michele battisti | Università degli Studi di Palermo (original) (raw)

Papers by michele battisti

Research Square (Research Square), May 21, 2024

What is the role of a society's wealth in influencing educational choices? Although the theoretic... more What is the role of a society's wealth in influencing educational choices? Although the theoretical literature provides several possible answers, from an empirical viewpoint answering this question is not straightforward. Indeed, nowadays such an issue cannot be typically inspected before starting the college, due to the compulsory public education laws in force at lower education levels in nearly all countries. We investigate this problem by employing a unique dataset covering Sicilian wealth shares and primary school enrollment in the year 1858 at municipal level. This represents an ideal setting to study our research question as, at that time, schools at the lowest grade levels were available in almost each Sicilian municipality, but their attendance was not compulsory. Our identification strategy relies on the historical heritage of seismic events in shaping mid-19th century land and property distribution, which allowed for the emergence of a class of "wealthy" households. Results of the analysis show that, even in an almost entirely agrarian society, household wealth played a decisive role in educational choices: an increase of 10% in the share of wealthy households implied an increase of approximately 0.6% of the share of students enrolled in primary schools. We discuss the implications of these results for the existing evidence on the nexus between wealth and education, and provide a number of falsification tests that support our main results. In addition, we document the long-lasting impacts of early wealth conditions on a series of institutional and economic outcomes.

arXiv (Cornell University), Aug 24, 2022

Governments have implemented school closures and online learning as one of the main tools to redu... more Governments have implemented school closures and online learning as one of the main tools to reduce the spread of Covid-19. Despite the potential benefits in terms of reduction of cases, the educational costs of these policies may be dramatic. This work identifies the educational costs, expressed as decrease in test scores, for the whole universe of Italian students attending the 5th, 8th and 13th grade of the school cycle during the 2021/22 school year. The analysis relies on a difference-indifference model in relative time, where the control group is the closest generation before the Covid-19 pandemic. The results suggest a national average loss between 1.6-4.1% and 0.5-2.4% in Mathematics and Italian test scores, respectively. After collecting the precise number of days of school closures for the universe of students in Sicily, we estimate that 30 additional days of closure decrease the test score by 1%. However, the impact is much larger for students from high schools (1.8%) compared to students from low and middle schools (0.5%). This is likely explained by the lower relevance of parental inputs and higher reliance on peers inputs, within the educational production function, for higher grades. Findings are also heterogeneous across class size and parental job conditions, pointing towards potential growing inequalities driven by the lack of in front teaching.

Research Square (Research Square), Jul 28, 2022

Relying upon an original (country-sector-year) measure of robotic capital, we study the extent of... more Relying upon an original (country-sector-year) measure of robotic capital, we study the extent of complementarity/substitutability between robots and workers at different skill levels. Relying on nonparametric analysis, we estimate country-sector elasticity of substitution patterns, over the 1995-2009 period, between robots and skilled/unskilled labor. We show that: i) robotization tends to increase the relative substitutability of unskilled labor; ii) this tendency strengthened from the beginning of '00s; iii) both the tendency and its increase have been more pronounced in OECD, compared to Non-OECD countries and in Manufacturing, compared to Non-Manufacturing; iv) substantial heterogeneity exists.

arXiv (Cornell University), May 4, 2022

Healthcare

Background: The present study analysed SARS-CoV-2 cases observed in Sicily and investigated socia... more Background: The present study analysed SARS-CoV-2 cases observed in Sicily and investigated social determinants that could have an impact on the virus spread. Methods: SARS-CoV-2 cases observed among Sicilian residents between the 1 February 2020 and 15 October 2020 have been included in the analyses. Age, sex, date of infection detection, residency, clinical outcomes, and exposure route have been evaluated. Each case has been linked to the census section of residency and its socio-demographic data. Results: A total of 10,114 patients (202.3 cases per 100,000 residents; 95% CI = 198.4–206.2) were analysed: 45.4% were asymptomatic and 3.62% were deceased during follow-up. Asymptomatic or mild cases were more frequent among young groups. A multivariable analysis found a reduced risk of SARS-CoV-2 cases was found in census sections with higher male prevalence (adj-OR = 0.99, 95% CI = 0.99–0.99; p < 0.001) and presence of immigrants (adj-OR = 0.89, 95% CI 0.86–0.92; p < 0.001). Pr...

Understanding Recruitment to Organized Crime and Terrorism, 2020

10 We are grateful to Magg. Domenico Martinelli and to Claudia Di Persio for invaluable help, and... more 10 We are grateful to Magg. Domenico Martinelli and to Claudia Di Persio for invaluable help, and to the Department on "Analisi Criminale della Direzione Centrale della Polizia Criminale" at the Italian Ministry of Interiors for releasing the data.

