Antonio Accetturo

Agglomeration and Growth: The Effects of Commuting Costs

We present a model of industrial location and endogenous growth with congestion costs. According to the interplay between knowledge spillovers and commuting costs, we are able to obtain both a Krugman-type and a bell-shaped agglomeration outcome. In the first case, the economy experiences a permanent income inequality in the steady state and income divergence in the transitional dynamics. In the second case, we observe an enlargement of the industrial core of the economy with a strong catching up by the periphery. Welfare analysis shows that congestion create (in the bell-shaped agglomeration case) a negative welfare effect on peripheral unskilled workers and renders the agglomerated equilibrium Pareto inferior to dispersion.

Welcome to the Machine: Firms' Reaction to Low-Skilled Immigration

We assess the impact of low-skilled immigration on capital intensity. We first present a model characterized by frictions in the labor market and firms asymmetric information on workers skills and show that firms can react to the immigration-induced reduction of their workforces skill level by increasing the capital-labor ratio. We test the predictions of the model on a sample of Italian manufacturing firms over the period 1996-2007, finding that increased immigration of low-skilled workers from developing countries, measured at the provincial level and instrumented with pre-existing enclaves of immigrants and network effects, raises capital intensity. In line with the predictions of the theoretical model, the impact of immigration, which is quite robust across empirical specifications, is stronger for larger firms and in skill-intensive sectors.

Skill upgrading and exports

This paper analyzes the effects of international trade on the relative demand for skilled workers in Italian local labor markets. We find that exports cause a sizable skill upgrading in the labor force by increasing the average level of education of the workforce and the share of white-collars workers.

Legal enforcement and Global Value Chains: micro-evidence from Italian manufacturing firms

In this paper we study the relationship between the quality of contract enforcement and firms participation in Global Value Chains. Using new data on Italian manufacturing firms supply of customized inputs to other firms and variations in law enforcement in courts across Italy, we find that firms located in courts with longer trial lengths are less likely to supply customized intermediate inputs to foreign firms. The effects are stronger for firms operating in contract-intensive industries. Our results are confirmed when we use a spatial regression discontinuity design that compares the probability of supplying customized inputs for firms that are located on different sides of a court border, and are therefore characterized by different trial lengths.

Law Enforcement and Political Participation: Italy, 1861-65

Does tougher law enforcement positively affect political participation? This paper addresses this question, which hinges upon the causal impact of formal institutions on informal ones, by using a historical event from 19th century Italy. This event was the Pica Law, which was introduced in 1863 to fight a surge of criminal violence in Southern Italy and to ensure a safer environment for wealthy people, the only ones allowed to vote at that time. Our main finding, obtained using a spatial regression discontinuity technique in a diff-in-diffs framework, is that voter turnout greatly increased in those areas where the Pica Law was applied, compared with bordering and otherwise similar areas. This result is confirmed by a number of robustness checks and placebo exercises and turns out to be persistent over time.