Research

Working Papers

Technology vs information to promote conservation: Evidence from water audits (with Erik Ansink and  Carmine Ornaghi) 

We study the impact of audits on water conservation, distinguishing between the information and technological components. We observe water consumption for up to 18 months for 10,000 households in the South East of England who received the visit of a so-called Green Doctor. We find that water-saving devices decrease water consumption by 2-4%, with an effect that is persistent over 18 months. Devices reducing water pressure are particularly effective, while shower timers are ineffective. The information component of the water audit has a large initial impact, but this gradually fades to a drop in consumption of 2% after 12 months. Technology appears to be more cost-effective than information provision and this can help in the design of policy interventions.

[LINK]

Publications

Journal Articles: 

Phishing Attacks: An Analysis of the Victims’ Characteristics Based on Administrative Data (with Alessandro Fedele and Matteo Valerio), Economics Letters, forthcoming  [LINK]

Using administrative data on phishing attacks targeting almost 150,000 Italian- and German-speaking customers of an Italian bank in 2022–23, we investigate how individual characteristics are associated to the likelihood of victimization. We find that younger customers and Italian speakers are more likely to be victims of phishing, while we find no differences in terms of gender or size of the place of residence.

Social Capital and Hit-and-Run Road Accidents: Evidence from Italy, (with Stefano Castriota and Sandro Rondinella), Italian Economic Journal, forthcoming  [LINK]

We use data on Italian road accidents involving pedestrians in the period 2000–2016 to study the link between social capital and the driver’s decision to flee. Running away is a serious crime which affects the victim’s probability to survive after the accident. We merge detailed police records on road accidents with data on social capital at the province level and find a strong negative correlation between social capital and the decision to run away. The analysis is in line with previous studies suggesting that social capital is an important driver of human behaviour even in situations characterized by strict time constraints and dramatic psychological conditions.

Paying for what kind of performance? Performance pay, multitasking, and sorting in mission-oriented jobs  (with Daniel Jones, Michael Vlassopoulos and Pun Winichaku), Games and Economic Behavior, forthcoming

How does pay-for-performance (P4P) impact productivity and the composition of workers in mission-oriented jobs when output has multiple dimensions? This is a central issue in the public sector, particularly in areas such as education and health care. We conduct an experiment, manipulating compensation and prosocial elements of the job, to answer these questions. We find that P4P has significantly smaller positive effects on productivity on the incentivized dimension in the prosocial setting relative to the non-prosocial setting. On the other hand, P4P generates no loss in performance on the non-incentivized dimension of effort in the prosocial setting, whereas it does so in the non-prosocial setting. In both settings, P4P attracts higher ability workers, but it does so at the expense of attracting prosocially-motivated workers in the prosocial setting. 

[LINK]

Symbolic Incentives and the Recruitment of Volunteers for Citizen Science Projects (with Simona Cicognani, Sebastian Stein and Michael Vlassopoulos), Oxford Economic Papers, forthcoming [LINK]

The provision of activities with external benefits that relies on voluntary contributions may often fall below societal needs. In this paper we focus on such contributions to a citizen science project (the World Community Grid) in which members of the general public are asked to offer unused computer power to advance cutting-edge scientific research. We investigate the role played by symbolic awards in stimulating existing contributors to recruit new contributors for this project. The recruitment campaign we study introduces badges for referrals (visible on each user’s public profile page) varying, across randomized treatment groups, the threshold of successful referrals needed to receive these badges. We find that these symbolic incentives are effective in boosting referrals, and more so when the minimum threshold for achieving symbolic awards is higher. However, the overall effect of the incentives is quite modest, highlighting the challenges of running referral campaigns for the recruitment of volunteers.

Does Social Capital Matter? A Study of Hit-and-Run in US Counties (with Stefano Castriota and Sandro Rondinella), Social Science & Medicine, 2023, vol. 329 (116011) [LINK]

We investigate the relationship between social capital and a decision that has dire health consequences: fleeing after a road accident. This event is unplanned, and the decision is taken under great emotional distress and time pressure, thus providing a test of whether social capital matters for behaviour in extreme conditions. We merge data from the universe of fatality accidents involving pedestrians in the US over the period 2000–2018 with a dataset on social capital measures at the county level. Using within-state-year variation, our results show that one standard deviation increase in social capital is associated with a reduction in the probability of hit-and-run of around 10.5%. Several falsification tests based on differences in social capital endowment between the county where the accident occurs and the county where the driver resides are suggestive of a causal interpretation of this evidence. Our findings show the importance of social capital in a new context, suggesting a broad impact on pro-social behaviour and adding to the positive returns of promoting civic norms.