This paper introduces a new way to measure divergence of output across countries. It measures how... more This paper introduces a new way to measure divergence of output across countries. It measures how productivity, technology or output per worker in each country follow the global frontier. We find that during the years 1970-2008 most countries followed the global frontier only partially, so they diverged from it. We use the tools of ‘development accounting’ to measure by how much countries follow the global technology frontier and find that the rates of following it are even lower. Finally, we show that the result of βconvergence in growth regressions, should be interpreted as convergence of output in each country to its own productivity path, but does not imply convergence across countries.

Do school openings trigger Covid-19 diffusion when school-age vaccination is available? We invest... more Do school openings trigger Covid-19 diffusion when school-age vaccination is available? We investigate this question using a unique geo-referenced high frequency database on school openings, vaccinations, and Covid-19 cases from the Italian region of Sicily. The analysis focuses on the change of Covid-19 diffusion after school opening in a homogeneous geographical territory. The identification of causal effects derives from a comparison of the change in cases before and after school opening in 2020/21, when vaccination was not available, and in 2021/22, when the vaccination campaign targeted individuals of age 12-19 and above 19. The results indicate that, while school opening determined an increase in the growth rate of Covid-19 cases in 2020/2021, this effect has been substantially reduced by school-age vaccination in 2021/2022. In particular, we find that an increase of approximately 10% in the vaccination rate of school-age population reduces the growth rate of Covid-19 cases after school opening by approximately 1.4%. In addition, a counterfactual simulation suggests that a permanent no vaccination scenario would have implied an increase of 19% in ICU beds occupancy.

Papers in Regional Science, 2022

Skill biased technical change (SBTC) can be detrimental to economic efficiency when labor market ... more Skill biased technical change (SBTC) can be detrimental to economic efficiency when labor market frictions/institutions prevent it from coming with higher skill premia and/or adjustment in the relative use of skilled and unskilled labor. While this issue has not been explored so far, since the standard approach to SBTC estimation only accommodates perfect competition, we present a novel framework allowing for labor market imperfections and misallocation effects. Using data on 38 countries and 25 sectors, we find the 19952005 average growth rate in the marginal rate of technical substitution (MRTS) between skilled and unskilled labor (32.3%) to be mostly driven by SBTC (36.1%), rather than factor accumulation (-3.9%). The growth rate (6% on average) of the discrepancy between MRTS and relative wages (i.e., economic inefficiency) is lower in less skill-intensive sectors and when the labor market institutions are such that job reallocation is easier and skilled workers possess relative...

This paper presents three new results on growth regressions. First, it uses data on total factor ... more This paper presents three new results on growth regressions. First, it uses data on total factor productivity in addition to output, now available from PWT, to estimate convergence of output to productivity. This test improves the estimation of the rate of convergence and shows that it is close to the famous 2 percent measured by Barro. Furthermore, this estimation does not require use of any control variables. Second, by using a regression of productivity on the global frontier we show that productivity, and output per capita, can diverge significantly from the global frontier for many countries. Third, a regression of the estimated coefficients of divergence on various explanatory variables shows that our method can separate the long-run effect of such variables from their overall effect.

Review of Economic Dynamics, 2019

Inequality and Growth: Patterns and Policy, 2016

This paper examines empirically the role of fiscal policy in redistribution of market incomes to ... more This paper examines empirically the role of fiscal policy in redistribution of market incomes to disposable incomes. We show that fiscal policy has a strong and significant effect on income inequality. An increase of public expenditures by one percent of GDP reduces the Gini coefficient of disposable income by 0.4 percentage point. This is a very significant effect. The paper also tests and rejects the possibility of reverse causality, namely that income distribution affects fiscal policy. The paper also examines the effect of fiscal policy on the rate of poverty and finds that it is significant and the effect is largest for expenditures on support in the labor market, which target the poor.

aiel.it

The aim of this paper is to verify the presence of dualism in a wage regression for the Italian l... more The aim of this paper is to verify the presence of dualism in a wage regression for the Italian labour market. In conformity with Labour market segmentation theory, in an economy there is a clear division between primary and secondary workers, that is not given by the characteristics of workers, but rather by the jobs. One standard way to assess this situation is by looking at the human capital's returns of comparable persons working in different segments. Tipically we expect respectively a flat and a steep profile of the experience/education-earnings relationship. In the attempt to avoid arbitrary choices about the determination of the segments, we use the tool of mixture regression models for an endogenous determination of the segments. Our results for Italy are generally similar to those obtained by Cipollone (2001) with the switching regression framework of Dickens and Lang. According to the results there is a strong demarcation between homogeneous workers, so that policy strategies have to consider these characteristics in the implementation of some labour market measures, like an improvement in the supply of human capital, or some ad hoc measures favouring some sectors of economy against other ones.

