Il primo capitolo offre un sommario della letteratura teorica ed empirica relative ai cicli di bilancio a livello nazionale e locale, iniziando dai primi cicli politici di bilancio detti “tradizionali” fino ad arrivare ai modelli detti di “political agency”. Viene discusso il filone di letteratura che scaturisce da quest’ultimo tipo di modellistica, cominciando dai primi modelli di segnalazione fino ai più recenti modelli teorici sull’effetto di selezione e di disciplina svolto dalle elezioni politiche. Un’enfasi particolare viene data alla rassegna dei test empirici basati su quest’ultimo tipo di modellistica e, in particolare, sul nesso tra decentralizzazione e trasparenza a livello locale. Il secondo capitolo è incentrato sulle tematiche del ciclo elettorale relativo alla tassazione e alla spese in un campione di comuni italiani. Le stime econometriche indicano un forte ciclo elettorale relativo alla tassa comunale sugli immobili (ICI) e, utilizzando le predizioni teoriche dei modelli a informazione incompleta sul differente comportamento dei sindaci che possono correre per un secondo turno e di quelli che sono invece impossibilitati a ricandidarsi, viene mostrato come i sindaci al primo turno che possono ricandidarsi manipolano in maniera più intensa l’imposta comunale sugli immobili applicata alla prima casa. Le stime effettuate sul comportamento differente dei sindaci con limite di mandato e senza limite di mandato, relative alle scelte di tassazione applicate alla base imponibile ICI ordinaria, indicano pure la presenza di un effetto di disciplina di partito. Questo capitolo, inoltre, compie un passo avanti rispetto a precedenti stime sui cicli elettorali fondati solo sulla dinamica delle spese correnti e in conto capitale senza tenere in considerazione la natura di competenza o cassa delle poste di bilancio corrispondenti. Sono presentate alcune evidenze in merito all’esistenza di un ciclo elettorale nella spesa in conto capitale registrata in contabilità come di cassa. Viene fornito anche un test econometrico sull’effetto dei vincoli del patto di stabilità interno sui comportamenti di spesa dei comuni. Nell’ultimo capitolo, sono ulteriormente approfonditi i risultati presentati nel secondo capitolo relativi alle scelte differenti dei comuni sulle aliquote ICI ordinaria e prima casa, esplorando il nesso tra cicli opportunistici razionali e trasparenza degli strumenti fiscali. Viene presentato un modello formale a informazione incompleta che predice come gli incentivi politici per usare due diversi strumenti fiscali possono essere diversi, a seconda delle caratteristiche di trasparenza annesse ai medesimi strumenti. Le predizioni teoriche sottoposte a stima empirica sono le seguenti: 1) i sindaci al primo mandato utilizzano maggiormente l’addizionale IRPEF introdotta per i comuni nel 1999 rispetto ai sindaci che non possono più correre; 2) il turnover politico dovrebbe diminuire dopo la riforma che ha introdotto l’addizionale IRPEF e, in particolare, per i sindaci che usano maggiormente tale strumento; 3) la riforma dovrebbe agevolare la decisione dei sindaci di correre per un secondo mandato, essendo agevolata la probabilità di rielezione. I test empirici presentati utilizzando un campione di comuni italiani confermano le predizioni teoriche contenute nel modello. / The first chapter reviews the theoretical and empirical literature about political budget cycles at national and local level, starting from earlier traditional political business cycles models to political agency models. This last strand of literature is discussed, starting from earlier signalling models to the more recent advancements in theoretical predictions about the selection and disciplining effect of elections on politicians. A particular emphasis is given to the full review of empirical tests based on political agency models predictions about the links between accountability and decentralization, especially at the local level. The second chapter focuses on the issues of electoral cycles in taxes and expenditures for a sample of Italian municipalities. Econometric estimates show a strong electoral cycle on municipal property tax, and extending political agency models' implications about the differences in tax-setting behavior between first- and second-term mayors, evidence is shown of a stronger electoral manipulation of property rates applied to main residence tax base when mayors run for re-election. Estimation of property tax rates' sensitivity to term-limited mayors' fiscal behaviors also uncovers a party discipline effect on tax rates applied to business and non homeowner property tax base. Furthermore, this chapter goes beyond previous econometric estimates of expenditure cycles focusing solely on the dynamics of current and capital expenditures without taking into account the basis on which outlays are recorded in local budgets. Some preliminary evidence points to the existence of an electoral cycle in cash-recorded budgetary investment outlays. An econometric test on the effect of formal expenditures restraints on municipal spending behaviors concludes the chapter. In the last chapter, results from the second chapter relative to business and main residence property tax rates’ choices are further investigated, exploring the link between opportunistic rational cycles and accountability of tax instruments. A formal political agency model predicts that the political incentives for using the two different property taxes may be different, according to their level of transparency. Three empirically testable implications derives from theoretical predictions: 1) first-term mayors should use a local income tax surcharge, introduced in 1999 in Italy, more than second-term mayors; 2) political turnover should be lower following the reform, and in particular for mayors using more the local income tax surcharge and 3) the reform might also affect the decision to run again by mayors, as it should be easier to get re-elected after the reform. Empirical estimates using a sample of Italian municipalities are presented, confirming theoretical predictions of the model.