Inattention Matters: An Analysis of Consumers’ Inaction in Choosing a Water Tariff  (with Florian Heiss and Carmine Ornaghi), Journal of the European Economic Association, 2023, vol. 21(4)  [LINK]

This paper studies consumers’ choice between two different water tariffs. We document a large inaction in a novel setting where customers face a binary decision and receive simple, detailed and personalized information about the financial savings they would obtain if they were to switch water tariff. Our empirical framework separates two sources of inertia: inattention and switching costs. The model estimates that half of the customers that would benefit from changing tariff are not aware of the opportunity they are offered. Conditional on paying attention, we estimate median switching costs to be around £100. A model where all customers are assumed to pay attention delivers instead implausibly high switching costs, with a median of £400. This shows the importance of inattention in explaining consumers’ inaction. Looking at the characteristics of the households, our results confirm previous findings that areas where households have higher levels of education or the proportion of minorities is lower, display a higher responsiveness to potential savings. The new insight offered by our analysis is that this is entirely driven by attention, whereas switching costs actually increase with education and ethnic homogeneity. Our findings suggest that policies aimed at increasing attention can play a central role in fostering competition among suppliers and reducing inequalities.

National or Local Infodemic? The Demand for News in Italy during COVID-19 (with Stefano Castriota and Marco Delmastro), International Journal of Health Economics and Management, forthcoming [LINK]

Information can have an important impact on health behavior and, according to the World Health Organization, an ‘infodemic’ has accompanied the current pandemic. Observing TV news viewership in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic using actual consumption data, we investigate whether demand for national and local news depends on national or local epidemiological developments, as measured by the number of new positives or the number of current positives on any given day. Exploiting the fact that the impact of the pandemic displays a great deal of variation among the different regions, we find that at the regional level, demand for both national and local news responds to national epidemiological developments rather than to local ones. This has implications regarding the incentives for local politicians to take preventive action.  

Expectations, reference points, and compliance with COVID-19 social distancing measures (with Guglielmo Briscese, Nicola Lacetera and Mario Macis), Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 2023

We study the behavioral impact of announcements about the duration of a policy and their relationship with people's expectations in the context of the COVID-19 lockdowns. We surveyed representative samples of Italian residents at three moments of the first wave of the pandemic to test how intentions to comply with social-isolation measures depend on the duration of their possible extension. Individuals were more likely to reduce, and less likely to increase, their compliance effort if the hypothetical extension was longer than they expected, whereas positive surprises had a lesser impact. The behavioral response to the (mis)match between expected versus hypothesized extensions is consistent with expectations acting as reference points and can help explain the increase in observed physical proximity in Italy following lockdown extension announcements. Our findings suggest that public authorities should consider citizens’ expectations when announcing policy changes.

 [LINK]

Assessing the Impact of COVID-19 Mass Testing in South Tyrol using a Semi-parametric Growth Model (with Davide Ferrari and Steve Stillman), Nature - Scientific Reports, 2022

Mass antigen testing has been proposed as a possible cost‑effective tool to contain the COVID‑19 pandemic. We test the impact of a voluntary mass testing campaign implemented in the Italian region of South Tyrol on the spread of the virus in the following months. We do so by using an innovative empirical approach which embeds a semi‑parametric growth model—where COVID‑19 transmission dynamics are allowed to vary across regions and to be impacted by the implementation of the mass testing campaign—into a synthetic control framework which creates an appropriate control group of other Italian regions. Our results suggest that mass testing campaigns are useful instruments for mitigating the pandemic.

[LINK]

Stay or Flee? Hit-and-Run Accidents, Darkness and Probability of Punishment (with Stefano Castriota), European Journal of Law and Economics, 2022 

Empirical studies on the economic theory of crime have extensively analyzed the importance of the probability of punishment with regard to premeditated criminal activities. Unplanned crimes also occur, however, and this paper will focus on a very serious and widespread example: the hit-and-run road accident. Using police records for every road accident with injuries or mortalities that took place in Italy in the period 1996–2016, we rely on changes in daylight, both when switching between daylight saving time and winter time and across seasons, as an exogenous source of variation affecting the probability of apprehension and find that the likelihood of hit-and-run conditional on an accident taking place increases by around 20% with darkness. Our results suggest that policies increasing the likelihood of apprehension could be effective in reducing hit-and-run.

[LINK] 

The Effect of the Language of Instruction on Academic Performance (with Juliana Bernhofer), Labour Economics, 2022. 