Economic historians have stressed that income convergence was a key feature of the pOECD&clubqand... more Economic historians have stressed that income convergence was a key feature of the pOECD&clubqand that globalization was among the accelerating forces of this process in the long&run. This view has however been challenged, since it suffers from an ad hoc selection of countries. In the paper, a mixture model is applied to a sample of 64 countries to endogenously analyze the cross&country growth behavior over the period 1870&2003. Results show that growth patterns were segmented in two worldwide regimes, the first one ...

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2019

Due to strict reliance on competitive labor markets, standard approaches which measure skill bias... more Due to strict reliance on competitive labor markets, standard approaches which measure skill biased technical change (SBTC) conflate labor market distortions which prevent firms from choosing the efficient ratio between skilled and unskilled labor and 'true' SBTC. This contrasts with recent evidence on decoupling between wages and productivity. To overcome this limitation, we present a unified framework to estimate SBTC which accounts for factor accumulation (FA) effects, and quantifies the discrepancy (i.e., relative misallocation) between the wage ratio (skilled to unskilled) and the marginal rate of technical substitution (MRTS). The suggested methodology takes advantage of recent developments in nonparametric estimation methods (i.e., discrete smoothing) that allow us to estimate the marginal productivity of inputs at the country-sector level directly from data. Over the 1995-2005 period, we find a 3% yearly growth rate for the MRTS between skilled and unskilled labor and show such change to be almost entirely driven by SBTC, rather than FA, on average. In most cases, SBTC and MRTS growth do not come with increasing skill premia; this fosters the decoupling and results in relative misallocation patterns (across countries and sectors) which are quite heterogeneous, for which we report a 6% overall increase. Finally, we show evidence that relative misallocation increased less in country-sectors in which it was larger at the beginning of the period and grew more in country-sectors characterized by: (a) higher skill-intensity; (b) lower bargaining power of skilled over unskilled workers; and (c) lower FA effects.

Empirical Economics

We ask whether the productivity advantage of internationalized firms documented by the internatio... more We ask whether the productivity advantage of internationalized firms documented by the international trade literature can be interpreted most accurately in terms of proximity to the “technological frontier”. We answer in the affirmative using a methodology (based on mixture models) of unbundling technology and total factor productivity (TFP) by estimating “technology-specific” production function parameters. Exploiting detailed data provided by the EFIGE database (a sample of firms distributed across Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and the UK), we find technology gaps (with respect to the frontier) more than three times larger than the TFP gaps on average. We also find sizable technology advantages for firms undertaking foreign direct investment and/or exporting to other European Union countries or to China, for importers of materials, and for firms with competitors in China and the USA. Medium and large firms feature a higher technology premium, which is even highe...

European Journal of Law and Economics

In this paper we study the decision of firms operating in areas where organised crime is pervasiv... more In this paper we study the decision of firms operating in areas where organised crime is pervasive to resist the extortion racket. To this purpose we design a case-control study starting from the unique experience of Addiopizzo (AP), an NGO operating in Palermo (Sicily) which, from 2004, invites firms to resist to the racketeers and join a public list aimed at eliciting critical consumption in favour of firms in the list. We study the determinants of the decision to join AP by estimating a two-level logistic regression model. We find that firm's total assets and firm's age have a negative effect on the probability of joining AP, while a higher level of human capital embodied in the firm and a higher number of employees increases such probability. Among the district-level variables, we find that the share of district population reduces the probability to join, while a higher level of socioeconomic development, including education levels, increase the probability. We posit that these results support the hypothesis that the decision to join AP is based on a cost-benefit analysis and discuss policy implications of our results.

Journal of Economic Growth

We adopt a counterfactual approach to decompose labor productivity growth into growth of Technolo... more We adopt a counterfactual approach to decompose labor productivity growth into growth of Technological Productivity (TEP), growth of the capital-labor ratio and growth of Total Factor Productivity (TFP). We bring the decomposition to the data using international countrysectoral information spanning from the 1960s to the 2000s and a nonparametric generalized kernel method, which enables us to estimate the production function allowing for heterogeneity across all relevant dimensions: countries, sectors and time. As well as documenting substantial heterogeneity across countries and sectors, we find average TEP to account for about 44% of labor productivity growth and TEP gaps with respect to the US to remain almost unchanged, on average, despite an average 1% yearly decrease in the labor productivity gap. The US displays the highest TEP growth rate. We then perform standard convergence regressions finding strong evidence of technological convergence and showing that the effect of a few variables only, among those found significant to explain labor productivity convergence, occurs through the technology channel.