La tesi si compone di tre capitoli. Il primo capitolo è una rassegna critica che intende spiegare come mai la riforma del sistema sanitario in Cina non funziona come ci si aspettava. Comparando il caso cinese con le con le riforme avvenute in Messico e Vietnam, vengono individuate alcune ragioni metodologiche sia di policy design che di valutazione d’impatto. Il secondo capitolo propone una fusione tra la letteratura sulla spesa medica e la letteratura inerente alla misurazione multidimensionale della povertà. Viene così analizzato l’impatto della spesa medica non-rimborsabile sul benessere generale. Il nostro studio suggerisce che, nelle aree rurali dei paesi in via di sviluppo, specialmente lì dove il sistema sanitario è agli esordi, le famiglie tendono ad essere messe in condizione di povertà più per colpa di problematiche legate agli aspetti sanitari che per una vera e propria scarsità monetaria. Ne segue che il design e le valutazioni delle politiche di welfare dovrebbero avere un respiro più ampio e non focalizzarsi soltanto sulla povertà in termini di reddito. L’ultimo capitolo è un tentativo di valutare gli impatti di un esperimento sociale ‘block-randomized’ in Cina. E’ stata utilizzata la metodologia Difference-in-Difference per stimare l’average treatment effect con un insieme di variabili relative alle spese mediche non-rimborsabili. I risultati dimostrano come i poveri possano beneficiare di più da questo tipo di interventi. / The thesis consists three chapters. The first one, a critical review, aims at explaining why health care system reform in China does not work as expected. By comparing the case of China with the cases of Mexico and Vietnam, we try to find the explanation from the policy design and evaluation methodology. The second chapter proposes to combine catastrophic health expenditure literature with multidimensional poverty literature to analyze the impact of out-of-pocket health expenditure on overall well-being. Our study suggests that, in the rural area of developing countries, especially where health care system is in its infancy, households may be driven into poverty by health-related deprivation more than monetary deprivation. Therefore, policy-makers should evaluate and design welfare policy from a broader perspective other than only focusing on addressing the monetary poverty. The last chapter attempts to evaluate the impacts of a block-randomized social experiment in rural China, which implemented the provider payment intervention on outpatient services. Difference-in-difference methods are employed to estimate the average treatment effect with a set of outcome variables related to out-of-pocket health expenditure. We find that the poor may benefit more from the interventions.