Education in a language other than the mother tongue is common. This is increasingly relevant in tertiary education, due to the growing international mobility of students. While the advantages of foreign language skills on the labour market are well-studied, literature on the cost of non-native learning is still not well established. To fill this gap, we explore the impact of the language of instruction on grades by using administrative data provided by the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. We exploit the fact that students whose mother tongue is for the most part Italian or German learn and take exams in English, German, and Italian. Our results, controlling for student fixed effects, show that taking an exam in a second language leads to a loss in grade points of approximately 9.5% (or 0.22 within-student standard deviations). These results are confirmed relying on an identification strategy that leverages on course language assignments in the standard study plan, circumventing the potential non-compliance of students selecting out of languages other than the mother tongue. A high proficiency in the non-native language mitigates - but does not eliminate - the loss. Moreover, also the number of failed attempts increases.

[LINK]

Communities and testing for COVID-19 (with Steve Stillman), European Journal of Health Economics, 2022.

Between November 18th and 25th, 2020, 348,810 out of 500,607 (69.7 percent) eligible residents of the South Tyrol region of Italy volunteered to take a Covid-19 rapid antigen test. We examine the community characteristics that are associated with higher testing rates. Our findings point to a number of key community determinants of people’s willingness to volunteer. Convenience was an important factor. Beyond that, socioeconomic status and religiosity were also both positively related to greater testing.

[LINK]

A field experiment on fundraising to support independent information (with Alessandra Casarico), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2021, vol. 186, 227-250.

Voluntary contributions solicited via fundraising campaigns can be a useful tool to finance high quality and independent news media without restricting readership, thus guaranteeing maximum diffusion. We conduct a field experiment with the Italian online information site lavoce.info to explore what type of message is more effective in eliciting readers’ willingness to contribute. We compare messages stressing the public good component of financing news or private benefits for donors. In addition, we test the effect on donations of including information about the tax allowance associated with contributions. While stressing the public good or private benefit component of donating to a media outlet does not lead to a statistically significant difference in terms of revenues raised, information about tax allowance reduces overall contributions, due to a reduction in the number of (small) donors.

Previously circulated as "Pay-what-you-want to support independent information: a field experiment on motivation".

[Open Access]

Class Size Effects in Higher Education: Differences Across STEM and Non-STEM Fields (with Elif Kara and Michael Vlassopoulos), Economics of Education Review, 2021, vol 82.

In recent years, many countries have experienced a significant expansion of higher education enrolment. There is a particular interest among policy makers for further growth in STEM subjects, which could lead to larger classes in these fields. This study estimates the effect of class size on academic performance of university students, distinguishing between STEM and non-STEM fields. Using administrative data from a large UK higher education institution, we consider a sample of 25,000 students and a total of more than 190,000 observations, spanning six cohorts of first-year undergraduate students across all disciplines. Our identification of the class size effects rests on within student-across course variation. Overall, we find that larger classes are associated with significantly lower grades (effect size of -0.04) and the effect varies across academic fields, with no effect in non-STEM fields, and a large effect in STEM fields (-0.08). We further explore the heterogeneity of the effect along the dimensions of students' socio-economic status, ability, and gender, finding that in STEM disciplines smaller classes appear to be particularly beneficial for students from a low socio-economic background, with higher attainment in A-levels and to male students.

 [Open Access]

Points or Prison? The Effects of Different Sanctions on Driving Behavior (with Silvia Bruzzone and Stefano Castriota), Contemporary Economic Policy, 2021, vol 39, 126-140. Open Access.

We compare two reforms aimed at reducing road accidents in Italy. The Penalty Points System (PPS) provides drivers with a score and curtails points after infractions. The license is temporarily suspended when points are exhausted. Losing points is easy, but the penalty is mild. The Road Homicide (RH) introduces heavy penalties in the rare event of injuries and/or fatalities. In terms of probability and intensity of the penalty the two policies are therefore diametrically opposed. We find that injuries and fatalities decrease more with PPS than with RH. Comparing costs and benefits, we conclude that strong penalties are not beneficial. 

[LINK]

The Effects of the Universal Metering Programme on Water Consumption, Welfare and Equity (with Carmine Ornaghi), Oxford Economic Papers, 2021.

There is consensus that meters are necessary for promoting an efficient use of water. However, available evidence on benefits and costs of metering is scant and often based on small samples. We use data of the first large-scale compulsory metering programme in England to study its impact on consumption, social efficiency and distributional outcomes. We find a decrease in consumption of 22% after meter installation, a considerably higher value than assumed as policy target. This result implies that overall, the benefits of metering outweigh its costs. We also document a large heterogeneity in reaction, with many households showing low sensitivity to the new tariff. This novel finding suggests that selective metering, where only more price-sensitive households receive meters, would deliver even higher social welfare. Looking at distributional effects, we find similar reduction in consumption across income groups, although only high-income households gain financially from the new tariff.

