Student performance at university significantly influences individual decisions and future opportunities, especially in labour markets. This paper analyses the impact of local crime on student performance during higher education, with a focus on potential gender differences. Following students over their bachelor’s years, the identification strategy exploits granular local crime variation – violent and non-violent crimes – near students’ residences before sitting a final exam. We consider both spatial and temporal patterns of crime exposure by estimating a panel data model with student, exam and district-month fixed-effects to provide causal estimates. Our findings suggest that violent crimes have a negative impact on student performance, while non-violent have no significant effect. Notably, the results are mainly driven by high-ability female students, with suggestive evidence that male students in the bottom or middle parts of the grade distribution are also affected.

This paper examines the impact of a substantial minimum wage increase in Uruguay—a middle-income developing economy—on wages and employment. Using administrative data and a difference-in-differences approach, we analyze the consequences of a 2005 policy reform that raised the real minimum wage by 80% within a year. Our findings show that the reform led to significant wage gains for low-wage earners, with at most minimal negative effects on employment. Survey data further reveal no significant changes in unemployment or informality, suggesting the reform did not distort labor market dynamics. To contextualize these results, we investigate compliance with minimum wage laws and document a post-reform decline in compliance, particularly among low-wage workers. This pattern aligns with firms’ cost-benefit trade-offs under weak enforcement of wage regulations. Our study contributes to the literature by providing causal evidence on the labor market effects of minimum wage policies in a developing economy, underscoring the pivotal role of enforcement in shaping policy outcomes.

We examine the impact of city council members with real estate backgrounds on housing supply in California 1995-2019. Using candidate occupation data and a close-elections regression discontinuity design, we find that electing a developer increases approved housing units by 68% during their term. This effect fades after one term, suggesting developers influence zoning decisions more than long-term policy change. Analysis of votes extracted from council meetings shows they are especially effective in securing discretionary zoning approvals. Importantly, we find no evidence of electoral backlash, suggesting voters are generally supportive of housing expansion led by pro-development candidates.

We examine how information influences the marginal willingness to pay taxes (MWTPT) through a four-wave randomized survey experiment conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, we assess the impact of quantitative (data on the actual tax-to-GDP ratio) and qualitative (basic pros and cons of taxation) information on revealed MWTPT. The results show that qualitative information increases MWTPT, particularly among high-income individuals. In contrast, quantitative information only reduces MWTPT among high-income individuals who initially underestimated the aggregate tax burden. Hence, those who are potentially more affected by taxes are also more sensitive to the provision of information. These findings suggest that information can shape perceptions of the tax system and, consequently, influence individuals’ willingness to contribute to public good provision. This has important implications for tax policy design and efforts to reduce political polarization. If these efforts are not properly implemented, the revealed price of democracy will remain biased.

This paper investigates how the interplay between politics and firms influences the profil·les of political candidates and their policy decisions. Specifically, we analyze the effects of an anti-revolving door law, which impose a mandatory “cooling-off” period before former politicians can take significant positions in the bureaucracy or in state-owned enterprises. We develop a political agency model where politicians can access “politically connected outside options” (PCOs), and examine how the reduction in the expected value of these PCOs impacts candidate selection and policymaking. Our findings suggest that a decline in the value of PCOs disproportionately affects individuals with lower human capital, thereby increasing the proportion of high human capital candidates. Simultaneously, this shift heightens the likelihood that low human capital politicians will pander toward the voters, even when such policies are suboptimal. We test those predictions using data from Italian municipalities. Leveraging a population threshold that triggers the implementation of anti-revolving door policies, we employ a difference-in-discontinuity approach. Our results show that the cooling-off period raises the average education levels of candidates and elected mayors. Additionally, we find that the reform reduces the probability that low human capital mayors adopt electorally costly policies.

We analyse whether decentralisation affects tax morale through both greater trust in institutions (the carrot) and greater perceived tax enforcement (the stick), two drivers of compliance that operate via the promotion of voluntary compliance and deterrence, respectively. We take advantage of the Spanish case characterised by a general regime, which is partially decentralised, and the so-called foral regime, operated in two regions, which is fully decentralised (i.e. high tax regulatory and administrative powers). We draw on data from a unique survey that are representative both of the national level and of the foral regions. Under the foral regime, the average citizen neither presents a higher level of tax morale, nor has the perception of a higher level of enforcement. Thus, any structuring of the tax administration within a federal system cannot be based on what are presumed to be higher levels of compliance resulting from the decentralisation of the administration.