Questa tesi studia da una prospettiva teorica le implicazioni della discriminazione del prezzo in oligopoli spaziali. Nel capitolo 1 presentiamo una raccolta selettiva dei principali articoli riguardanti discriminazione del prezzo e differenziazione del prodotto nel modello di Hotelling. Nel capitolo 2 studiamo l’incentivo per le imprese a discriminare quando la differenziazione del prodotto è endogena. Due diverse versioni di un gioco a tre stadi sono considerate. Nella prima versione, le imprese prima scelgono quale varietà produrre, poi scelgono se discriminare o non discriminare, e infine fissano i prezzi. Emerge un Dilemma del Prigioniero: le imprese discriminano e i profitti sono inferiori di quelli che sarebbero emersi in caso di prezzo uniforme. Nella seconda versione del gioco i primi due stadi sono invertiti: in questo caso, in equilibrio nessuna impresa discrimina e non c’è Dilemma del Prigioniero. Nel capitolo 3 studiamo la relazione tra sostenibilità della collusione e differenziazione del prodotto quando le imprese possono discriminare. Analizziamo tre schemi collusivi: collusione sui prezzi discriminatori, collusione su un prezzo uniforme, collusione per non discriminare. Otteniamo che la sostenibilità del primo e del terzo schema non dipende dalla differenziazione del prodotto, mentre la sostenibilità del secondo schema dipende negativamente della differenziazione del prodotto. / This thesis studies from a theoretical point of view the implications of price discrimination in spatial oligopolies. In Chapter 1, we provide a selective survey of the main contributions regarding price discrimination and product differentiation in the Hotelling framework. In Chapter 2 we study the firms’ incentive to price discriminate when product differentiation is endogenous. Two different versions of a three-stage game are considered. In the first version, firms first choose which variety to produce, then choose whether to price discriminate or not, then set prices. A Prisoner Dilemma arises: firms price discriminate and profits are lower than under uniform pricing. In the second version of the game, the first two stages are reversed: in this case uniform pricing emerges in equilibrium and there is not Prisoner Dilemma. In Chapter 3, we study the relationship between product differentiation and collusion sustainability when firms may price discriminate. Three different collusive schemes are analyzed: collusion on discriminatory prices, collusion on a uniform price, and collusion not to discriminate. We obtain that the sustainability of the first and the third scheme does not depend on product differentiation, while the sustainability of the second scheme depends negatively on product differentiation.

Questa tesi si sviluppa secondo tre saggi empirici, indagando il rapporto tra spazio e povertà in un contesto urbano industrializzato, Milano. Il primo saggio, accogliendo lo schema concettuale unificante per l’analisi del suddetto rapporto illustrato in Chiappero-Martinetti, Moroni e Nuvolati (forthcoming), suggerisce un sistema di 27 indicatori riferito a 3 dimensioni chiave del benessere (infrastrutturale-ambientale, economica e socio-simbolica), ne testa la robustezza e fornisce l’indicazione di un profilo di povertà per ciascuna delle ex 20 zone di decentramento. Il secondo saggio considera esclusivamente la dimensione economica, estendendo il campo di indagine alle 180 aree funzionali. Da questa analisi si ottiene che, dal 2000 al 2006, il reddito medio procapite per componenti equivalenti risulta autocorrelato in modo significativo, secondo diversi regimi di concentrazione (cluster spaziali tipici e outlier spaziali atipici). Il terzo saggio considera le 3 dimensioni menzionate nel primo contributo, riferite alle 180 aree funzionali. All’approccio theory driven se ne contrappone uno data-driven, che consente di specificare la relazione che intercorre tra le variabili e le sottodimensioni del benessere, identificare sei distinti gruppi di cluster sulla base delle misure sintetiche ottenute e suggerire un profilo di policy che combini interventi a favore delle persone e dei contesti di vita. / This thesis is developed under three empirical essays, investigating the linkage between space and poverty in the urban industrialized Milan. The first essay, accepting the unifying conceptual framework for the analysis of such linkage issued by Chiappero-Martinetti, Moroni and Nuvolati (forthcoming), suggests a system of 27 indicators related to 3 key dimensions of wellbeing (physical, economic and social ), tests its robustness and provides the indication of a poverty profile for each of the former 20 areas of decentralization. The second essay considers only the economic dimension, extending the investigation to the 180 “aree funzionali”. From this analysis we find that, from 2000 to 2006, the average per capita income per equivalent components is significantly autocorrelated, according to various concentration schemes (typical spatial clusters, atypical spatial outliers). The third essay considers the three dimensions mentioned in the first contribution but related to the 180 “aree funzionali”. In opposition to that theory-driven, this data-driven approach allows to specify the relationship between the variables and sub-dimensions of wellbeing, to identify six distinct cluster groups on the basis of the synthetic measures obtained and to suggest a policy profile combining people and area-based interventions.