[LINK]

When the market drives you crazy: Stock market returns and fatal car accidents  (with Corrado Giulietti and Michael Vlassopoulos), Journal of Health Economics, 2020, vol. 70.

This paper provides evidence that daily fluctuations in the stock market have important - and hitherto neglected - spillover effects on fatal car accidents. Using the universe of fatal car accidents in the United States from 1990 to 2015, we find that a one standard deviation reduction in daily stock market returns is associated with a 0.6% increase in fatal car accidents that happen after the stock market opening. A battery of falsification tests support a causal interpretation of this finding. Our results are consistent with immediate emotions stirred by a negative stock market performance influencing the number of fatal accidents, in particular among inexperienced investors.

[LINK][VIDEO SUMMARY]

Are Workers Motivated by the Greater Good?  IZA World of Labor, 2020: 138v2.

Organizations that support a social cause in a genuine way have an advantage in motivating employee effort. Jobseekers, customers, and investors view such companies as more attractive. The public sector, however, is generally not very successful in attracting motivated workers. Experimental studies show that using extrinsic incentives (better pay and career prospects) can be useful to recruit more productive workers in the public sector without necessarily having a negative effect on the intrinsic motivation to serve the public interest. This suggests that human resources practices from the private sector may also be useful in the public sector.

[Open Access]

Racial Discrimination in Local Public Services: A Field Experiment in the US (with Corrado Giulietti and Michael Vlassopoulos), Journal of the European Economic Association, 2019, vol 17, 165–204.

Discrimination in access to public services can act as a major obstacle towards addressing racial inequality. We examine whether racial discrimination exists in access to a wide spectrum of public services in the US. We carry out an email correspondence study in which we pose simple queries to more than 19,000 local public service providers. We find that emails are less likely to receive a response if signed by a black-sounding name compared to a white-sounding name. Given a response rate of 72% for white senders, emails from putatively black senders are almost 4 percentage points less likely to receive an answer. We also find that responses to queries coming from black names are less likely to have a cordial tone. Further tests demonstrate that the differential in the likelihood of answering is due to animus towards blacks rather than inferring socioeconomic status from race. 

[PDF][LINK]  

“Now that you mention it”: A Survey Experiment on Information, Inattention and Online Privacy (with Helia Marreiros, Michael Vlassopoulos, and m.c. schraefel), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2017, vol 140, pages 1-17.

Personal data lie at the forefront of different business models and constitute the main source of revenue of several online companies. In many cases, consumers may have incomplete information or may be inattentive about the digital transactions of their data. This paper investigates whether highlighting positive or negative aspects of online privacy policies, thereby mitigating the informational problem, can affect consumers’ privacy actions and attitudes. Results of an online survey experiment indicate that participants adopt a more conservative stance on disclosing sensitive and identifiable information, even when positive attitudes of companies towards their privacy are made salient, compared to when privacy is not mentioned. On the other hand, they do not change their attitudes and social actions towards privacy. These findings suggest that privacy behavior is not necessarily sensitive to exposure to objective threats or benefits of disclosing personal information. Rather, people are inattentive and their dormant privacy concerns may manifest only when consumers are asked to think about privacy.

 [DOI]

Sharing One's Fortune? An Experimental Study on Earned Income and Giving (with Michael Vlassopoulos), Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 2017, vol 66, pages 112-118 

In this paper we investigate the relationship between charitable giving and earnings, focusing on whether earning more due to good luck influences the decision of whether and how much to give. To do this we set up a real effort experiment, in which subjects enter data in four one-hour occasions and are paid a piece rate. From the second occasion onwards, half of the subjects are randomly assigned to a treatment with higher piece rates. At the end we ask subjects whether they want to donate a share of their earnings to a charity of their choice. We find that, despite large differences in earnings due to different piece rates, givers in the two groups give the same share of their total earnings, and that subjects receiving the higher piece rate are actually less likely to give. On average charities receive the same amount from the two groups. 

[DOI][PDF]

Peer Pressure and Productivity: The Role of Observing and Being Observed (with Sotiris Georganas and Michael Vlassopoulos), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2015, vol. 117, pages 223-232.

