Maria Alessandra Antonelli

The More Public the More Private? The Case of the Italian Childcare

Childcare availability is regarded as an important factor in the evaluation of public policies for both sustaining fertility and increasing women participation to the labour market. However, the recent empirical literature shows that the extension of the public supply of childcare mainly crowds out private providers. Italy is a case of special interest for testing the relationship between the pub- lic and private supply of childcare given that: 1) an increase in public childcare provision can be achieved through broadly conceived forms of out-sourcing; 2) public childcare for children less than 3 years old can be considered as a ser- vice with high redistributive goals, which determines a sorting mechanism of the demand between public and private providers. We use Italian data at the munic- ipality level for the period 2000-2006 to explain the number of registered private providers of childcare as a function of 1) the public coverage of the 0-2 years old population, and 2) the main characteristics of the public service. We show that the public coverage positively a¤ects the number of private providers. When the characteristics of public supply are considered, the e¤ect of a sorting mechanism is con?rmed.

Assessing the performance of social spending in Europe

Abstract Based on the construction of a composite index to assess the relative performance of welfare policies, we show that the variability of performances cannot be explained only by the amount of resources devoted to social policies, but also by its composition: countries with higher shares of social public expenditure, specifically aimed at reducing income concentration, obtain better results. This associates the traditional classification of the European welfare systems to the performance obtained in the social sector.

Asili nidi e livelli di governo: evidenze da una prima ricognizione dei comuni italiani

This paper is an empirical survey on both the provision and the funding of childcare services in Italy. To this purpose, national financial laws, regional laws as well as Italian municipalities’ budgets are analyzed. First of all we describe the funding mechanism of the service pointing out the relationship between different government levels. Secondly, we propose demand and supply indexes for 20 territorial clusters using data at the municipal level. The analysis shows that, de facto , the aim of the service is conceived in different ways by local governments. This implies uncoordinated policy interventions by the different levels of government as well as a huge unbalanced territorial distribution of both demand and supply. The characteristics of the local demand for the service seem to be crucial elements to promote an efficiency improvement of public expenditure for this service.

The efficiency of social public expenditure in European countries: a two-stage analysis

ABSTRACT Do European countries differ in the efficiency of their welfare policies? And which factors can account for such variability? To address these questions, we perform a two-stage efficiency analysis. First, based on a composite output indicator for social protection expenditure, we measure efficiency by means of the Free Disposable Hull and Data Envelopment Analysis techniques. Second, we perform an econometric analysis to identify the factors that can be associated to cross-country differences. We find that countries scoring higher efficiency have higher education and GDP levels, a smaller population size, a lower degree of selectivity of their welfare systems and a lower corruption level.

Central Targets and Local Agendas: Missing Lisbon 2010

In a decentralized setting, are policy targets imposed by the central government on local elected officials effective? And when? We address these questions in Italy, where the central government has set a target for childcare coverage at the municipal level for Southern regions since 2007. We first implement a difference-in-differences estimator where the municipalities already complying with the target comprise the control group. We then implement a triple-difference estimator with the additional control group of municipalities in the bordering Central regions. Our results show that elected officials comply with the target mainly when it is coherent with voters’ preferences (as measured by the characteristics of the resident female population) and in reaction to political incentives (as measured by partisan alignment among levels of government).

An Economic Model of Filing: Assessing Different Institutional Contexts

In order to analyze the civil justice congestion problem, we propose a model in which institutional elements are considered to shape different forms of the payoff function of risk neutral agents who have to decide whether or not to file a suit. Our approach is twofold. First, we use a model with subjective probability introducing a discounting factor in order to take into account possible delay in resolutions. Secondly, we introduce an objective probability of winning (losing) given by the combination of a precedent-weight parameter (defining the type of legal system) and a transparency factor. In our model the transparency factor is considered both as an independent parameter and as a function of the weighing parameter. Such distinction is not only due to a theoretical need but also linked to the more traditional distinction between common law and civil law system. The simulation’s results in the second part of the paper show that an over-dimension of the demand for civil justice is not necessarily a result of the agents’ strategic behaviors, rather the result of a misperception of the expected payoffs due to a low transparency level.