Stefania Lovo

Tell Me Where You Would Like to Go and I Tell You Why - Potential Migration and Subjective Well-Being

By examining the preferences over migration destinations of those revealing a desire to permanently leave their country, this paper provides new evidence on the relevance of subjective measures for cross country comparisons. While hard statistics such as GDP per capita and unemployment rates are commonly used to measure a country success, this analysis reveals that people preferences over alternative migration destinations are better explained by average levels of life satisfaction in the destination country. Aggregated measures of subjective well-being are, therefore, useful for international comparisons as they better reflect what makes some countries more attractive than others.

Effect of Environmental Decentralization on Polluting Firms in India

This paper examines the impact of environmental decentralization on the birth of polluting firms in India. It focuses on a 2006 reform of the environmental impact assessment process and adopts a triple-differences approach that compares treated and untreated sectors across states with different levels of environmental stringency. Results based on firm-level data for the period 1998–2012 show that the decentralization induced a decrease in firm births in states with stricter enforcement. The findings draw attention to the consequences of large disparities in enforcement capacity when fostering decentralization.