Peer effects arise in situations where workers observe each others' work activity. In this paper we disentangle the effect of observing a peer from that of being observed by a peer, by setting up a real effort experiment in which we manipulate the observability of performance. In particular, we randomize subjects into three groups: in the first one subjects are observed by another subject, but do not observe anybody; in the second one subjects observe somebody else's performance, but are not observed by anybody; in the last group subjects work in isolation, neither observing, nor being observed. We consider both a piece rate compensation scheme, where pay depends solely on own performance, and a team compensation scheme, where pay also depends on the performance of other team members. Overall, we find some evidence that subjects who are observed increase productivity at least initially when compensation is team based, while we find that subjects observing react to what they see in a non-linear but monotonic way when compensation is based only on own performance.

[DOI][PDF]

Corporate Philanthropy and Productivity: Evidence from an Online Real Effort Experiment (with Michael Vlassopoulos), Management Science, 2015, vol. 61(8), 1795-1811.

Contributing to a social cause can be an important driver for workers in the public and non- profit sector as well as in firms that engage in Corporate Philanthropy or other Corporate Social Responsibility policies. This paper compares the effectiveness of social incentives - that take the form of a donation received by a charity of the subject's choice - to financial incentives. We find that social incentives lead to a 13% rise in productivity, regardless of their form (lump sum or related to performance) or strength. The response is strong for subjects with low initial productivity (30%), while high-productivity subjects do not respond. When subjects can choose the mix of incentives half sacrifice some of their private compensation to increase social compensation, with women more likely than men. Furthermore, offering subjects some discretion in choosing their own payment scheme leads to a substantial improvement in performance. Comparing social incentives to an equally costly increase in private compensation for low productivity subjects reveals that the former are less effective in increasing productivity, but the difference is small and not statistically significant.

This paper previously circulate under the title "Social Incentives Matter: Evidence from an Online Real Effort Experiment". A non-technical summary appeared on Vox and on the Review of Environment, Energy and Economics - Re3 with the title "Do social incentives matter? Evidence from an online real effort experiment" and on The Conversation with the title "Note to Bosses: Workers Perform Better if you Give to Charity " This paper has been discussed in the “Behavioural Bulletin Issue 2” by the Behavioural Insights Team, Cabinet Office [LINK].

This paper has won the Best Paper Award at the 9th Young Economists' Workshop on Social Economy, Italy.

[PDF] [DOI] [Online Appendix]

Are Public Sector Workers Different? Cross-European Evidence from Elderly Workers and Retirees (with Michael Vlassopoulos), IZA Journal of Labor Economics, 2015, vol. 4:11, pages 1-21.[Open Access].

We investigate whether public and private sector employees differ in terms of public service motivation using a representative sample of elderly workers from 12 European countries. We find that public sector workers, both those currently employed and those already retired, are significantly more prosocial; however, the difference in prosociality is explained by differences in the composition of the workforce across the two sectors, in terms of (former) workers' education and occupation. Subsample analysis reveals that public sector former workers in education are more prosocial even after controlling for a rich set of characteristics.

[PDF]

Benefits Conditional on Work and the Nordic Model (with Ann-Sofie Kolm), Journal of Public Economics, vol. 127 (July 2015), pages 115-126.

Welfare benefits in the Nordic countries are often tied to employment. We argue that this is one of the factors behind the success of the Nordic model, where a comprehensive welfare state is associated with high employment. In a general equilibrium setting, the underlining mechanism works through wage moderation and job creation. The benefits make it more important to hold a job, thus lower wages will be accepted, and more jobs created. Moreover, we show that the incentive to acquire higher education improves, further boosting employment in the long run. These positive effects help counteracting the negative impact of taxation.

Through numerical simulations, we show how this mechanism can contribute to explain the better labor market performance and more equitable income distribution of Nordic countries compared to Continental European ones.

[PDF] [DOI]

The Sources of the Gender Gap in Economics Enrolment, (with Jackie Wahba), CESifo Economic Studies, vol. 61(1), pages 72-94.

In many countries there is a considerable gender gap in enrolment for a bachelor's degree in Economics, arguably an important stepping stone towards positions of influence in policy making and occupations paying relatively high wages. We investigate the sources of this gap by looking in detail at the university admission process in the UK. We use a 50 percent random sample of administrative data covering all university applications in 2008 and find no evidence of universities discriminating against female applicants. What we find is that girls are less likely to apply for a bachelor's degree in Economics to start with, even if once they apply their likelihood of enroling is the same as for boys. Girls are less likely to study Maths in high school and this may deter them from applying to study Economics at the university level. However, even among those who have studied Maths, females are less likely to apply than males, suggesting that differences in the choice of A level subjects cannot explain the whole gap.

