Working papers results

The Italian economy is often said to be on a declining path. In this paper, we document that:
(i) Italy�s current decline is a labor productivity problem (ii) the labor productivity slowdown
stems from declining productivity growth in all industries but utilities (with manufacturing
contributing for about one half of the reduction) and diminished inter-industry reallocation of
workers from agriculture to market services; (iii) the labor productivity slowdown has been
mostly driven by declining TFP, with roughly unchanged capital deepening. The only mild
decline of capital deepening is due to the rise in the value added share of capital that
counteracted declining capital accumulation.

We lay out a tractable model for fiscal and monetary policy analysis in
a currency union, and analyze its implications for the optimal design of such
policies. Monetary policy is conducted by a common central bank, which sets
the interest rate for the union as a whole. Fiscal policy is implemented at
the country level, through the choice of government spending level. The model
incorporates country-specific shocks and nominal rigidities. Under our assumptions,
the optimal monetary policy requires that inflation be stabilized at the
union level. On the other hand, the relinquishment of an independent monetary
policy, coupled with nominal price rigidities, generates a stabilization role
for fiscal policy, one beyond the efficient provision of public goods. Interestingly,
the stabilizing role for fiscal policy is shown to be desirable not only from
the viewpoint of each individual country, but also from that of the union as
a whole. In addition, our paper offers some insights on two aspects of policy
design in currency unions: the conditions for equilibrium determinacy and
the effects of exogenous government spending variations.

Pooling forecasts obtained from different procedures typically reduces
the mean square forecast error and more generally improves the quality
of the forecast. In this paper we evaluate whether pooling interpolated
or backdated time series obtained from different procedures can also
improve the quality of the generated data. Both simulation results
and empirical analyses with macroeconomic time series indicate that
pooling plays a positive and important role also in this context.

In this paper we assess the possibility of producing unbiased forecasts for fiscal variables in the
euro area by comparing a set of procedures that rely on different information sets and
econometric techniques. In particular, we consider ARMA models, VARs, small scale semi-
structural models at the national and euro area level, institutional forecasts (OECD), and
pooling. Our small scale models are characterized by the joint modelling of fiscal and monetary
policy using simple rules, combined with equations for the evolution of all the relevant
fundamentals for the Maastricht Treaty and the Stability and Growth Pact. We rank models on
the basis of their forecasting performance using the mean square and mean absolute error
criteria at different horizons. Overall, simple time series methods and pooling work well and are
able to deliver unbiased forecasts, or slightly upward biased forecast for the debt-GDP
dynamics. This result is mostly due to the short sample available, the robustness of simple
methods to structural breaks, and to the difficulty of modelling the joint behaviour of several
variables in a period of substantial institutional and economic changes. A bootstrap experiment
highlights that, even when the data are generated using the estimated small scale multi
country model, simple time series models can produce more accurate forecasts, due to
their parsimonious specification.

Many countries, especially developing ones, follow procyclical fiscal polices, namely spending goes up (taxes go down) in booms and spending goes down (taxes go up) in recessions. We provide an explanation for this suboptimal fiscal policy based upon political distortions and incentives for less-than-benevolent government to appropriate rents. Voters have incentives similar to the starving the Leviathan classic
argument, and demand more public goods or fewer taxes to prevent governments from appropriating rents when the economy is doing well.
We test this argument against more traditional explanations based purely on borrowing constraints, with a reasonable amount of success.

Do countries gain by coordinating their monetary policies if they have different economic structures? We address this issue in the context of a new open-economy macro model with a traded and a non-traded sector and more importantly, with a across-country asymmetry in the size of the traded sector. We study optimal monetary policy under independent and cooperating central banks, based on analytical expressions for welfare objectives derived from quadratic approximations to individual preferences. In the presence of asymmetric structures, a new source of gains from coordination emerges due to a terms-of-trade externality. This externality affects unfavorably the country that is more exposed to trade and its effects tend
to be overlooked when national central banks act independently. The welfare gains from coordination are sizable and increase with the degree of asymmetry across countries and the degree of openness, and decrease with the within-country correlation of sectoral shocks.

We study whether fiscal restrictions affect volatilities and correlations of macrovariables
and the probability of excessive debt for a sample of 48 US states. Fiscal constraints are
characterized with a number of indicators and volatility and correlations are computed in several
ways. The second moments of macroeconomic variables in states with different fiscal constraints
are economically and statistically similar. Excessive debt and the mechanism linking budget
deficit and excessive debts are independent of whether tight or loose fiscal constraints are in
place. Creative budget accounting may account for the results.

We study how constrained fiscal policy can affect regional inflation and output in a two-region model of a monetary union with sticky prices and distortionary taxation. Both government expenditure and taxes can be used to stabilize regional variables; however, the best welfare outcome is obtained under constant taxes and constant regional inflations. With cooperation debt and deficit constraints reduce regional inflation variability, but the path of output is suboptimal. Under non-cooperation the opposite occurs due to a trade-off between taxation and inflation variability. Decentralized rules, rather than constraints, stabilize regional inflation and output. They imply more fiscal action for smaller union members.

We study the mechanics of transmission of fiscal shocks to labor markets. We
characterize a set of robust implications following government consumption, investment
and employment shocks in a RBC and a New-Keynesian model and use part of them to
identify shocks in the data. In line with the New-Keynesian story, shocks to government
consumption and investment increase real wages and employment contemporaneously
both in US aggregate and in US state data. The dynamics in response to employment
shocks are mixed, but in many cases are inconsistent with the predictions of the RBC
model.

Does culture have a causal effect on economic development? The data on European
regions suggest that it does. Culture is measured by indicators of individual values
and beliefs, such as trust and respect for others, and confidence in individual selfdetermination.
To isolate the exogenous variation in culture, I rely on two historical
variables used as instruments: the literacy rate at the end of the XIXth century, and
the political institutions in place over the past several centuries. The political and
social history of Europe provides a rich source of variation in these two variables at a
regional level. The exogenous component of culture due to history is strongly
correlated with current regional economic development, after controlling for
contemporaneous education, urbanization rates around 1850 and national effects.
Moreover, the data do not reject the over-identifying assumption that the two
historical variables used as instruments only influence regional development through
culture. The indicators of culture used in this paper are also strongly correlated with
economic development and with available measures of institutions in a cross-country
setting.