Local Economy, Housing Prices and Neighborhood Change  

XI Giorgio Rota best paper award, Epainos award

This paper investigates the impact of real estate prices on local economic businesses within cities. I use a novel geo-located dataset of retailers and service providers, combined with information on sale and rental prices. I propose a unique empirical strategy that leverages the staggered implementation of a district heating system in Turin as an exogenous shock to housing prices. The analysis reveals that housing prices differently affect local economic sectors. While tradable sectors show resilience, non-tradable sectors experience a notable decline following the housing price shifts, exhibiting a negative effect of approximately 3%. This is probably due to demographic changes, particularly among college students, who are primary consumers in the non-tradable sector. The paper contributes to highlighting the complex interplay between housing market changes, demographic shifts, and urban economic activities. Moreover, it emphasizes the critical role of housing market dynamics in shaping urban planning and policy decisions.

Let’s visit the Consumer City: The role of tourism in reshaping urban amenities with Miquel-Àngel Garcia-López  (Submitted)

Previously circulated under the title "Amenities, urban consumption and tourism"

In this paper, we investigate how tourism reshapes local consumption amenities in cities. To do so, we combine a geo-located dataset of monthly retail establishments (licenses) with tourist accommodations (Airbnb rooms) and develop an empirical strategy based on non-linear panel techniques. To address endogeneity concerns, we implement a control-function approach that leverages exogenous variation from an instrument. Results show that tourism positively affects establishment licenses, driven by tourist-oriented retail activities (e.g., bars and restaurants), while resident-oriented establishments decline. This result highlights the segregating and reshaping effect of tourism on retail activity in city centers.

Entry Deregulation, Firm Turnover and Labour Market Outcomes: Evidence from Italian local markets  with Matteo Broso, Carlo Cambini, Francesca Lotti and Lorien Sabatino  

This paper investigates the impact of liberalisation policies on industry dynamics and labour market outcomes, by focusing on a landmark Italian law, the Bersani Law (BL). The BL was a key reform that removed entry barriers for new establishments. Using unique datasets on Italian firms turnover and worker histories, we exploit the timing of the BL to set up a difference-in-differences specification. Our results show that the BL significantly increased competition in the restaurant industry by increasing the number of restaurants. In particular, the law led to the exit of smaller, potentially less efficient firms and the entry of new ones. On the labour side, the BL induced an overall increase in employment, mainly through temporary contracts, but caused a decrease in average wages. These findings highlight the unforeseen effects of liberalisation policies: while boosting competition and employment, they may also bring challenges such as reduced job security and lower wages.

Mine, theirs or ours?  A survey experiment on citizens' motivations to invest in mental health with Pierluigi Conzo, Marina Della Giusta, Florent Dubois and Giovanni Razzu

Mental health is vital for well-being and productivity, yet investment remains chronically low. We study how different framings of mental health investment affect cooperation and donations using a pre-registered online experiment across five European countries (N = 8,312). Participants were randomly assigned to receive information emphasizing either individual benefits (Private Perspective), collective benefits (Public Perspective), or prevalence data (Neutral Perspective). All treatments significantly increase cooperation in a Public Goods Game and donations in a Charity Dictator Game, suggesting intrinsic motivation drives behavior. Only the Private Perspective increases personal normative expectations, while empirical expectations remain unaffected—suggesting that interventions influence moral beliefs more than beliefs about others’ actions. All treatments reduce self-reported mental health stigma, consistent with evidence from a list experiment, suggesting stigma reduction as a key mechanism. Heterogeneity analyses show stronger treatment effects among individuals with lived experience or prior concern, and reduced contributions under collective framings when public provision is perceived as adequate—consistent with a substitution effect between public and private action. Donations also decline in post-communist countries, aligning with historically lower institutional trust and weaker norms of private giving. These findings highlight how individual perceptions and institutional legacies shape behavioural responses, and suggest that perceived adequacy of public provision can backfire by discouraging private engagement—potentially trapping societies in a bad equilibrium of persistent underinvestment in mental health.