Skills scarcity and export intensity

We describe a model of trade with skills-based product differentiation and non-proportional trade costs that predicts a positive correlation between firms' export intensity, the price of their exports and the wages they pay to their workers. In equilibrium, firms that employ workers with comparatively scarcer skills export a larger proportion of their output, pay higher wages and charge higher prices. In line with empirical evidence, the model predicts that trade liberalization can cause the distribution of earnings to become more polarized, with patterns that reflect the heterogeneous effects of trade liberalization on firms' export performance.     

Digital highways and firm turnover

We study the impact of ultra-broadband (UBB) internet connections on firm entry and exit dynamics. These connections are based on optical fiber cables that link telecommunication operators to final users, allowing a significantly higher performance compared with traditional copper-line networks. We leverage on a unique comprehensive dataset collecting municipality-level information on broadband diffusion and firm turnover in Italy for the period of 2012–2019. Our empirical strategy exploits the staggered roll-out of UBB, starting from 2015. Our identification strategy is based on an instrumental variable approach that exploits plausibly exogenous variation in the physical and geographical peculiarities of the telecommunication infrastructure. Results suggest that UBB increases firm exit, particularly for small firms. On the contrary, firm entry rises only in digital intensive sectors and in the most developed geographical areas. Our findings have important implications for the ongoing debate around the massive investments in high-speed digital infrastructures, as they argue against the conventional idea that business activities equally benefit from last-generation broadband technologies.     

Media negativity bias and tax compliance: experimental evidence

We study the impact of the media negativity bias on tax compliance. Through a framed laboratory experiment, we assess how the exposure to biased news about government action affects compliance in a repeated taxation game. Subjects treated with positive news are significantly more compliant than the control group. Instead, the exposure to negative news does not prompt any significant reaction compared to the neutral condition, suggesting that participants may perceive the media negativity bias in the selection and tonality of news as the norm rather than the exception. Overall, our results suggest that biased news provision is a constant source of psychological priming and plays a vital role in taxpayers’ compliance decisions.