[PDF]

Reporting Import Tariffs (and Other Taxes), International Tax and Public Finance, vol. 21 (February 2014), pages 153-173. 

This paper derives the implications for compliance and fiscal revenues of a tax base that is the product of several factors. For instance, in the case of import tariffs, the tax base is the product of quantity and unit value, both reported to, and during an audit assessed by, the custom authority. Import tariff are particularly interesting as custom receipts represent an important share of government revenues in many developing countries and there has recently been a surge in empirical studies showing how evasion in this field is a pervasive phenomenon. I show that, with a multiplicative tax base, when the fiscal authority has an imperfect detection technology a greater declaration in one dimension actually increases the fine when evasion in the other dimension is detected. Therefore, there is an additional incentive for the taxpayer to underdeclare and a multiplicative tax base is subject to more evasion, compared to a tax base that can be assessed directly. As a result, fiscal revenues decrease with the dimensionality of the tax base. Also, voluntary compliance and fiscal revenues may be higher when the importer is required to declare only the total value of imports instead of quantity and unit value separately.

This paper provides an argument in favour of uniform or specific tariffs and a reason for why a flat tax may improve compliance.

[PDF] [DOI]

An Experimental Investigation of Intrinsic Motivations for Giving (with Michael Vlassopoulos), Theory & Decision, vol. 76 (January 2014), pages 47-67.

This paper presents results from a modified dictator experiment aimed at distinguishing and quantifying intrinsic motivations for giving. We employ an experimental design with three treatments that vary the recipient (experimenter, charity) and amount passed (fixed, varying). We find giving to the experimenter not to be significantly different from giving to a charity when the amount the subject donates crowds out the amount donated by the experimenter such that the charity always receives a fixed amount. This result suggests that the latter treatment, first used by Crumpler and Grossman (2008), does not provide a clean test of warm glow motivation. We then propose a new method of detecting warm glow motivation based on the idea that in a random-lottery incentive (RLI) scheme, such as the one we employ, warm glow accumulates and this may lead to satiation, whereas purely altruistic motivation does not. We also provide bounds on the magnitudes of warm glow and pure altruism as motives that drive giving in our experiment.

[PDF] [DOI]

Experimental Evidence of Self-Image Concerns as Motivation for Giving (with Michael Vlassopoulos), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, volume 90 (June 2013), pages 19-27. 

We conduct an experiment in which subjects make a series of decisions of allocating an endowment of £10 between themselves and a passive recipient that is either a charity or the experimenter. When making these decisions subjects are informed that one of them will be chosen randomly at the end to determine payoffs. After all decisions have been made and it has been revealed which decision will determine payoffs we offer subjects an opportunity to opt out from their initial decision and receive £10 instead. We find that around one third of subjects choose to opt out. The fact that a subject decides to revise a decision to give and chooses instead to exit and keep the whole amount - an option that was available when she made the first decision and was not exercised - indicates that giving in the first instance was not motivated solely by altruism toward the recipient. We argue that opting out indicates that giving is also motivated by self-image concerns.

[PDF] [DOI] [Appendix]

Underreporting of Earnings and the Minimum Wage Spike, IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, vol. 2 (2013), issue 2.

This paper documents a positive correlation within European labour markets between the proportion of full-time employees with earnings on the minimum wage and the extent of underreporting of earnings in the economy. Using a simple model of a competitive labour market, I show how this correlation can emerge as a result of the common dependence of both quantities on the strength of enforcement of fiscal regulation. This suggests that a high spike in the wage distribution at the minimum wage level is, in some contexts, an issue of fiscal enforcement, more than a labour market issue.

[PDF] - Open Access

Minimum Wage and Tax Evasion: Theory and Evidence, Journal of Public Economics, volume 95 (2011), issue 11-12, pages 1635–1651

This paper examines the interaction between minimum wage legislation and tax evasion by employed labor. I develop a model in which fi rms and workers may agree to report less than the true amount of earnings to the fiscal authorities. I show that introducing a minimum wage creates a spike in the distribution of earnings and induces higher compliance by some agents, thus reducing their disposable income. The comparison of food consumption before and after the massive minimum wage hike that took place in Hungary in 2001 reveals that households affected by it experienced a drop compared to similar but unaffected household, thus supporting the prediction of the theory.

[PDF] [DOI]

This paper is discussed in OECD, 2008, Employment Outlook.

