We study the effect of immigration on the upsurge of right-wing populism in Italy. Our data considers electoral results at the municipality level of the Senate of the Italian Republic and the Chamber of Deputies over the period 2006–2018. Using an IV strategy based on the shift–share instrument, we find that immigration generates a sizable causal increase in votes for the right-wing populist party Lega. Immigration also works as a major catalyst for the electoral distance between Lega and its most direct competitors. We explore how different levels of tax autonomy impact the results, as well as how the re-branding of Lega as a national movement affects the relation between immigration and support for the party.
We estimate the effect of the granting of European Union (EU) citizenship rights on the flow of remittances from Italy. We use the EU enlargements of 2007 and 2013 as natural experiments. The results show a negative impact on remittance flows. The effect of the 2007 EU enlargement shows how Romanian and Bulgarian citizens reduced the average annual amount of remittances by 1400 Euros per year per migrant. In the case of the 2013 EU enlargement, we find a smaller decrease of about 50 Euros per year per Croat. These results are consistent after a series of robustness checks. We analyse this decline in depth to the extent that remittances are an important source of monetary flows in transition economies. We find that both the change in the taxonomy of immigrants from the new Member States and the improvement of economic conditions in the country of origin after the EU accession provide suggestive evidence on plausible mechanisms behind our results.
A growing body of literature has established that childhood health is a crucial determinant of human capital formation. Shocks experienced in utero and during early life may have far-reaching consequences that extend well into adulthood. Nevertheless, there is relatively little evidence regarding the effects of parental behaviour on child health. This paper contributes to the literature by examining the impact of intimate partner violence (IPV) on the child's health production function. Using data from the UK's Millennium Cohort Study and leveraging information on both child health and IPV, our analysis reveals that living in a violent domestic environment has a deleterious effect on a child's health, reducing the likelihood of excellent health ratings by between 7\% and 16\%. Our results also suggest that IPV is linked to increased morbidity in children, manifested in elevated risks of hearing and respiratory problems, as well as long-term health conditions. We find suggestive evidence that mothers who are exposed to IPV decrease their investments in the child's health production function.
This study examines the association between maternal working hours and a child's emotional well-being using survey data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. We gauge a child's emotional well-being through self-reported happiness and a comprehensive well-being summary index, which incorporates the child's levels of concern, temperament, bullying, and interpersonal behaviour. Our findings indicate a positive association between maternal employment, particularly in terms of working hours, and child well-being. We employ a factor analysis strategy to combine responses to the child's happiness reported by the child, mother and teacher. Our findings consistently suggest there is a positive association between maternal employment and child well-being, even when considering simultaneously the perspectives of the mother and the teacher on the child's happiness. Moreover, our analysis demonstrates that variations in maternal labour supply do not yield discernible differences in child happiness across the income distribution. The introduction of commuting time or restricting the sample to families where both parents cohabit exert minimal influence on the results. Overall, these findings contribute to understanding the association between maternal employment and child well-being, underscoring the significance of contextual factors.
We estimate the effect of granting legal status to immigrant women on voluntary abortions. We exploit the 2007 EU enlargement as an exogenous shock to legal status for Romanian and Bulgarian women, considering Italy as a destination country. Using a standard Difference-in-Differences model, we estimate a decline between 60\% and 70\% in voluntary pregnancy termination (VPT) rates for the new EU citizens from the two Eastern countries. We also introduce a novel framework to separate the total effect of the enlargement into a ``citizenship'' effect due to (legal or illegal) migrants already present in Italy and a ``selection'' effect due to new flows of immigrants. We show that the findings are robust to several alternative explanations. The drop in abortions points to legal status as a way to empower immigrant women.
Using comparable measures of welfare we study inequality and social mobility trajectories of European countries exposed to Soviet Communism (SC) regimes compared to unexposed European countries. We draw upon a rich retrospective dataset that collects relevant welfare measures across regimes such as access to living space and self-reported health, and relevant inequality and mobility indices for ordinal and categorical data. Our results suggest evidence of comparable welfare inequality trends in countries exposed to SC and those unexposed. Although individuals exposed to SC enjoyed higher levels of social mobility, SC delivered a negligible inequality reduction compared to unexposed European countries. A plausible explanation lies in the countervailing role of the welfare state in non-SC countries, and the inefficiency of the bureaucratic allocation of private goods in counties exposed to SC.
This study examines how Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) affects the educational outcomes of children living in violent households. We use the Millennium Cohort Study, a longitudinal survey that follows about 19,000 children born in the UK in 2000-01. We use their educational performance measures in English, Science, Mathematics, Physical Education, Creativity, and Information and Technology at ages 7 and 11. We find that IPV has a negative impact on all educational outcomes for these children. This impact is consistent across different definitions of IPV and remains significant even after controlling for potential sample selection bias. Children who live with abused mothers have lower scores in English and Maths by age 11. The negative effect varies by subject, with a stronger impact in subjects that require prior knowledge, such as Maths and Science.
Past trauma and deprivation can exert long-lasting effects on people's health and well-being. Trauma resulting from personal life shocks, especially during periods of particular volatility such as regime transition (or regime change), can give rise to significant health inequalities. Drawing on longitudinal and retrospective data, we study the effect of past exposure to major individual-level shocks (specifically hunger, persecution, dispossession, and exceptional stress) on current measures of individual's health and mental well-being. We study the effect of the timing of the personal shocks, alongside the additional effect of `institutional uncertainty' of regime change in post-communist countries in Europe. First, we document evidence of detrimental effects of shocks on a series of health and well-being outcomes. Second, we show evidence of more pronounced detrimental consequences of such personal chocks experienced by individuals living in formerly communist countries (which accrue to about 8\% and 10\% in the case of hunger and persecution, respectively) for individuals living in formerly communist countries than in non-communist countries. The effects are robust and take place in addition to the direct effects of regime change and shocks.
This study delves into Italy's industrial evolution, exploring how immigration influences support for right-wing populist parties. We analyse the factors that mould populist voting patterns from the years 2006 to 2018, encompassing cultural discrepancies and economic prospects within industrial districts. It challenges the notion that only low-skilled immigration drives populist support, especially in high-tech sectors where support varies significantly. The study also examines native workers' views on immigration, finding that those employed in high-tech industries tend to view immigration more positively, even after accounting for education. These findings shed light on the complex relationship between immigration, industrial dynamics, and populist politics in Italy.
A list of academic and policy publications is available on my CV.