Recent Publications

Employee-owned firms and the careers of young workers

Gabriel Burdin & Jose Garcia-Louzao

Using detailed administrative data from Spain, we characterize how a first work experience in an employee-owned firm (EOF) versus a conventional firm can affect workers’ careers. We find that workers’ exposure to EOFs at the time of entry reduces daily wages by 8% over the first 15 years in the labor market. The wage penalty appears to be driven by differences in job mobility and wage returns to experience rather than by non-random selection. We show that workers who had their first job in EOFs have a strong attachment to this organizational model and are less likely to experience both voluntary and involuntary job separations over their careers, with quit and layoff rates 8% and 4% lower, respectively. In addition, we quantify lower wage returns to experience in EOFs, although there are no differences in subsequent career progression in terms of promotions. Taken together, the analysis suggests the existence of other job amenities offered by EOFs that may compensate for flatter wage profiles.

 

Congestion, scaling and the market for shards in blockchains

Nicola Dimitri

Sharded blockchains have been introduced as a possible solution to scalability issues. In general, the platform decides how to allocate new transactions to the available shards. This is done according to the shards’ capacity, their level of occupancy and possible other criteria. In this paper we take an exploration into an alternative perspective, allowing the users to choose which shard to store a transaction into. It follows that such choice would generate a market for shards, where users select among available shards considering their performance and transaction fees. In the paper we characterize shards’ selection as a Nash Equilibrium of the relevant game. The main finding shows that, when free to choose, users would in general select different shards, therefore scaling the blockchain without main congestions. This is except for when there is a dominating shard, that is one which all users prefer regardless of how many users have chosen it. In the paper, we discuss possible measures to prevent such dominance.

 

Effectiveness of iNTS vaccination in sub-Saharan Africa

Daniele Cassese, Nicola Dimitri, Gianluca Breghi & Tiziana Spadafina

Invasive non-Typhoidal Salmonella (iNTS) is one of the leading causes of blood stream infections in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially among children. iNTS can be difficult to diagnose, particularly in areas where malaria is endemic, and difficult to treat, partly because of the emergence of antibiotic resistance. We developed a mathematical model to evaluate the impact of a vaccine for iNTS in 49 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Without vaccination we estimate 9.2 million new iNTS cases among children below 5 years old in these 49 countries from 2022 to 2038, 6.2 million of which between 2028 and 2038. The introduction of a 85% (95%) efficacy vaccine in 2028 would prevent 2.6 (2.9) million of these new infections. We provide the country-specific impact of a iNTS vaccine considering the different age structures and vaccine coverage levels.

 

Enhancing institutional trust: Evidence from an experimental study with adolescents in Italy

Social Indicators Research

Elena Sestini, Alessio Muscillo, Gabriele Lombardi, Francesca Garbin & Paolo Pin

This study presents a quantitative analysis of a randomized survey experiment with Italian high school students (N = 1,433). It aims to evaluate trust levels in various institutions-healthcare, education, politics, judiciary, and defense-and identify determinants influencing trust in the scientific field, particularly regarding health issues. Using experimental scenarios, potential causal relationships among factors influencing confidence and trust scores are explored. Three distinct experimental scenarios are included in the survey: the first examines the influence of various social media platforms, the second and the third evaluate the impact of doctors, parents, and friends on trust-building among young individuals. Our results indicate a high level of trust in science among adolescents and emphasize high confidence in scientific experts. The study provides policy insights aimed at fostering trust, including recommendations for investments in education, increased involvement of specialists in direct communication, and enhanced transparency measures to mitigate misinformation.

 

Does far-right populism affect immigrants’ working conditions?

Journal of Population Economics

Anna D’Ambrosio, Roberto Leombruni & Tiziano Razzolini

Anti-immigrant stances are central in far-right populist propaganda. We investigate whether the electoral success of far-right populist parties affects the labor market conditions of immigrants. Using administrative panel data from Italian manufacturing workers in 1994–2005, we show that higher electoral support for the populist party Lega Nord significantly increases injury risks for foreign workers within job spells. This effect is most pronounced in small firms, which are characterized by lower levels of unionization and employment protection. The increase in injury rates appears driven by task reallocation to overtime and night shifts and to the exploitation of immigrants’ labor supply rigidity. While alternative factors such as import competition and robotization influence injury risk, they fail to explain our core findings.

