RESEARCH

Global Trends in Intergenerational Income Inequality? - 2022 

(with Roberto Pancrazi)

The income gap between old and young is increasing in rich countries, but falling in developing countries, and for different reasons. We discuss evidence from 42 countries and provide (or dismiss) possible explanations for this phenomenon. Converging educational achievements in rich countries and recent structural change in developing countries explain most of these diverging trends.

Do localised lockdowns cause labour market externalities? - 2022  

(with Todor Tochev)

Local U.S. lockdowns caused spillovers on neighbouring counties' employment, which account for 10-15% of U.S. job losses in early 2020. We provide causal evidence that shops whose clients reside in areas under lockdown experience larger employment losses, even if no local restriction is in place.

[Online Appendix with additional results] [Slides]

Thanks to Safegraph and Placekey Community for providing the POI data.

The power of text-based indicators in forecasting the Italian economic activity - 2022

(with Valentina Aprigliano, Simone Emiliozzi, Andrea Luciani, Juri Marcucci, Libero Monteforte) - International Journal of Forecasting, forthcoming

Do newspaper articles help forecast the Italian GDP and its components? We obtain substantial gains in the density forecasts and on a weekly-frequency GDP nowcasting exercise.

Italian Economic Dictionary available upon request.

[Slides for BoE]

Covid-19: Regional policies and local infection risk: Evidence from Italy with a modelling study - 2021

(with Roberto Pancrazi) - Lancet Regional Health Europe

Regional-level restrictions were unable to fully break the role of observable province-level characteristics in explaining Covid-19 transmissions.

[Replication data]