Disentangling the Sources of Pro-socially Motivated Effort: A Field Experiment (with Michael Vlassopoulos), Journal of Public Economics, volume 94 (2010), issue 11-12, pages 1086-1092

This paper presents evidence from a field experiment, which aims to identify the two sources of workers' pro-social motivation that have been considered in the literature: warm glow altruism and pure altruism. We employ an experimental design that first measures the level of effort exerted by student workers on a data entry task in an environment that elicits purely selfish behavior and we compare it to effort exerted in an environment that also induces warm glow altruism. We then compare the latter to effort exerted in an environment where both types of altruistic preferences are elicited. We find evidence that women increase effort due to warm glow altruism while we do not find any additional impact due to pure altruism. On the other hand, men in our sample are not responsive to any of the treatments.

[PDF] [DOI]

A non-technical summary appeared on Vox with the title "Are workers motivated by the greater good? Evidence from a field experiment"

Press Coverage: Independent on Sunday and Daily Telegraph

Cited in a report presented to the US Senate Committee on Finance and the House Committee on Ways and Means.

In-Work Benefits and Unemployment (with Ann-Sofie Kolm), International Tax and Public Finance, volume 18 (2011), issue 1, pages 74-92

In-work bene fits are becoming an increasingly relevant labour market policy, gradually expanding in scope and geographical coverage. This paper investigates the equilibrium impact of in-work benefi ts and contrasts it with the traditional partial equilibrium analysis. We find under which conditions accounting for equilibrium wage adjustments ampli fies the impact of in-work bene fits on search intensity, participation, employment, and unemployment, compared to a framework in which wages are fixed. We also account for the fi nancing of these bene fits and determine the level of benefi ts necessary to achieve efficiency in a labour market characterized by search externalities.

[PDF] [DOI]

This paper is discussed in Swedish Fiscal Policy Council (2010), Swedish Fiscal Policy - Report of the Fiscal Policy Council 2010.

Employment Protection Legislation and Job Stability: an European Cross-country Analysis (with Sandrine Cazes), International Labour Review, volume 149 (2010), issue 3, pages 261-285

Based on Eurostat data on wage employment for the period 1999–2006, this article investigates the dynamics of job tenure across the European Union. The authors’ analysis shows no generalized decline in job tenure, but a trend towards shorter tenure among young workers (aged 15–24 years) in many European countries. Their regression results indicate that this trend is associated with the weakening of employment protection provided by law and by trade unions. Given young workers’ weak individual bargaining power, the trend towards individualization of the employment relationship may thus affect them disproportionately.

[PDF] [DOI]

This paper is discussed in OECD (2010), Off to a Good Start? Jobs for Youth, OECD Publishing, and ILO (2012), World of Work Report.

Refereed Conference Proceedings:

Exploring User Perceptions of Online Privacy Disclosures (with Helia Marreiros, Richard Gomer, Michael Vlassopoulos, m.c. schraefel), Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on WWW/INTERNET (ICWI 2015)

[PDF] 

Referral Incentives in Crowdfunding (with Victor Naroditskiy, Sebastian Stein, Long Tran-Thanh, Michael Vlassopoulos, Nicholas R Jennings), Proceedings of the Second AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing (HCOMP-2014), pages 171-183.

Word-of-mouth, referral, or viral marketing is a highly sought-after way of advertising. We undertake a field experiment that compares incentive mechanisms for encouraging social media shares to support a given cause.Our experiment takes place on a website set up to promote a fundraising drive by a large cancer research charity. Site visitors who choose to sign up to support the cause are then asked to spread the word about the cause on Facebook, Twitter or other channels. Visitors are randomly assigned to one of four treatments that differ in the way social sharing activities are incentivised. Under the control treatment, no extra incentive is provided. Under two of the other mechanisms, the sharers are offered a fixed number of points that help take the campaign further. We compare low and high levels of such incentives for direct referrals. In the final treatment, we adopt a multi-level incentive mechanism that rewards direct as well as indirect referrals (where referred contacts refer others). We find that providing high level of incentives results in a statistically significant increase in sharing behaviour and resulting signups. Our data does not indicate a statistically significant increase for the low and recursive incentive mechanisms.

[PDF] There is also a website describing the project: http://www.referral-incentives.com/

Refereed Book Chapters:

Why Give Away your Wealth? An Analysis of the Billionaires' View (with Jana Sadeh and Michael Vlassopoulos), 2017, in: Social Economics, edited by J. Costa-Font and M. Macis, MIT press.

