Matteo Migheli | Università degli Studi di Torino (original) (raw)

Papers by Matteo Migheli

Italian economic journal, Apr 25, 2023

Access to credit and its cost are a major challenge for farmers in developing countries. Land ser... more Access to credit and its cost are a major challenge for farmers in developing countries. Land serves as collateral for accessing formal credit, but the role that land ownership plays in accessing informal credit and determining its cost is understudied. This paper provides empirical evidence on the effects that land ownership has on both the demand for and the cost of informal and formal credit in the Mekong Delta. The results show that as land ownership increases, both the demand for and the cost of informal loans decrease, while the amount of money borrowed from formal lenders increases. The design and implementation of appropriate land redistributions seem to be a fundamental way to fight the informal credit market. Keywords Informal credit • Cost of credit • Land ownership • Developing countries • Vietnam JEL Classification H81

Research Square (Research Square), Dec 19, 2022

Money laundering and waste-related crimes are widely studied by the literature. However, few atte... more Money laundering and waste-related crimes are widely studied by the literature. However, few attention has been paid to the connection between the latter and the former. Using Italian data at provincial level, the analysis presented here shows that also waste-related crimes generate illegal proceeds that increase the ows of dirty money that needs laundering. Moreover, evidence about cross-provincial spillovers is provided. Fighting money laundering and following dirty money (perhaps also internationally) may help decreasing illegal waste disposals and tra cs, decreasing the yields generated by these crimes.

European divorce rates have been on the rise since the 1970s. At the same time, as more couples o... more European divorce rates have been on the rise since the 1970s. At the same time, as more couples opt for cohabitation over marriage, there has been an increase in separations among cohabiting partners. Nearly 50% of separated individuals form new relationships within five years. These trends may have implications for fertility research. Are re-partnered mothers more likely to continue bearing children than never-separated mothers? Does quick re-partnering lead to the recovery of births "lost" due to separation? To answer these questions, we use longitudinal data from 2004 to 2018 for 32 European countries. We find that mothers in higher order unions are-on averagemore likely to have one more child than those who already have children with their current partner. The former seem to be less burdened by already having children and less concerned about family income. Our data show that if separation occurs at a relatively young age and re-partnering occurs relatively quickly, then births lost to union dissolution can be recovered.

Social Science Research Network, 2016

Voting gender gap characterises several countries, and it is likely to translate into the composi... more Voting gender gap characterises several countries, and it is likely to translate into the composition of elected assemblies and governments. Starting from given preferences of the electors, different electoral rules may translate this gap into different outcomes in terms of composition of the parliament. To amplify or to attenuate this gap results in generating a sort of gender inequality. In this work, I inquiry if and to which extent the different electoral rules may generate gender inequality when translating votes into seats. First, I present a theoretical framework to capture the potential of an electoral system to amplify or attenuate the voting gender gap. Then, using survey data and different indices of representativeness and of governability, I provide some empirical test for the theoretical framework. Both the theory and the simulations indicate that majority systems magnify the gender gap, while proportional rules are likely to reproduce it with minimal distortions.

Social Science Research Network, 2009

This paper analyzes the support to market competition by Indian and Chinese citizens. In particul... more This paper analyzes the support to market competition by Indian and Chinese citizens. In particular I study the individual preferences with respect to some characteristics of a free and competitive market. The paper aims at establishing whether preferences in these countries are different and their evolution over the time. This is an important issue, as the economic literature shows that people's preferences and policies tend to go hand in hand. This means that the analysis of today's preferences and of their evolution over the time can be useful to forecast tomorrow's policies. The main findings of this paper are that Indians and Chinese are different at supporting competition. The Chinese express preferences that are more in line with a free and competitive market, than Indians do. The detected time path reveals that this support has been decreasing over time during the last two decades. The two populations appear to be in favour of a capitalistic, but strictly regulated market. This can mean that the future economic policies of these Asian giants will tend to this direction. Apparently there are no risks for some form of capitalism, but likely the two countries will not adopt completely free and competitive market institutions.

Journal of Cleaner Production, Mar 1, 2017

Massive use of pesticides is one of the major environmental problems in developing countries. I a... more Massive use of pesticides is one of the major environmental problems in developing countries. I analyse the correlation between land ownership and use of pesticides in the Mekong Delta. Landowners may either use more or less pesticides than renters do. Indeed, pesticides increase land productivity in the short run, while decrease it in the long run. Therefore landowners trade-off immediate and future profits, which include also the value of the land that depends on its productivity. Differently from the extant literature this paper does not consider simply land ownership, but the share of the total land cultivated by the household that the household itself owns. Using data from the World Bank covering 603 farmer households in the Mekong Delta, this paper shows that as the share of cultivated land owned increases, so does the quantity of pesticides used. Policy recommendations may be derived: the governments of developing countries should strengthen their efforts to sensitise and to educate the owners of small farms to use agrochemicals correctly.