Questo lavoro propone dei temi sulla tax compliance in un contesto come quello italiano, caratterizzato da un basso livello della stessa. Il primo capitolo propone una ricerca concernente gli effetti dei controlli. Nella letteratura, l’esito degli stessi è ancora discusso, alla luce del fatto che sono possibili due effetti opposti: il target effect ed il bomb-crater effect. Grazie all’impiego di un database dell’Agenzia delle Entrate italiana, con una combinazione di tecniche di of matching e difference – in – difference, questo lavoro mostra come in un particolare contesto, come quello italiano, i controlli possono avere un effetto positivo sulla tax compliance. Il secondo capitolo mostra gli effetti dell’introduzione di una presumptive tax nella forma di una minimum tax. L’obiettivo principale è quello di studiare l’effetto di tale introduzione quando si hanno particolari condizioni. Nello specifico, questa analisi confronta le tasse italiane pagate da un particolare gruppo di contribuenti, con quelle che verrebbero pagate con l’introduzione di una presumptive tax nella forma di una minimum tax. Il presente lavoro include due differenti metodologie di stima di una presumptive tax, sviluppate dall’ISTAT e dall’Agenzia delle Entrate italiana, includendo anche le possibili reazioni dei contribuenti. / This work investigates issues of tax compliance in a context like the Italian one, characterized by a low level of it. The first chapter investigates the role of audits. In the present literature, the outcome of them is an open question since two opposite effects are possible: the target effect and the bomb-crater effect. Using a database provided by the Italian Revenue Agency, with a combination of matching with difference – in – difference techniques, this work shows how in a particular context, such as Italy, audits can have a positive effect on tax compliance. The second chapter explores the effects of implementing a presumptive tax in the form of a minimum tax. The main aim is to study the effect of a change in the policy from a particular starting condition. More specifically, this analysis compares the taxes collected in Italy from a particular group of taxpayers, to the ones that would be collected if Italy implements a presumptive tax in the form of a minimum tax. This work implements two different methodologies to estimate a presumptive tax, provided by ISTAT and the Italian Revenue Agency, and reactions of taxpayers are included as well.

The overall goal of this work is to study the effect of a crisis on the distribution and employment and the space of manoeuvre of the government for supporting and reverting the negative shock produced by such a crisis. Every chapter of this work and the related models are supported by both a theoretical background analysis and by numerical dynamic simulations. Stylized facts show that the income and wealth inequality in all the OECD countries has been constantly increasing after the 1960s. Piketty has been one of the most important authors that highlighted the rising inequality issue, mainly in the OECD countries. For example, Piketty (2014) shows that the income share held by the top percentile in countries such as US, Canada and UK increased from 8%-10% in the 1960s up to 14%-18% in the current decade. Similar figures are now provided by the World Inequality Lab that has updated data for almost every country up to 2016. At the same time, the wage share for the majority of the OECD countries substantially decreased. For example, countries such as Italy and Spain experienced a decrease in wage share from about 73% in the 1970s to about 63% in the current decade (Hein, 2014). Taking into account such a stylized fact, we will consider a model with two social classes, workers and capitalists. These social classes differ in terms of their initial endowment, their consumption behaviour, the different loans repayment conditions required to them by the banks and in terms of the ways in which they can use their financeable wealth. This is a very important departure hypothesis from the mainstream point of view models that generally consider a population made up of “a representative agent” of the whole society. Considering the inequality levels that the OECD countries are experiencing, we took the Post-Keynesians school of thought as a very good reference point since it always focused its attention on the relation between the level of employment, the aggregate demand and the distribution between social classes. In line with the post-Keynesians tradition, we believe that a theory cannot be correct unless it starts from realist or realistic hypotheses, although it is recognized that assumptions are always abstractions and simplifications (Lavoie, 2014). Therefore, we developed a step by step model with the analysis of an economy based on some well-known stylized facts. Beyond the social classes distinction, we take into consideration the temporal lag between production and sales of products by firms and the one between income received by the social classes and their expenditure. Those two temporal lags are the very key aspects we focus our attention on in the model presented in Chapter II named “Keynes, Kalecki and Metzler in a Dynamic Distribution Model”. In that chapter, we merge the hints of Keynes and Kalecki about the distribution of social classes and the intervention of the government in supporting the aggregate demand together with Metzler’s hint about the mismatching process between aggregate demand and aggregate production. Metzler’s mismatching process would finally generate inventories of consumption goods. More specifically, it is argued that even if Post-Keynesians models focused their attention on output growth, employment and income distribution relating those issues with a stronger intervention of the state, they all (even the canonical Kaleckian model) overlooked the adjustment - or non-adjustment - dynamics