Research

We study the reaction of national politicians to rigorous fact-checking of their public statements. Our research design relies on a novel randomized field experiment conducted in collaboration with a leading fact-checking company. Our results show that fact-checking discourages politicians from making factually incorrect statements, with effects lasting several weeks. At the same time, we document that fact-checking neither increases nor displaces correct statements. Instead, fact-checked politicians tend to substitute incorrect statements with either no statements or with unverifiable ones. This suggests that they also respond by increasing the “ambiguity” of their language to escape the possibility of public scrutiny.

This paper examines the impact of a reform aimed at expediting graduation times in Italian universities by reducing the number of exams students must pass to obtain the fixed number of credits required to graduate. Using event-study estimates that leverage the reform’s staggered implementation, we find that this policy change led to an increase in on-time graduation rates but also resulted in a decreased probability of employment one-year post-graduation. However, this negative effect reverses into a positive one in the medium run. We show that these patterns are explained by students using the time gained from earlier graduation to pursue additional educational qualifications in the year following graduation, an investment that ultimately leads to higher earnings in the medium run. 

In recent years, advanced democracies have witnessed a marked decline in candidates for local government office, undermining electoral competition and accountability and triggering a sheer political recruitment crisis. Although several factors may contribute to this trend—such as generalized disaffection with politics—we focus on politicians' salaries, one of the few policy instruments that policymakers can directly adjust to influence the decision to pursue a political career. To this end, we examine a large-scale reform that significantly increased local politicians’ salaries using the newly proposed time-shifted control design (TSCD)—a counterfactual method that exploits misaligned local election dates to estimate treatment effects. We show that pay incentives increase the number of candidates, especially those new to the political arena. In less affluent areas or those with fewer entry barriers, the pay rise also drew a larger number of women mayoral candidates, with an increase in their probability of being elected. In the poorest contexts, we also observe a shift in the profile of councilors and members of the mayor's executive committee, where the pay rise attracted individuals with lower educational levels but with experience in white-collar positions.

Hedonic models say real estate markets price natural disaster risk, especially after catastrophic events. But can salience alone—absent any disaster, and with geological risk already known and pre-existing—shift risk perception and tolerance enough to affect prices? To answer this question, we leverage a natural experiment provided by the unique case study of the Phlegraean Fields, a large volcanic caldera near Naples, Italy. The area is home to over one million residents and is characterized by bradyseism, a geological phenomenon involving cyclic ground uplift and often accompanied by seismic activity perceptible by the population. We show that the recent bradyseismic crisis that began in 2023 has significantly affected local real estate markets, despite minimal damage so far and no abrupt shift in the long-known risks of living in the area. Using granular sub-municipal data, we provide quasi-experimental evidence of sudden declines in residential property sale prices in the most affected areas, alongside a substantial increase in rental prices across the entire caldera that is likely driven by speculation in response to growing demand for safer housing.

We investigate whether climate activism favors pro-environmental consumption by examining the impact of Fridays for Future (FFF) protests in Italy on second-hand automobile sales in rally-affected areas. Leveraging data on 10 million automobile transactions occurring before and after FFF mobilizations, we exploit rainfall on the day of the event as an exogenous source of attendance variation. Our findings reveal a reduction in both the total number of cars purchased and their average CO2 emissions, with an uptick in the market share of low-emission vehicles and a corresponding decrease in the market share of high-emission counterparts. We test for two potential mechanisms at work: one mediated by an increase in environmental awareness, the other induced by a rational anticipation of future stricter regulations. Empirical evidence suggests that the latter mechanism is generally more pronounced than the former. However, the first channel seems likely to be at work among individuals aged 18–25, a group that is potentially more involved in the FFF movement.

This study examines the Welcome-ED project—a partnership between the Municipality of Turin and the Turin Museum of Savings (MoS)—designed to provide tailored financial education to diverse migrant groups through cooperation with local entities, including cooperatives, non-profit associations, and provincial centers for adult education. By analyzing the project’s implementation, we identify its strengths and critical areas for improvement, offering actionable recommendations to guide the design of future financial education programs for migrants at the local level. The program’s use of multimodal, interactive teaching methods is a valuable aspect of this initiative, as it contributed to increasing participant engagement and delivering accessible content. Our analysis demonstrates that evaluation criteria should account for varying levels of topic difficulty, supported by insights from Item Response Theory (IRT). Migrants involved through cooperatives and non-profits exhibited the greatest knowledge gains, emphasizing the importance of context-specific approaches tailored to participants’ diverse needs—a goal achievable through effective inter-institutional cooperation and co-creation. 

We use data on Italian municipal elections from 1993 to 2009 to provide evidence on the role of social capital in explaining civic engagement measured through electoral turnout. We first show that an exogenous increase in the cost of voting—due to rainfall on election day—has a negative and significant impact on voters' participation. However, we also find that a sufficiently high level of social capital—that we proxy with the percentage of blood donations at provincial level—is enough to attenuate the cost of voting induced by adverse weather conditions. We interpret this as evidence that non-instrumental factors, like individual sense of civic duty and intrinsic motivations, play a non-negligible role in explaining electoral turnout.

Tourism accounts for around one tenth of global GDP. We analyze the impact of entertainment media in drawing tourists to filming municipalities (media multiplier) and, in turn, the effect of tourism on local economic development (tourism multiplier). To quantify the media multiplier, we employ a triple-difference empirical strategy exploiting the staggered international release across the EU of Inspector Montalbano, a TV series set in four municipalities of Sicily, a region of Italy. We find that the series release led to a fourfold increase in the number of tourists and boosted tourist expenditure by a factor of 2.5. Furthermore, we provide evidence of positive spillovers in nearby municipalities. To estimate the tourism multiplier, we exploit the interaction between the filming locations and the time-varying share of countries in which the series was aired, to instrument total tourist expenditure at the municipality-time level. Our results show that a 10% increase in total tourist expenditure translates into an increase in municipal income of 4.7%. We also document the impact of tourism on urban dynamics. Namely, tourism increases (decreases) rental and selling prices in the more (less) tourist-attractive areas within municipalities. All in all, the paper suggests that both entertainment media and tourism can be effective tools to boost local economic development. 

I investigate the effect of studying in English in a non-English speaking country, Italy, on international labor market mobility. I exploit the introduction of master's degrees offered in English by a university while students are already enrolled in a bachelor's program as an instrument for studying in English. I find that English-taught degrees increase an individual's probability of working abroad by 11.3 percentage points. The results are driven by students outside of the top-10 universities in Italy and students from universities in less-developed regions of the country.