Economia politica (Bologna, Italy)最新文献

In this study, we estimate the effect of a negative labour market shock on individuals' levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. We use a dataset collected during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, on a representative sample of citizens from Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, interviewed on three occasions. We measure stress, anxiety and depression and labour shocks using validated scales. Our research design is a standard difference-in-differences model: we leverage the differential timing of shocks to identify the impact on mental health. In our estimations, a negative labour shock increases the measure of stress, anxiety, and depression by 16% of a standard deviation computed from the baseline.

This paper aims to explain labour productivity through the lens of a Kaldorian perspective. To assess the relationship between output, demand, capital accumulation, and labour productivity, we apply Panel Structural Vector Autoregressive (P-SVAR) modelling to a dataset of 52 countries observed over a long-time span as provided by the Penn World Table. Findings validate the Kaldorian perspective and show that demand shocks-measured by government expenditures and exports-produce positive and persistent effects on labour productivity. Findings are confirmed even when the full sample is broken down to consider developed and developing countries separately.

I propose a stochastic SIR-Macro model to study the effects of alternative mitigation policies to cope with an epidemic. Lockdowns that force firms to close and that discontinue social activities slow down the progression of the epidemic at the cost of reducing GDP and increasing debt and, on average, decrease mortality. Testing-Tracing-Quarantine policies decrease mortality at a lower cost, but they are effective only if thorough. I find that lockdowns work best in case of a bigger average family size, of a diffused labor market participation and of a bigger average firm size.

How the foreign direct investment behavior of enterprises changes in response to the risks and instability of government economic policy changes is a relevant issue which, however, has not been extensively studied yet. Accordingly, this paper establishes a linear probability regression model to study the foreign direct investment behavior of Chinese A-share listed companies in 13 countries between 2003 and 2020 and explores whether multinational companies change their OFDI decisions when the economic policy environment of China and trade-related countries are unstable. A firm heterogeneity analysis and phased discussions were conducted, and a robust conclusion was finally drawn. The results show that (1) China's economic policy uncertainty promotes China's foreign direct investment, while the host country's monetary policy uncertainty inhibits China's foreign direct investment. (2) The foreign direct investment decisions of enterprises are affected not only by the macroeconomic and policy environment of the two trading countries but also by their development characteristics. (3) Sino-US trade frictions and the financial crisis have different effects on China's foreign direct investment.

We evaluate the impact that the economic freedom exerts on the shadow economy for a sample of 152 countries from 1995 to 2017. In order to solve endogeneity issues, we rely on an instrumental variable approach and find that a change in the economic freedom index, induced by the level of independence of financial markets from government actions, adversely affects the hidden economy. To corroborate the interpretation of our results we also show how each subcomponent of the economic freedom index explains the downward change registered in the shadow economy. Further, the negative effect is mainly found in countries characterized by a low level of democracy and strong corruption, whereas in more democratic and less corrupt countries the economic freedom positively affects the size of the shadow economy. Consistent with these findings, we also highlight that the effect of the composite indicator of economic freedom on the hidden economy is U-shaped and this relationship is exclusively driven by both business regulation and the freedom in the legal system and property rights.

In the literature, the positive effect of ICT on labour productivity and, in general, economic growth is vast and well consolidated. This paper wants to go beyond the general term of ICT and look inside the "black box." In particular, broadband adoption among Italian firms is critical for productivity. Hence, we focus on broadband adoption and internet facilities and how they affect the firms' total factor productivity in the Italian business sector firms at NUTS2 over the period 2003-2018. Italy is indeed still characterized by a robust North-South divide. Our question is: can we exploit the digital advantage for filling the productivity gap? To answer, we are going to use a classical two-stage approach. In the first one, the TFP is filtered out using both a semi-parametric approach and a parametric one (spatial ML). The second step investigates its determinants, using broadband firms' adoption as a covariate in an ECM augmented by spatial spillovers, controlling for competitivity, internationalization, and human capital. Our results show a positive relationship between TFP and broadband adoption (cointegration), including regional spillovers; this positive effect spreads to GVA. Moreover, our results show that digitalization makes Southern regions more resilient to external shocks.