Working Papers

How Big Is the Big Push? The Macroeconomic Effects of a Large-Scale Regional Development Program [submitted]

Co-author: F. Filippucci

Large-scale regional development programs aim to narrow productivity gaps and foster long-term growth, but factor mobility may limit aggregate gains and reductions in regional output-per-worker gaps. From 1950 to 1992, Italy implemented one of the largest programs in history to industrialize its Southern regions. The program persistently boosted local economic activity, but induced sizable crowding-out effects and hardly reduced regional output-per-worker gaps. Disciplining a multi-region growth model, we quantify the aggregate welfare effects of the program, finding that its benefits exceeded its costs. Yet, a counterfactual exercise shows that welfare gains would have been larger under a place-neutral resource allocation.

• Job market seminars 2024: Bank of Italy, HEC Paris, CREI, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Columbia, National University of Singapore (NUS)

• Seminars/Conferences: Boston College Macro Seminar (September 2024), Columbia New Thinking in Industrial Policy (November 2024), NBER Summer Institute 2025 Economic Growth, Brown University Growth Lab Seminar

The Return of the Phillips Curve: Evidence from US Cities [submitted]

Co-author: G. Gitti

Exploiting the post-COVID inflation episode as a quasi-experimental setting, we show that the US Phillips curve is neither stable nor flat. To do so, we leverage data on inflation and unemployment across US cities and use a two-region New-Keynesian model to derive the aggregate Phillips curve slope from our city-level estimates. We find that the slope of the Phillips curve increased substantially after the pandemic, reaching its highest level since the mid-1970s. A sizable estimated decrease in the labor supply elasticity combined with the increase in the frequency of price changes fully accounts for the Phillips curve steepening.

• Previously circulated with the title: Inflation Since COVID: Demand or Supply [SSRN]

• NBER Spring 2023 Monetary Economics Program Meeting, Bank of Canada-University of Toronto Inflation Workshop 2023, Norges Bank Women in Central Banking Workshop 2023,  Norges Bank-Bank of Italy-Collegio Carlo Alberto  Conference on Heterogeneity and Microdata 2024, European Commission (DG ECFIN) Post-COVID Labour Markets Workshop 2025, Collegio Carlo Alberto 2025 Workshop on "Understanding Inflation: Labor Markets, Trade Flows, and Supply Chains"

• Selected as finalist in the European Central Bank's Young Economist Prize 2023.

• Media coverage: VoxEu-CEPR, New York Times

Balanced Budget Requirements and Local Austerity Multipliers [updated version]

Co-authors: F. Filippucci and S. Valle

Fiscal consolidation often entails balanced budget requirements (BBRs) imposed to local governments. However, little is known about the effects of BBRs on economic activity, as most quasi-experimental estimates of local fiscal multipliers stem from windfall expansionary shocks. This paper studies the 2013 extension of a BBR to Italian municipalities below 5,000 residents. Using a two-stage least squares difference-in-discontinuities design, we document that tighter rules pushed local governments to increase their budget surplus and correspondingly reduce their borrowings by about 1\% of local income. Treated municipalities cut capital expenditures, rather than decreasing current expenditures or raising taxes. The estimated local fiscal multiplier is not statistically different from zero and significantly lower than 1.5, the prevailing estimate in the literature. The result holds even after accounting for spatial and public procurement network spillovers. Overall, our findings point to a relatively low short-term local output cost of BBRs. 

Work in progress

In the Wrong Place, at the Wrong Time: Post-Pandemic Wage Growth in Survey vs. Administrative Data

Co-authors: D. Patki, P. Wu

New Lives vs. Livelihoods: Pro-Cyclical Fertility and the Welfare Costs of Recessions

Co-authors: J. Terry

The Short and Long Run of Substitution Bias in Inflation

Co-authors: D. Cai and D. Patki

Extremely Early Retirement

Co-authors: F. Filippucci, P. Garibaldi, G. Mastrobuoni, V. Navarino