We explore what motivates the philanthropic activity of the extremely wealthy individuals and families. We focus on a recent large-scale philanthropic initiative by billionaires, the Giving Pledge, a commitment to donating half or more of one's wealth. We perform two pieces of analysis: first, we investigate what personal characteristics of billionaires are associated with becoming a pledger. Second, we undertake a textual analysis of the pledgers' letters describing their philanthropic outlook and classify their motivation into ten categories. We then correlate these motivational categories with various personal characteristics of the pledgers. The main insights obtained from our analysis is that pledgers are more likely to be self-made billionaires, and that their philanthropy is impact-driven.

[PDF]

Too Low to Be True: the Use of Minimum Thresholds to Fight Tax Evasion in: Critical Issues in Taxation and Development, edited by Clemens Fuest and George R. Zodrow, MIT press (ISBN: 978-0-262-01897-5), 2013.

The enforcement of compliance with tax regulation is a complex task. This is particularly the case when the administrative capacity of the tax authority is low, as is often the case in developing and transition countries. In this paper, I first formally model the impact of minimum thresholds by explicitly taking into account the low administrative capacity. The model shows that the introduction of a threshold creates a spike and a "missing middle" in the distribution of declared incomes and highlights under which conditions introducing a threshold is likely to increase net revenues for the tax authority.Then, I draw on some international experiences in fighting tax evasion to identify tools that can be used to reduce underreporting by employed labor, small and medium enterprises, self-employed, and professionals. In particular, I analyze the Italian "Business Sector Analysis" and the Bulgarian "Minimum Social Insurance Thresholds".

[PDF][LINK]

Informality in: Perspectives on Labour Economics for Development, edited by Sandrine Cazes and Sher Verick, ILO and Academic Foundation (ISBN: 978-92-2-126714-0), 2013.

A striking feature of labour markets in developing economies is informality: informal employment is not only widespread, often involving the vast majority of workers, but it does not seem to be receding. This chapter looks more in depth into this issue. After defining and quantifying the informal sector, the chapter discusses the reasons behind its existence, emphasizing how people may work informally by choice or due to exclusion from the formal sector. This chapter then describes the most important characteristics of informality in the main developing regions of the world and, finally, considers possible policy responses.

[PDF][LINK]

Policy Reports

Gli effetti dell’informazione sui comportamenti e la sostenibilità economica dei media, in: Monica Andolfatto, Laura Nota, Roberto Reale (eds.), Aver cura del vero, nuovadimensione, 2022.

Il capitolo discute il ruolo dell’informazione ai tempi del Covid e nel contrasto alla corruzione, passando poi ad una analisi della sostenibilità economica dei media.

Ruolo del settore pubblico e politiche al tempo del Covid-19 (with Federico Boffa and Francesco Ravazzolo), in: Elisabeth Alber, Alice Engl, Günther Pallaver (eds.), Politika21 - Annuario di politica dell´Alto Adige, Raetia Edizioni, 2021. 

The article discusses the scope of government intervention to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic. It looks at the actual policies implemented, with a focus on South Tyrol. It discusses the implications of both the Covid-19 pandemic and the changes in the role of the government and in the types of policies brought about by Covid-19 on some relevant economic trends.

Gender Differences in Earnings and Leadership: Recent Evidence on Causes and Consequences (with Mario Macis), ifo DICE Report 2 / 2017, vol 15, June 2017.

[PDF]

Minimum Wage or Minimum Tax?

in: Fazekas K., Benczúr P., Telegdy Á. (eds.) "The Hungarian Labour Market Review and Analysis", Research Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences & National Employment Nonprofit Public Company Ltd., 2012.

[English Version - LINK] [Hungarian Version - LINK]

Employment Protection Legislation in Central and East European Countries, South East Europe Review, issue 4, 2009.

This article presents updated indicators of employment protection legislation for several central and eastern European countries according to OECD methodology. Common patterns and outliers are identified and additional information is provided to interpret correctly the strictness of the regulatory environment. The aim is to provide some hard evidence for the debate regarding the interface between employment protection legislation and labour markets and welfare, based on the legislations applying in central and east European countries at the end of 2003. The article focuses on the 22 aspects of employment regulation encompassed within the OECD model, examining how each relates to the employment protection legislation in force in each country, and scores each one based on the relative restrictiveness of the regulation. The article concludes that the occurrence of informal arrangements complicates the picture but that this does not invalidate the usefulness of examining formal rules in detail.

[PDF]

The Wage Dimension of Flexibility and Security in Selected Central and Eastern European Countries

in: Cazes, S., Nesporova, A. (eds.) “Flexicurity: a relevant approach for Eastern Europe?“,  International Labour Office, Geneva, 2007.

[Google Books]