Giovanni Righetto

PAPERS:

Marriage patterns and the gender gap in labor force participation: evidence from Italy - Labour Economics, 2023, Elsevier, vol. 82(C) Link

Presented at: 25th Spring Meeting of Young Economists (2021) organized by the European Association of Young Economists at the University of Bologna, 7th Potsdam PhD Workshop in Empirical Economics (2021) organized by the University of Potsdam, Applied Young Economist Webinar (2021) organized by the University of Warwick, PhD Conference in Economics 2021 jointly organized by University of Sassari and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Cultural Economics and Finance conference (2021) organized by the University of Trier, RGS Doctoral Conference in Economics (2022) organized by the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research

The Italian rate of gender participation gap, defined as the differential between female and male rates of labor force participation, was 18.2% in 2020, the second highest among EU countries. In this paper, we present evidence highlighting a new possible determinant of this unbalance in the labor force: endogamy intensity. We define endogamy as “marriage within the community”, and we argue that it helps preserve and reinforce social norms stigmatizing working women, along with reducing the probability of divorce, which in turn disincentivizes women’s participation in the labor force. We proxy the endogamy rate of a community by the degree of concentration of its surnames’ distribution, and we provide evidence that a more intense custom of endogamy contributed to enlarging gender participation gaps across Italian municipalities in 2001. In order to deal with endogeneity issues, we make use of an instrumental variable strategy, by instrumenting the endogamy measure of a municipality by the degree of ruggedness of its territory: the asperity of a municipality’s surface indeed contributes to its geographical isolation, thus incentivizing inmarriage. In our main 2SLS result, a standard deviation increase in our proxy of endogamy is linked to roughly a 0.3 standard deviation increase in the gender participation gap of 2001. In addition, we provide evidence supporting our main hypothesis, documenting how higher rates of in-marriage are linked to the preservation of social norms and to greater marriage stability, with a lower probability of divorce.

Political power and the influence of minorities: theory and evidence from Italy (with Vanin P.)- Submitted Link

Presented at: BSE PhD Jamboree (2022) organized by the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, NSEF PhD and Postdoc Workshop (2022) organized by the University Federico II, Internal seminar at the University of Bologna (2022), Brown Bag seminar at the University of Milan (2023), Conference on “Institutions, knowledge diffusion and economic development” organized by CRENOS (2023), Bomopav 2024 organized by the Universities of Bologna, Modena, Venice and Padua (2024), Sites-GLO conference 2024

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between minority and majority in politics, and how it can influence policy outcomes and potential conflict between parties. In particular, we focus on the consequences of a sudden increase in the power of a political minority, and on its potential effects on the relationship with the long-standing majority. We start by presenting a theoretical model that describes the potential consequences of an increase in a minority’s political power and show how it can make it more challenging to reach a compromise on policy outcomes between parties. When the minority’s power significantly increases, their demands for policy outcomes also increase, making the compromise more costly for the majority, which may lead to conflict. Furthermore, we empirically test these implications by exploiting the introduction in 2012 of a gender quota in Italian local elections. Using a Difference-in-Discontinuity strategy, we show how the generated increase in female politicians had heterogeneous effects on the level of funding for daycare, based on the share of post-quota women councillors. Municipalities with high shares of female councillors observed a decrease in expenditure for day care compared to control municipalities, whereas municipalities with low shares saw a relative increase in funding for day care following the quota.

Sweeping corruption: is transparency helping voters? - Submitted Link

Presented at: University of Bologna Internal Seminar, University of Bologna Work in Progress Seminar, BOMOPAV conference

Transparency in elections is vital for fostering democratic accountability, enabling voters to make informed decisions, and ensuring the selection of competent politicians. This paper evaluates the impact of the 2019 Italian law “Spazzacorrotti” (“corrupts-sweeper”), which required candidates in local elections in municipalities with populations over 15,000 to publish their curriculum vitae and criminal records. To isolate the law’s effects, I employ a Difference in Discontinuity design on a sample of electoral outcomes between 2013 and 2024. My findings reveal that the Spazzacorrotti law increased voter turnout by three percentage points and led to a higher educational level among elected officials, alongside a reduced re-election rate for incumbent local councillors. Additionally, the effects were mediated by high media coverage and social capital, with stronger impacts observed in cities with greater newspaper readership and collective welfare values. These findings highlight how increasing transparency is a cost-effective policy to boost democratic participation and the selection of qualified candidates.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Workers' networks and labor market outcomes: type of job matters (with J. Gagete and G. D'Adda) - Link

We study how the influence of social networks on individual labor market outcomes varies across occupations, specifically between manual and cognitive jobs. Using data from over fourteen million Brazilian workers and exploiting exogenous job termination due to mass layoffs, we confirm that social networks reduce unemployment duration and increase wages in the new job, but show that these effects are heterogeneous depending on workers’ occupations at the time of displacement. Manual workers benefit more from networks in terms of job reentry but less in terms of wages compared to workers performing cognitive tasks. We argue that these different patterns are due to the fact that networks reduce the likelihood that manual workers find new jobs in the same occupation, given that occupational change is associated with reductions in wages.

Vote for Assets: electoral support and asset confiscation in Sicilian municipalities (with A. Carrozzo Magli, A. Schiavone) - LinkWinner of the SIEP Prize 2025
This study investigates the relationship between electoral support for Forza Italia, the party led by Silvio Berlusconi, and the intensity of asset confiscation from the mafia during Italy's second republic (from 1994 onward). Building on a probabilistic voting model that posits a reciprocal influence between the anti-mafia policies chosen by political parties and the mafia's electoral preferences, we explore the hypothesis that a colluding party can repay its "electoral debt" to the mafia only if it wins elections, by reducing the intensity of anti-mafia policies when in power. We test our theoretical predictions by examining the relationship between votes for Forza Italia and asset forfeiture across Sicilian municipalities over the last 30 years. Our findings reveal a significant decrease in the fraction of assets confiscated by judicial authorities returned to civil society by governmental agencies in areas with higher electoral support for Forza Italia during Berlusconi’s governments.

Beyond Human Capital: Mobility intentions, IT skills, and the Early Gender Wage Gap (with F. Barigozzi, N. Montinari, A. Tampieri) - Link
In most countries, women systematically outperform men in academic achievement across fields of study. Yet within a year of graduation, they earn less, face lower employment rates, and are more likely to work part-time. If human capital were the sole determinant of pay, this pattern would be difficult to reconcile. We address this puzzle by extending the statistical discrimination framework a la Phelps (1972) to include not only human capital but also additional components of productivity, such as IT skills and mobility intentions -the willingness to travel or relocate for work -which might capture candidates’ technological proficiency and adaptability. Using rich microdata from the AlmaLaurea survey of master’s graduates from the University of Bologna (2015-2022), we show that while human capital alone predicts no gender wage gap in favor of men, combining it with mobility intentions reproduces the early wage disadvantage observed for women in Economics and Engineering. We further show that IT skills -an observable CV trait constructed from multiple IT-skill items- reduce the residual gender wage gap, especially in Engineering. Our findings highlight the importance of complementing human capital with field-specific preference and skill traits to explain—and potentially address—early gender wage gaps.

The impact of gender norms on mental health (with S. Vitellozzi) - Work in Progress

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