from the ultra-short run to the short run period upon which the short run and long run models are then constructed. In fact, even if the Kaleckian models completely reject the standard neoclassical production function (rejecting diminishing returns and rejecting the substitution between capital and labour) they also very strongly rely on a final equilibrium between aggregate demand and aggregate production. The canonical Kaleckian short run models are constructed upon the consideration of the effective labour demand curve defined as “the locus of combinations between real wages and levels of employment which ensure that all produced goods are sold at the price set by firms” (Lavoie, 2014). As argued by Lavoie (2014), this construction assures that an increase of real wage leads to an increase in the employment level. That has been and still is definitely one of the cornerstones for the Post-Keynesian authors. We argue that the equilibrium assumption between the aggregate demand and the aggregate production plays a key role in obtaining the standard Kaleckian conclusions regarding the relation between effective demand, employment levels and the distribution of surplus product between the social classes. The main question arising from the previous enquiring exercise about adjustment dynamics in the Kaleckian framework is that, because of the overlooking on that adjustment process between aggregate production and aggregate demand, also its conclusions might be consequentially affected. More precisely the main Post-Keynesian Kaleckian conclusions to assess are the following: would it still be true that higher real wages lead to a higher level of employment? Would it still be true that a decrease in the propensity to save will lead to an increase in output and employment? Would it still be true that in order to keep employment from falling, whenever there is an increase in productivity there must be some increase in real wages? And finally, most importantly in terms of policies, would it still be true that in order to keep employment from falling, even when the economy faces a pari passu increase of real wage and productivity level, it would be necessary an increase in real autonomous expenditure such as a strong government one? In this way, our model analyses under which conditions the standard Kaleckian conclusions are still valid considering a disequilibrium situation. Two scenarios are simulated: one with fixed expectations as in Metzler (1941) and another new one based on adaptive expectations and asymmetric behaviour of the wages-unemployment relation. The model questions the effective demand labour curve and suggests that an increase in real autonomous expenditures, mainly by the Government, might be even more essential than what is generally considered in the Kaleckian literature, to avoid increasing unemployment in an increasing wage world. The model presented in Chapter III named “The stabilising role of the Government in a Dynamic Distribution Growth Model” builds upon the model presented in Chapter II and considers once again the effect of a crises on the relation between aggregated demand, employment and distribution between social classes adding important characteristics of realism that were absent in the previous chapter. Here, we consider the gestation period of the investments and the presence of the government investigating its margin of manoeuvre in such an economy. The first aspect takes inspiration by Kalecki (1971) himself who considers the three different Investment stages: investment order or Demand (I^D), investment Production (I^P) and investment delivery or Completion (I^C). In line with a post-Kaleckian perspective, we consider the expected profitability and the capacity utilisation as the two main variables as driving forces for the investment decisions. The second new aspect of this model compared to the one presented in Chapter II is the explicit presence of the government. In fact, even if chapter II suggested the Government as the emblematic autonomous figure able to foster expenditure in times of recession, its actual role in the economy was not analysed. Many post-Keynesian scholars have underlined how recent decades have been characterised by a strong downgrading of the fiscal policy role as a stabilisation instrument of macroeconomic policy (Arestis and Sawyer, 2003). In this way, this chapter analyses exactly the space of manoeuvre of the government and the role of the fiscal policies into a “functional finance” framework where the government "can and should be called upon as a key part of the remedy" (Fazzari, 1994) to ensure a high level of economic activity whenever the private sector is unable to do so by itself. In the light of such a functional finance framework, the government actions should be inspired to achieve a more stable and sustainable growth path. More specifically, we here investigate the possibilities that the Government has to boost and support the economic activity with its two main tools, public investments spending and a taxation system in two scenarios. The first scenario simulates an exogenous fall of private investments while the second one relates to an exogenous increase in labour productivity and real wages. In particular, here we test the canonical Kaleckian model conclusion according to which even when the economy faces a pari passu increase of real wages and productivity level it would be necessary an increase in real autonomous expenditures - such as the one implemented by the government - in order to keep employment from falling. At the same time, the aim of this chapter is also to explore the role of the Government in stabilising the economy exactly thanks to the previous tools. In fact, Chapter II underlined the possibility of an arising unstable path from a mismatching dynamic between aggregate demand and aggregate production. It was argued that such an unstable path might develop