"Facts vs Narrative. A New Trend or More of the Same? A Critical Discussion on Recent Emigration from Italy" abstract According to media reports and raw official data, the economic crisis of 2008/9 has led to the recurrence of emigration from Italy. Emigration thus seems a path-dependent response in times of economic difficulty. In recent decades, Italy became…

"Disposable workforce, long-term unemployment, out-of-the labour force or irregular work ? discovering the pathologies of the italian labour market" abstract Italy’s labour market suffers from a serious pathology, in addition to the increasing precariousness of the young workforce common to all EU member countries: flows from regular employment to non-employment are very often dead-ends. A vast…

"Early Origins of Birth Order Differences"

"Habemus papam? Polarization and conflict in the Papal States" abstract Does increased disagreement among members of an elite translate into more conflict? Divisions among the elite might weaken the central authority, lowering its ability to suffocate revolts. In this paper we study the effect of division within elite groups on the probability of internal conflicts…

"Social learning by chit-chat"

"Hold-up and Sorting"(Note: the seminar is on Thursday)

"Household Behavior and the Marriage Market"

"Recessions and Babies' Health"(Note: the seminar is on Wednesday)

"Testing for Educational Credit Constraints using Heterogeneity in Individual Time Preferences" (Note: the seminar is on Thursday)

"A Theory of Slow Trading in Bargaining" AbstractA seller dynamically sells a divisible good to a buyer. It is common knowledge that there are gains from trade and that the gains per-unit are decreasing. Payoffs are interdependent as in Akerlof’'s market for lemons. The seller is informed about the good’s quality. The buyer learns about it only through…

"Soldiers and Rebels. Coups and Civil Wars in Weakly-Institutionalized and Fragmented States" Abstract Many ethnically divided societies are ridden with inter-ethnic conflicts which inhibit their economic development. Following Lijphart, many scholars have advocated the adoption of "consensual" political institutions to facilitate the peaceful resolutions of ethnic conflicts. In this paper, we argue that making institutions…

"Ambiguity in the small and in the large" Abstract This paper considers local and global multiple-prior representations of ambiguity for preferences that are (i) monotonic, (ii) Bernoullian, i.e. admit an affine utility representation when restricted to constant acts, and (iii) locally Lipschitz continuous. We do not require either Certainty Independence or Uncertainty Aversion. We show…

"Reciprocity or strategy? An analysis of motivation behind conditional cooperation" abstract The goal of this research is the understanding of the dynamics that lead to the rise of motivation to cooperate under limited information about what other people involved are doing. This research is a part of a broader project that analyses motivation for adopting pro-environmental behaviour: climate change is…

"Two-sided reputation in certification markets" Abstract We consider a market where a seller needs to resort to a certifier to overcome adverse selection. There is uncertainty about the certifier'spreferences for disclosing negative information about the seller. The profit of a monopolistic certifier is an inverted U-shaped function of his reputation for transparency: being perceived as more transparent allows him…