“Going Local: Decentralization, Bureaucratic Capacity and Public Spending Efficiency” with A. Cerqua [Working Paper]
Abstract: Decentralization policies are widely used to pursue efficient management of public funds and better public goods provision. However, little is known about the conditions under which these policies ensure positive outcomes. While existing literature emphasizes the aggregate benefits of decentralization, we address a critical gap by examining how pre-existing differences in municipal bureaucratic capacity mediate these effects. We explore this hypothesis by analyzing a major administrative decentralization reform in 2001 in Italy (L.Cost. 3/2001). Exploiting spatial variation in reform implementation through a matched difference-in-differences design with panel data covering 1998-2007, we document significant efficiency gains. However, we find that the effects are contingent on local bureaucratic capacity. High-capacity municipalities achieve efficiency gains through cost optimization in street lighting and nursery services, while low-capacity municipalities focus improvement efforts on waste collection, reflecting preferences toward visible short-term gains. We identify multiple mechanisms driving heterogeneous effects: a general enhanced fiscal accountability through larger reliance on local taxation, a strategic shift toward income taxation paired with larger leniency toward tax collection among low-capacity municipalities, incumbents' incentives for re-election, and local governments' compliance with citizens' exogenous preferences for decentralization. This study provides important policy implications for understanding distributional consequences of decentralization processes and inform their optimal design.
Presented at: LSE Geography and Environment Student WIP Seminar, IRVAPP Foundation, Gran Sasso Science Institute, AISRe Annual Conference, RSA Winter Conference, Séminaire en ligne d'Economie Géographique, Banca d'Italia Workshop, EAYE 2025, Lisbon Urban and Public Economics Workshop 2025.
Published and Forthcoming Papers
“Femicides, Anti-Violence Centers, and Policy Targeting” with A. Cerqua, M. Letta and G. Pinto
Forthcoming at the European Economic Review [webiste and data; replication package]
Presented at: European Public Choice Society 2025, LSE Workshop of Early Career Women in Economic Geography and Spatial Economics, Press Conference at the Italian Senate
Media coverage: la Repubblica, IlSole24Ore, Ansa, Domani, IlPost, Senato della Repubblica
“Regional Government Institutions and the Capacity for Women to Reconcile Career and Motherhood” with A. Rodríguez-Pose, Journal of Economic Geography, 2025
[CEPR Discussion Paper No. 19621] [WP -Utrecht University, Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography]
“The Municipal Administration Quality Index: the Italian Case” with A. Cerqua, F. Zampollo, and M. Mazziotta, Social Indicators Research, 2025
Working papers
“The Causal Effect of Municipal Mergers on Local Institutional Quality” with A. Cerqua and F. Zampollo
R&R at the Journal of Regional Science
Abstract: While boundary reforms have been extensively studied for their economic and electoral implications, their impact on institutional capacity remains underexplored. Leveraging the staggered implementation of mergers across 197 Italian municipalities, we investigate changes in administrative quality using the Municipal Administrative Quality Index (MAQI)—a novel composite measure of local administrative capacity and quality. Using a non-parametric matching difference-in-differences approach , we find that mergers substantially improve administrative performance. This improvement is primarily driven by enhanced quality of local politicians and strengthened economic-fiscal performance, while bureaucratic efficiency improves only marginally. We show that the benefits depend on the generation of economies of scale and the self-selection of higher-quality local politicians attracted by higher wages. Our findings contribute to the broader debate on optimal municipal size and highlight an important channel through which boundary reforms can enhance local governments’ capacity to deliver public services and manage funds effectively.
“Signature spending politics” with A. Cerqua, M. Letta and G. Pinto [SSRN Working Paper]
Abstract: We study the behavior of politicians when they have vast discretion over the allocation of public resources. We examine a unique case study from Italy, where the exogenous pandemic shock prompted Lombardy’s regional government to approve a large extraordinary spending package. Most of these funds were swiftly allocated to numerous small projects through ad hoc motions proposed and signed by individual members of the regional parliament and subsequently approved through bipartisan resolutions. We leverage Large Language Models to text-mine thousands of parliamentary documents and assemble a fine grained politician-fund dataset containing detailed information on how and where these resources were distributed and which politician signed them. We document widespread pork-barrel strategies bargained with informal arrangements and driven by personal electoral rent-seeking, benefiting both majority and opposition politicians. By scraping social media data, we pinpoint the key mechanism: politicians credit claiming to boost visibility and advance their political careers.
“Dead Man Working”: A Place-based Approach to Workplace Fatalities” with A. Cerqua, M. Letta and G. Pinto
[SSRN Working Paper]
Media coverage: lavoce, Senato della Repubblica Italiana, IlSole24Ore, Il Fatto Quotidiano
Abstract: Despite increasingly stringent regulations, there has been a concerning stagnation in reducing workplace fatalities. Can place-based policy targeting help? By coupling machine learning techniques with comprehensive data from Italy, we develop a place-based approach to workplace fatalities. Harnessing accurate forecasts, we construct a granular risk map and compare it to the allocation of on-site inspections and public subsidies for occupational safety, uncovering limited overlap. Counterfactual estimates reveal that current public policies are effective only in areas flagged as high-risk by ex-ante machine predictions. AI-powered territorial targeting can reduce the incidence of this chronic issue while lowering the costs of policy implementation.
Selected works in progress
“The Recentralisation Hypothesis in Times of Crisis: the Role of Constitutional Courts” with A. Filippetti and F. Tuzi [draft coming soon]
Abstract: This article explores the behavior of the constitutional courts when deciding about the distribution of powers between the central and subnational governments during major economic crisis momentum. We propose an empirical assessment of the crisis-driven recentralization hypothesis, where central governments strive to consolidate authority and resources. We also hypothesize that during major crises constitutional courts tend to favor the central governments by taking a more centralistic stance. Using newly collected data about verdicts on intergovernmental conflicts and relying on a non-linear probability model, we test these hypotheses for the Italian context. Our findings show that during significant economic crises, the likelihood of the central government prevailing in disputes and their proclivity towards litigation escalates. This suggests a substantial change in the Constitutional Court’s behavior towards recentralization during crisis periods, irrespective of the prevailing political cycle.
“Climate change and voting preferences” with G. Valenti [Analysis stage]
Non-refereed publications
“Fiscal Federalism in Italy Twenty Years after the Constitutional Reform: an Appraisal” with A. Filippetti, S. Rondinella and F. Tuzi, Cuadernos Manuel Giménez Abad, Special Issue 9, 2023