because of “wrong” oversensitive expectations of firms regarding the production of consumption goods. Therefore, chapter III focuses exactly on the space of manoeuvre of the government in stabilizing an unstable economic scenario caused by a crisis. The model built in Chapter IV named “The distributive monetary analysis of a sustainable ecological economy” is the natural evolution of the models developed in Chapters II and III. In such a model all the previous stylized facts are contained, namely the temporal lag between production and sales of products by firms, the temporal lag between income received by the social classes and their expenditure, the gestation period of the investments and, finally, the intervention of the government. The most important difference with respect to the models presented in the previous chapters is its overall monetary and ecological framework. In fact, for simplification purposes the previous models were assuming that, in line with a horizontalist approach, commercial banks were providing funds on demand to firms for financing their investments. However, the explicit relations among all the sectors of our economy were not fully exposed. In this chapter Graziani’s endogenous money theory is used and we are developing a Post-Keynesian Stock Flow Consistent (SFC) model to track all the economic relations, both the real and monetary ones. At the same time, the use of a SFC model ensures that “there are no black holes - every flow comes from somewhere and goes somewhere” (Godley W. , 1996) through a rigorous accounting framework, which guarantees a correct and comprehensive integration of all the flows and the stocks of an economy. Such as Kalecki, Graziani and the circuitists economists introduce a preliminary distinction between producers and wage earners. The first step of the monetary circuit is always characterized by firms’ decision to activate production and, in order to do so, they take up loans by commercial banks. In this sense, commercial banks are able to create deposits ex nihilo, granting them loans and, at the same time, creating deposits. In this way, the starting logical cause of the expansion of money is exactly the firms’ willingness of contracting a liability to activate production. In the second step, firms use those loans to pay workers and in this way to obtain the amount of consumption goods desired through the production process. When such funds are transferred by firms to households they instantaneously become income paid for the work provided to firms by workers. Finally, the last step of the Monetary Circuit is characterized by the households’ spending decision to use the money balances previously obtained as income. In this step, while households use their funds to buy consumption goods, firms obtain back those money balances they initially paid to households for their work. In this way, the previous Monetary Circuit analysis is not in contrast with the one made by Kalecki upon the way workers obtain their wages and use all of them to buy consumption goods while capitalists are able to spend just a proportion of their income. Finally, together with its social and monetary framework, our economy is also characterized by an environmental one since we here study the impacts that the economic consumption has in terms of ecological erosion of natural resources. In this way, the model of chapter IV questions the expenditure margins of the Government – in particular after a crisis - and uses the suggestions of the monetary circuit theory to analyse the space for fiscal policies to reduce unemployment boosting the economic activity, to obtain a more equitable distribution between social classes in a sustainable ecological way. Our understanding is that despite many contributions focused on the topics of recovery, distribution and ecological sustainability, few of them tried to tackle them all in a comprehensive way considering the rediscovery of the endogenous money phenomena as one of the most important breakthroughs in the last decades. Here we argue that exactly the endogenous money feature is the essential fil rouge to better understand and connect the three previous important aspects. It is so when we analyse the sectors connections and the policies ones devoted to recovery, and also if we consider how the different incomes and wealth are captured and distributed by the different social classes and finally when we point out the ways of financing long term ecological path to preserve a sustainable environment. Indeed, our overall work in Chapter II, Chapter III and Chapter IV is a step by step construction of an organic and consistent model. It starts with a more theoretical and simplified approach through Chapter II which investigates the (in)stability conditions of the Kaleckian approach while suggesting the presence of an autonomous figure such as the government one. Chapter III adds more real base features through endogenous investments and government presence while Chapter IV finally concludes considering all the real and monetary links of the sectors into a social and ecological framework.

La tesi indaga la logica dell'integrazione europea prendendo in esame il caso dell'Unione Bancaria. Due sono gli argomenti che vengono sostenuti. Il primo é che l'Unione Bancaria é la soluzione imperfetta ad uno spillover funzionale che emerge dalla moneta unica. Il secondo é che l'integrazione europea é un processo di centralizzazione duale i cui fuochi sono le istituzioni sovranazionali e gli stati più potenti. / The dissertation inquiries into the logic of European integration by employing the newly established Banking Union as a case study. Two arguments are developed. First, the Banking Union is the imperfect solution to a functional spillover emerging from the common currency. Second, European integration is best understood as a process of centralisation around supranational institutions and powerful states.