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Mar 1, 2014

The rising star of scholarly publishing is Open Access. Even some traditional journals now offer ... more The rising star of scholarly publishing is Open Access. Even some traditional journals now offer this option on author payment, and many full freely accessible journals are now available to scholars, providing relief to research institutions increasingly unable to afford the escalating subscription rates of serials. However, proper recognition of full Open Access journals by the community remains a major obstacle to overcome if they are to become a viable alternative for scholarly communication. Through a survey, this work investigates economics scholars' attitudes to OA, and attempts to outline the state of practices and norms governing individuals' publication choices.

RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Jul 1, 2018

The aim of the paper is to examine whether the distribution of funds that prises relatively more ... more The aim of the paper is to examine whether the distribution of funds that prises relatively more the most performing institutions has the effect of replicating the Matthew effect within them in terms of personnel policies and allocate proportionally more resources to the best departments to strengthen their output in the prospect of future assessments. Data from the Italian public university system between 2010 and 2017 as well as outcomes of the national evaluation of research produced between 2004 and 2010 and between 2011 and 2014 in 14 disciplinary research areas have been used. The empirical evidence shows that the Italian universities tended to increase their specialisation in the research areas, where they ranked below or slightly above the national mean, revealing that the universities chose to the mean try strengthening the weak sectors, both through promotions and new recruitments. Results suggest the existence of a dual policy. When the Ministry of Education, University and Research tries to foster a Matthew-effect mechanism, allocating more resources to the best-performing universities, these last seem opting to implement a beauty-contest strategy to make their weak areas to converge towards the national mean.

Economics & Human Biology

Seasonal influenzas are annually responsible for tens of thousands of deaths worldwide, often bec... more Seasonal influenzas are annually responsible for tens of thousands of deaths worldwide, often because of insufficient care which, in turn, may depend on orientations of economic policy. Yet, the empirical evidence on the relations that exist between policies based on different degrees of economic liberalism and flu mortality is still scarce. This paper contributes to filling the gap by proposing an empirical investigation into the effects of various dimensions of liberalism, proxied by the different components of the Fraser Index of Economic Freedom, on deaths from seasonal influenzas in a sample of 38 OECD countries observed from 1970 to 2018. A dynamic panel System-GMM estimator is used to alleviate endogeneity concerns. Findings show that: a) not every component of economic freedom has an effect on flu mortality; b) more economic freedom not always means less (or more) deaths from flu. In particular, stronger protection of property rights and lower government consumption are associated with higher flu mortality, which is instead lower when people and capital are freer to move. Such results give rise to policy considerations and contribute to inform policymakers about which actions can limit the mortality of a globally widespread disease like flu.

Financial education is today a primary issue. We experimentally test whether a programme (“treatm... more Financial education is today a primary issue. We experimentally test whether a programme (“treatment”) of financial education on savings, targeted to children aged 8 and 9, is effective and to what extent. We measure the interest rate required by the children before and after the treatment to accept to postpone a reward, compute its variation and compare this with that of a control group. We find that children are sensitive to the programme, and that this decreases the children’s impatience. We also find some gender differences that cast some doubts about the gender neutrality of programmes of financial education.

Italian Economic Journal

This paper analyses the recent boom of the New Zealand’s exports of wine. In particular the ows t... more This paper analyses the recent boom of the New Zealand’s exports of wine. In particular the ows to some of the main markets currently covered by the European traditional producers are considered. The paper shows that New Zealand’s wines are challenging the exports of the traditional producers of wine.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2008

This paper analyzes the contribution of youth's different time allocations to positive behavi... more This paper analyzes the contribution of youth's different time allocations to positive behaviours in exchanges. In particular the psychological literature states that spending time within youth voluntary organizations fosters positive development of the young more than hanging out with friends. This paper aims at deepening the knowledge of the psychological bases of the observed outcomes of a basic trust game. Undergraduate students played a basic trust game and filled in a questionnaire collecting information about the use of their spare time. It emerges that higher passed amounts positively correlate with more time spent in youth organizations, but hanging out with friends seems to have no correlation. Moreover, according to the psychological literature, the causality mechanism should go from participation to social networks to higher levels of trust, altruism, reciprocity and inequity aversion.

Research Papers in Economics, Sep 1, 2014

Several papers in experimental economics use reaction times (RTs) to assess whether a decision is... more Several papers in experimental economics use reaction times (RTs) to assess whether a decision is instinctive or not. This paper analyses a field experiment (the behaviour of athletes at the World Swimming Championships) in three steps, where only the (expected) payoff changes (i.e. increases) from one step to the next. The payoff depends on the time of the race, of which the RT is part. Considering, for each competition, a homogeneous sample of swimmers, the paper shows that RTs decrease as the expected payoff increase. The observed reductions are comparable in magnitude to those observed in other experiments, where conscious/cognitive process are induced (or, at least, present). The paper concludes claiming that a share of the observed RTs is determined through a cognitive process, and therefore RTs are not pure measures of instinctiveness.

Experimental economics uses response times as a tool to evaluate the instinctiveness of choices a... more Experimental economics uses response times as a tool to evaluate the instinctiveness of choices and behaviours. They have been used to define types of subjects, but never to evaluate the stability of such types. This paper defines stability of types in terms of the variability exhibited by the choices made by an individual in a repeated experiment. The analysis of response times and type stability shows that stability is more instinctive than instability, supporting the idea that types exist and that deviations require cognitive effort.

International Review of Law and Economics