Roberto Ricciuti

Laboratory Experiments for Economic Policy Making

In this paper, we assess the scope and the specific contribution of laboratory experiments for economic policy making. We review experiments which have addressed a specific problem, institution, mechanism design or tool relevant in economic policy. We have two research questions. What type of policy questions can be addressed in the laboratory? And what is the specific value added of economic experiments for policy making. The survey contains experiments on competition policy, auctions, regulated markets, and emission permits. Copyright

Climate Change, Rice Crops and Violence. Evidence from Indonesia.

This article contributes to the literature on the nexus between climate change and violence by focusing on Indonesia over the period 1993–2003. Rice is the staple food in Indonesia and we investigate whether its scarcity can be blamed for fueling violence. Following insights from the natural science literature, which claims that increases in minimum temperature reduce rice yields, we maintain that increases in minimum temperature reduce food availability in many provinces, which in turn raises the emergence of actual violence. We adopt an instrumental variable approach and select the instruments taking into account the rice growing calendar. Results show that an increase of the minimum temperature during the core month of the rice growing season, that is, December, determines an increase in violence stimulated by the reduction in future rice production per capita. Results are robust across a number of different functional specifications and estimation methods. From a methodological point of view, we claim that the inconclusive results obtained in this literature may be caused by an overlook of the correct bundle crop/temperature. Studies concentrating on several countries with different crops and using variations of average temperature as a measure of climate change missed the biological mechanism behind the relationship between climate change and violence.

Corporate Governance Reforms, Interlocking Directorship Networks and Company Value in Italy (1998-2007)

In this paper we contribute to the literature on the structure of interlocking directorship networks and to the literature on the relationship between corporate governance and performance. We use a unique dataset made of corporate governance variables related to the board size and interlocking directorships of the Italian companies listed in the stock exchange over 1998-2007. We find that the corporate governance reforms introduced over the period considered have shown some effectiveness by slightly dispersing the network of companies. Moreover, we find robust evidence that interlocking directorships has been negatively related with company performance.

Experiments for Economic Policy Making

In this paper, we assess the scope and the specific contribution of laboratory experiments for economic policy making. We review experiments which have addressed a specific problem, institution, mechanism design or tool relevant in economic policy. We have two research questions. What type of policy questions can be addressed in the laboratory? And what is the specific value added of economic experiments for policy making. The survey contains experiments on competition policy, auctions, regulated markets, emission permits and macroeconomics.

The historical economics of corruption and development within Italy

We investigate the relationship between corruption and economic performance, focusing on the historical roots of the former. We claim that a sequential mechanism linking history to development exists: first, history defines the quality of social capital; then, social capital determines the level of corruption; finally, corruption affects economic performance. We empirically test this hypothesis on a dataset of Italian provinces, and address the possible endogeneity of corruption by applying an IV model. We use three sets of historical instruments for corruption: 1) foreign dominations that ruled Italian regions between the 16th and 17th century; 2) autocracy/autonomous rule in the 14th century; 3) an index of social capital between the end of the 19th and at the onset of the 20th century. The results confirm the validity of the set of instruments (2) and (3), and indicate a significant impact of historically driven corruption on development.

The economic impact of peacekeeping. Evidence from South Sudan

This paper investigates the effect of the deployment of United Nations Blue Helmets on economic activity in South Sudan with a special focus on agricultural production. Since UN troops are predicted to improve security, in particular, we expect a positive relationship between deployment of UN blue Helmets and cereal production. We test our hypothesis using an original data-set including all the 78 South Sudanese counties over the period 2009–2011. We control for the non-random assignment of UN troops through an Instrumental Variables approach. Our empirical results show that a 10% increase in the size of the troop allows the production of additional 600 tonnes.

Relative Income Distribution in Six European Countries

Abstract The relationship between income inequality and polarization is an empirical fact: a change in equality might occur together with a change in polarization. At the same time, polarization might emerge while inequality remains constant. The outcome of this process entails relevant information on the evolution of the income distribution. We exploit the LIS database to perform a relative distribution analysis for six European countries. Our aim is describing how disposable income distributions evolved over time. The results indicate that polarization increased in all the considered countries, being the largest in the United Kingdom and the smallest in Italy. Nonetheless, in all the countries downgrading prevails over upgrading: the relevance of the middle class getting poorer is larger than the one of the middle class getting richer.

An Attempt to Disperse the Italian Interlocking Directorship Network: Analyzing the Effects of the 2011 Reform

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects on the Italian directorship network of the corporate governance reform that was introduced in Italy in 2011 to prevent interlocking directorships in the financial sector. Interlocking directorships are important communication channels among companies and may have anticompetitive effect. We apply community detection techniques to the analysis of the networks in 2009 and 2012 to ascertain the effect of the reform. We find that, although the number of interlocking directorships decreases in 2012, the reduction takes place mainly at the periphery of the network whereas the network core is stable, allowing the most connected companies to keep their strategic position.

The Importance of Betting Early

We analyze more than 1,250,000 bets on Italian soccer league matches. Our findings show that bettors do not improve their performance as the season progresses. We obtain evidence that early bettors, who place bets the days before the match, performed better then late bettors, who place bets on the same day of the event. We attribute this outcome to the increase of noisy information released the last day impairing late bettors’ capacity to use very simple prediction methods, such as team rankings or last match result.

Departures from Ricardian Equivalence: An Experimental Evaluation

We construct an overlapping-generations experiment to test for some allegedly departures from Ricardian equivalence. In the first treatment the setting is close to the theoretical model, while in the second we allow for liquidity-constrained consumers. Finally, we introduce uncertainty on future income. We can never accept the hypothesis that agents behave in a Ricardian way, with some exceptions in the first treatment. We find clear evidence of departure in the other two settings. Our subjects appear to first decide how much to consume out of their resources, and then, sequentially and residually, to decide how much to bequeath.