Da diversi anni la letteratura economica raccomanda l'utilizzo del road pricing come strumento efficiente per internalizzare le esternalità (ambientali e di congestione) prodotte dalla circolazione dei veicoli sulle strade. Tuttavia, l'accettabilità di questo strumento è in genere molto bassa. Pertanto, il lavoro di ricerca svolto è stato indirizzato allo studio di uno schema di road pricing più accettabile, giungendo alla elaborazione di una politica innovativa, il charge-subsidy road pricing (CSRP). Il CSRP prevede che gli automobilisti ricevano gratuitamente un certo numero di permessi che consente loro di guidare in un'area soggetta a pricing nelle ore in cui è in richiesto il pagamento. Inoltre, il CSRP consente a coloro che hanno bisogno di un numero maggiore di permessi di comprarne di aggiuntivi dentro pagamento di una charge; allo stesso tempo lo schema prevede che coloro che riescono a risparmiare parte dei permessi ricevuti possano restituirli e ottenere in cambio un beneficio (monetario/fiscale o in natura ) dall'amministrazione incaricata di gestire il sistema. L'idea di fondo che sta dietro il CSRP è il fatto che la distribuzione gratuita di un certo numero di permessi dovrebbe rendere il CSRP più accettabile di altre politiche di road pricing più tradizionali: il lavoro svolto testa questa ipotesi sia da un punto di vista teorico che empirico. / Economists tend to support road pricing for its efficiency properties in tackling road usage externalities (in particular, congestion and environmental impacts), but usually the acceptability of this instrument is really low both among the general public and politicians. Thus, this PhD research is an attempt to design and analyse a more acceptable road pricing scheme, i.e. a charge-subsidy road pricing scheme (CSRP) where car owners are allotted an amount of free units they can use in place of money to pay for the kind of road pricing scheme implemented. Under the CSRP those who want to drive more than the allowance provided are required to pay a charge, while a (monetary/fiscal or in kind) subsidy might be given to those who manage to spare some of the initially distributed rights. The presence of an initial amount of free units should make the CSRP more acceptable than other traditional road pricing schemes: indeed this work investigates this hypothesis by means of a theoretical and an empirical analysis.

La recente crisi finanziaria e la recessione che ne e' seguita hanno spinto molti a guardare al mercato immobiliare come ad una possibile fonte di fluttuazioni macroeconomiche. Inoltre, esse hanno evidenziato il ruolo cruciale dei paesi emergenti per la crescita globale e rianimato il dibattito sulla relazione tra politica monetaria e il prezzo degli asset. Questa tesi di dottorato, composta di tre saggi, si incentra sui mercati immobiliari dei paesi industrializzati e emergenti nonché sulla relazione tra i prezzi delle case e il ciclo macroeconomico. Il primo saggio descrive un data set originale di prezzi delle case per 19 paesi emergenti (con frequenza trimestrale e aggiornato al 2009:4) e li confronta con un data set esistente per 21 paesi industrializzati. Il secondo saggio studia la trasmissione internazionale di shock di domanda immobiliare negli Stati Uniti e il loro impatto sull'economia reale. Il terzo saggio analizza la relazione tra politica monetaria e macro-prudenziale in un semplice modello di asset-pricing. / The recent global financial crisis and ensuing recession led many to look at the housing market as a possible source of macroeconomic fluctuations, highlighted the crucial role played by emerging market economies as a source of world growth, and revived the much discussed issue of the interaction between monetary policy and asset prices volatility. Motivated by these issues, my Ph.D. thesis focuses on housing markets in both advanced and emerging economies and their interaction with the macroeconomy. This dissertation consists of three self-contained essays. The first essay describes a novel dataset on house prices for 19 emerging economies with quarterly data updated to 2009:4, to be compared with an existing database for 21 advanced economies. The second essay investigates the international spillovers of U.S. housing demand shocks across housing markets and their impact on real economic activity. The third essay studies the uncharted interaction between monetary and macro-prudential policies in a simple model of consumption-based asset pricing with collateralized borrowing.

The scope of this work is analysing how economic policies chosen by governments are influenced by the power of social groups. The core idea is taken from the single-mindedness theory, which states that preferences of groups and their ability to focus on the consumption of goods enable them to obtain the most favourable policies. This approach exploits the advantages of probabilistic voting theory, ability to manage the multidiemnsionality and possibility to study precisely how politicians tailor their policies to groups' features. Unlike classic probabilistic voting models, my theory assumes that the density function which captures the distribution of political preferences depends on consumption of goods and preferences of individuals. The higher the consumption of goods, the higher the density, the higher the political power. This mechanism is better explained by considering the role played by "swing voters". Since they are pivotal to changing the equilibrium, candidates must favour them because they realise that even a small change in policy could force them to vote for the other candidate, Thus, the lower the loyalty of voters for parties, the higher the benefit they obtain. As a consequence, these voters are better off and represent the winners of the political process.