the strategic interaction

Interazione spaziale nella spesa dei comuni Italiani:Un’analisi empirica

This paper uses a dynamic spatial autoregressive model on a sample of 5564 Italian municipalities over the period 2001-2011. By exploiting the spatial contiguity of municipalities, the analysis points to the existence of a positive and significant effects in neighboring spending decisions on its own municipal expenditure (total, current and investment expenditure). Further analysis indicate that such an effect is not consistent with the yardstick competition hypothesis, as the spatial dependence is not guided by political factors; rather, we found a negative and significant relationship between spatial interaction and the municipality’s size, thus suggesting that spillover effects drive the strategic interactions among local governments. In fact the higher the size the lower the impact in decreasing costs of public good provision due to the neighboring provision

COVID-19 Is a Multifaceted Challenging Pandemic Which Needs Urgent Public Health Interventions

Until less than two decades ago, all known human coronaviruses (CoV) caused diseases so mild that they did not stimulate further advanced CoV research. In 2002 and following years, the scenario changed dramatically with the advent of the new more pathogenic CoVs, including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndome (SARS-CoV-1), Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS)-CoV, and the new zoonotic SARS-CoV-2, likely originated from bat species and responsible for the present coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which to date has caused 15,581,007 confirmed cases and 635,173 deaths in 208 countries, including Italy. SARS-CoV-2 transmission is mainly airborne via droplets generated by symptomatic patients, and possibly asymptomatic individuals during incubation of the disease, although for the latter, there are no certain data yet. However, research on asymptomatic viral infection is currently ongoing worldwide to elucidate the real prevalence and mortality of the disease. From a clinical point of view, COVID-19 would be defined as “COVID Planet “ because it presents as a multifaceted disease, due to the large number of organs and tissues infected by the virus. Overall, based on the available published data, 80.9% of patients infected by SARS-CoV-2 develop a mild disease/infection, 13.8% severe pneumonia, 4.7% respiratory failure, septic shock, or multi-organ failure, and 3% of these cases are fatal, but mortality parameter is highly variable in dfferent countries. Clinically, SARS-CoV-2 causes severe primary interstitial viral pneumonia and a “cytokine storm syndrome”, characterized by a severe and fatal uncontrolled systemic inflammatory response triggered by the activation of interleukin 6 (IL-6) with development of endothelitis and generalized thrombosis that can lead to organ failure and death. Risk factors include advanced age and comorbidities including hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Virus entry occurs via binding the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor present in almost all tissues and organs through the Spike (S) protein. Currently, SARS-CoV-2 infection is prevented by the use of masks, social distancing, and improved hand hygiene measures. This review summarizes the current knowledge on the main biological and clinical features of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, also focusing on the principal measures taken in some Italian regions to face

Interaction between federal taxation and horizontal tax competition: theory and evidence from Canada

The aim of this paper is to determine to what extent and how federal taxes affect local tax decisions. Testing the impact of an increase in the federal tax on horizontal tax competition with Canada-US data for 1984–1994, it finds evidence that an increase in federal tax makes horizontal tax reactions weaker. This is because an increase in federal tax raises the cost, in terms of utility of income, of a unit increase in the province’s tax rate. On the methodological side, it is possible to estimate the impact of the federal tax on the fiscal policy of the province without neglecting control for year effects, which cannot be used in the empirical literature because they are perfectly collinear with the federal tax

Politics or mobility? Evidence from US excise taxation

We test for the state interdependence of gasoline and cigarette taxation in the US (1975-2006). We estimate a tax reaction function, and find that state interdependence is due solely to yardstick competition, since any interaction disappears completely in the case of states with lame duck governors. This result holds for both taxes: the short-run reaction of those states whose governor is eligible to stand for reelection is 0.13 and 0.21 for gasoline and cigarette taxation, respectively. In the long run, the cigarette tax rates levied in a jurisdiction match those of its neighbors perfectly, while the long-run reaction in the case of gasoline is much lower at 0.72

Filling Fiscal Gap in Italy: a Challenging Task for the Federal Reform

The enactment in May 2009 of the framework law providing for the reform of the system by which Italy’s Regions and Municipalities are funded (Law 42/2009) marks a step forward towards the decentralization of public finances in Italy. However, the law only offers a number of very loose guidelines concerning future government decrees to be adopted over the subsequent two-year period, while providing for a further five-year transitional phase leading to full implementation of the reforms. We discuss the current situation about public spending and taxesa and potential issues which can arise after the ongoing federal reform

Effetti distributivi della flat tax: il caso italiano

The paper discusses the flat rate tax, intended as a potential comprehensive reform of the personal income tax. After a presentation of the broad characteristics of the flat tax model, we consider its applications that have taken place so far in some countries. The second part of the work focuses on the Italian case, first considering the characteristics and problems of the current personal income tax, then assessing the possible distributional effects of the application, on Italian households’ incomes, of some recently presented flat tax reform proposals

Spesa standard e perequazione della capacità fiscale dei Comuni

Breve descrizione dei contenuti (Abstract) . Il capitolo è diviso in due parti. La prima illustra i principi teorici che dovrebbero guidare il disegno di un sistema di trasferimenti intergovernativi che si proponga di perseguire gli obiettivi dell’efficienza nelle decisioni finanziarie degli enti locali e dell’equità distributiva fra le giurisdizioni territoriali che compongono la federazione. L’illustrazione delle soluzioni adottate in alcuni stati federali accompagna la descrizione dei principi teorici. La seconda parte del capitolo esamina il tema della perequazione delle risorse finanziarie con riferimento al caso specifico dei Comuni italiani. Partendo dalle informazioni contenute nei bilanci dei Comuni, si enucleano innanzitutto le funzioni di spesa e le categorie di entrate assoggettate al processo di perequazione e quelle che ne rimangono escluse. Il lavoro prosegue con la descrizione di un modello per la stima della spesa standard e si conclude con l’illustrazione di una proposta di riforma del sistema vigente dei trasferimenti ai Comuni che recepisce i principi enunciati nel Titolo V della Costituzione. La proposta di riforma è anche brevemente confrontata con le disposizioni riguardanti i Comuni contenute nel disegno di legge delega sul federalismo fiscale approvato dal Consiglio dei Ministri il 28 giugno 2007

Fuel Price Subsidies and the control of corruption: a first approach

Fuel-price subsidies are pervasive and widespread around the globe. While there is by now a well-established understanding of the efficiency properties of fuel-price subsidies, there is limited empirical work on their determinants and, in particular, on the extent to which their presence (and their magnitude) is associated with countries that suffer significantly from corrupt practices. This chapter aims to explore empirically the link between fuel-price subsidies and a measure of the degree to which public power is exercised for private gain and the state is ‘captured’ by private interests (proxied here by the variable ‘control of corruption’). Using panel data over the period 1991-2008, this paper shows that in countries with relatively low level of corruption (high level of control of corruption), when corruption control increases, fuel subsidies decrease; for high level of corruption (low level of control of corruption), increasing corruption control does have only a small effect on fuel subsidies. Interestingly, these results hold independently of the level of per capita income of a country. What this suggests is that, from a policy perspective, a prerequisite for a substantial reduction in fuel subsidies is an increase in the control of corruption, when it is already relatively hig