Ongoing projects:
Riders in the Smog: the Impact of Air Pollution on the Health, Safety, and Productivity of Food Delivery Workers, joint with Giovanna D'Adda, Tommaso Frattini, and Alessio Romarri
We examine the impact of air pollution on the health, safety, and productivity of food delivery riders, a population that is exposed to air pollution daily and for prolonged periods. Using a dataset from 24 large Italian cities (2021-2023) provided by a leading food delivery company, we apply an instrumental variable approach that leverages exogenous variation in air quality induced by changes in the planetary boundary layer height. Our findings reveal significant detrimental effects on all the considered dimensions: a 1 SD worsening in air quality (+27 AQI) leads to a 30% increase in reported injuries, a 20% rise in absenteeism, and a 1.4% reduction in delivery speed. Interestingly, these adverse effects on productivity are less pronounced or even eliminated when riders are offered higher monetary incentives, highlighting a complex interplay between air quality, workers’ physical conditions, and their financial motivation.
A More Conservative Country? Asylum Seekers and Voting in the UK, joint with Francesco Fasani, Elisabetta Pasini, and Alessio Romarri
This study examines the impact of dispersed asylum seekers on local electoral outcomes in the UK from 2004 to 2019. We identify the causal effect of asylum seekers on electoral outcomes by combining variation from a dispersal policy with an IV strategy which predicts the allocation based on pre-determined public housing characteristics. Our IV results show a significant shift in the Conservative-Labour vote share difference, with a one standard deviation increase in dispersed asylum seekers leading to a 3.2 percentage point rise in favour of the Conservatives at the local elections. We find similar and significant effects in national elections and the Brexit referendum, with increased support for the Leave vote. Evidence from survey data confirms that exposure to asylum seekers shifted votes away from the Labour Party and towards the Conservative one. Further, the English context allows us to extend the analysis to asylum seekers who are not dispersed throughout the country. A shift-share IV analysis indicates that non-dispersed asylum seekers do not significantly affect the voting behaviour of natives. Exploring potential mechanisms, we find that the salience of immigration in MPs’ speeches has increased over time, and even more so in areas that hosted more asylum seekers. Finally, heterogeneity analyses reveal that the effect is particularly pronounced in areas hosting asylum seekers from Muslim-majority countries and those who arrived unaccompanied.
Sociopolitical and Climatic Events, Climate Change Salience, and Electricity Consumption [submitted], with Jacopo Bonan, Daniele Curzi, and Giovanna D’Adda,
Out of Practice: GP retirement and Patient Healthcare Demand and Service Utilization, with A. Riganti
From the Ballot to the Keyboard: Far-Right Mayors and Online Hate, with A. Romarri
Voting matters: the unintended consequences of early electoral participation on educational choices, with S. Granato, M. Ovidi, and C. Serra
Air pollution and school performance, with E. Meschi and C. Pavese
The Italian Judicial Geography and the Labour Market
Publications:
2024, "Triage at Shift Changes and Distortions in the Perception of Patients’ Condition at ED" [Journal of Health Economics], forthcoming, joint with Chiara Serra
2024, "Beyond Birth: the Medium-Term Health Impact of Prenatal Exposure to Air Pollution" [Journal of Environmental Economics and Management], joint with Chiara Serra, Massimo Stafoggia, and Alessandro Palma
2024, "The Hidden Toll of the Pandemic on Non-COVID Patients” [Health Policy], joint with Andrea Riganti
2023, "The complex interplay between weather, social activity, and COVID-19 in the US" [Social Science and Medicine - population health], joint with Chiara Serra
2023, “L’applicazione del d.lgs. n. 231/2001 sul territorio” in "Verso una riforma della responsabilità da reato degli enti. Dato empirico e dimensione applicativa", F. Centonze e S. Manacorda, ISBN 978-88-15-38380-8