Suchergebnisse

The economic history literature on Fascism points out that its policies were strongly oriented towards capital accumulation. In this paper we analyse capital accumulation in Italy between 1881 and 1938 to verify its stability. If these policies were successful, we should observe a discontinuity in the data generation process with respect to the previous period. However, this analysis shows that the process is quite stable over time, and possible discontinuities cannot be attributed to the economic policy of the Fascist government.

We analyze the effects of political fragmentation on fiscal policy in a number of ways, considering three kinds of fragmentation: size & control, institutional, & over time. In doing so we introduce a number of new variables that allow us to look at this issue in a broader way. At the same time we have tackled some methodological problems that affected previous analyses, using a panel of 19 OECD countries, 1975-1995. Overall, we find relatively poor evidence in favor of size & over-time fragmentation, & more evidence of institutional & control fragmentation. 7 Tables, 24 References. Adapted from the source document.

In an economic system dominated by small and medium enterprises, striking among the large companies are Finmeccanica, Eni and Enel, partially controlled by the Ministry of the Economy and Finance. What are the links between politics and the choices of these companies? Have the changes in the political colour of the governments modified the entrepreneurial policies? Starting from the partial privatisation of these large companies, the book seeks to trace the thread linking politics and economics.

Empirical tests of the theories on the relationship between political competition and economic performance generate a puzzle: data tend to support the theory at the lower levels of government, but not in panels of countries. We argue that the larger set of policy instruments reduces the tax price of votes at the national level, increasing the incentives to use distortionary redistributive policies to win contested elections. Moreover, constitutions reserve competencies with a high ideological potential to the national government, reducing swing voters' responsiveness to the economic performance of the central government. We thus expect political competition to produce efficiency-oriented policies at the sub-national level compared to the national one. We test this hypothesis on a panel of 24 OECD countries over 1974-2000 and a panel of 15 Italian regions over 1984-2000 and find support for our predictions.

Using a public choice perspective, this book explains the evolution and political and economic impact of recent changes to the Italian institutional framework. Because these changes are so numerous and broad, their implementation serves as a case study for other Western governments. Particular attention is paid to the introduction of the EURO, the reform of voting from proportional to majoritarian rule, the impact of corporatism, constraints imposed by the Maastricht Treaty, and the switch from a highly centralized government to a federal organization.

AbstractThis paper evaluates the existence of a resource curse on political regimes using the Synthetic Control Method. Focusing on 12 countries, we compare their democracy level with the weighted democracy level of countries that have not experienced oil shocks and have similar pre‐event characteristics. We find that the exogenous variation in oil endowment does not have the same effect on all countries. In most cases, the event has a negative effect in the long run, but countries with a pre‐existing high level of democracy are not negatively affected.