 

Purely hedonic image concerns and audience size: Evidence from a charity dictator game

Journal of Economic Phychology

Sem Manna & Alessandro Stringhi

We study whether image preferences in isolation from strategic considerations, namely purely hedonic image concerns, can motivate prosocial behavior and whether this audience effect is mediated by the number of observers. Answers to related questions from the extant experimental literature are often mixed or influenced by multiple mechanisms evoked by the context at hand or design employed. We employ an experiment involving a dictator game with a charity receiver and a binary choice with unambiguous social valence. Choices are observed by an anonymous, passive, and external audience whose size varies across treatments. Our simple experimental design allows us to isolate purely hedonic image concerns about appearing altruistic from strategic considerations and other confounding features of alternative designs. We find that donations rise by 10.2 percentage points on average when audiences are present, with every observer increasing the probability of donating by an estimated 2.12 percentage points. We provide evidence that the size of the audience also matters.

 

Homophily and infections: Static and dynamic effects

Games and Economic Behavior

Matteo Bizzarri, Fabrizio Panebianco & Paolo Pin

We analyze the effect of homophily in the diffusion of a harmful state between two groups of agents that differ in immunization rates. Homophily has a very different impact on the steady state infection level (that is increasing in homophily when homophily is small, and decreasing when high), and on the cumulative number of infections generated by a deviation from the steady state (that, instead, is decreasing in homophily when homophily is small, and increasing when high). If immunization rates are endogenous, homophily has the opposite impact on the infection level of the two groups. However, the sign of the group-level impact is reversed if immunization is motivated by infection risk or peer pressure. If motivations are group-specific, homophily can decrease immunization in both groups.

 

A model of network redistributive pressure

Network Science

Salvatore Di Falco, Francesco Feri & Paolo Pin

In this paper, we propose a network model to explain the implications of the pressure to share resources. Individuals use the network to establish social interactions that allow them to increase their income. They also use the network as a safety and to ask for assistance in case of need. The network is therefore a system characterized by social pressure to share and redistribute surplus of resources among members. The main result is that the potential redistributive pressure from other network members causes individuals to behave inefficiently. The number of social interactions used to employ workers displays a non-monotonic pattern with respect to the number of neighbors (degree): it increases for intermediate degree and decreases for high degree. Respect to a benchmark case without social pressure, individuals with few (many) network members interact more (less). Finally, we show that these predictions are consistent with the results obtained in a set of field experiments run in rural Tanzania.

 

Fat vs. Sugar: The Case for a Saturated Fat Tax in Italy

Health Economics

Valeria di Cosmo & Silvia Tiezzi

When judging the distributional impact of unhealthy food taxes, what matters is not just how much low income people would pay but how much the such taxes would benefit or harm them overall. In this paper, we assess the consumer welfare impact of a fat tax net of its expected benefits computed as savings from weight loss. Using Italian data, we estimate a censored Exact Affine Stone Index (EASI) incomplete demand system for food groups, simulating changes in purchases, calorie intake, consumer welfare, and the monetary value of short-run health benefits. While the Italian government has proposed a sugar tax, we show that there is no significant excess consumption of added sugars among Italian adults. Instead, excessive fat consumption is more prevalent, making a fat tax a more compelling and effective solution to address diet-related health risks. Our results suggest costs from fat taxation are larger than benefits at all income levels. As a fraction of income, the net impact would be slightly regressively distributed.

 

Big Moves, Small Gains: Unpacking the Size Effect in Takeovers and Other Corporate Deals

Economic Notes

Antonio Roma & Costanza Consolandi

This study explores the size effect in financial markets, focusing on how mergers, acquisitions, and other corporate transactions influence the returns of small versus large stocks. Employing a comprehensive data set of US-listed companies from 1992 to 2021, which includes 51,780 events, this research improves upon previous methodologies by integrating detailed timing information on deal announcements and completions with stock size and return data. Our analysis shows that small stocks are often the targets of transactions that significantly enhance their returns, not limited to takeovers. We find that pre-announcement returns are consistently higher for small stocks, likely due to less analyst coverage, resulting in largely unanticipated deal news. The study deepens our understanding of the size effect, suggesting that deal-related dynamics are essential for analyzing performance variations across different stock sizes and contributing to discussions on market efficiency and the valuation effects of corporate actions.