PhD in ECONOMICS AND FINANCE

July 1, 2025
11.00 am, Sala Marini (2nd floor, bldg B)

Essays in Applied Microeconomics
Simona Mandile

Abstract

Through three empirical essays, this thesis examines how the design and implementation of digital technologies and policy interventions can unintentionally shape mental health, well-being, and social and labor market outcomes. Each chapter employs quasi-experimental techniques and natural experiments to identify causal effects.The first chapter studies the impact of social media algorithms on teenage mental health, using the introduction of Instagram's algorithmic feed as a quasi-experimental setting. The second chapter evaluates how negative fiscal shocks affect hate crimes against minorities in Italian municipalities, leveraging population cutoffs introduced by fiscal reform. The third chapter investigates the labor market and well-being consequences of exclusionary pension policies for workers ineligible for early retirement benefits.

Supervisor: Francesco Sobbrio
Examiners: Francesco Drago (U. Catania), Sarah Beate Eichmeyer (Bocconi Milano), Francesco Sobbrio.

June 26, 2025
3.00 pm, classroom A (1st floor, bldg B)

Essays in Political Economy
Gianluigi Conzo

Abstract
The thesis investigates how media salience, communication constraints, and voter-party misalignment shape public behavior and political outcomes. The first chapter analyzes the unintended effects of a sudden media shift from pandemic health-crisis coverage to the Russo-Ukrainian war, showing that fear-driven reactions—especially near U.S. military bases—led to a temporary spike in contagion and electoral gains for right-wing parties exploiting public fear, while left-wing parties gained from voters’ responsiveness to issue salience over emotional tone. The second chapter examines the consequences of Twitter’s character limit expansion, finding that longer tweets reduced the engagement with aggressive, insulting, and apodictic content, making the platform less conducive to polarization. The third chapter explores the decline in voter turnout across Europe, framing abstention as a rational response to the distance between voters and parties across key policy dimensions, and argues that the recent success of populist parties is likely linked to their greater ability to identify non-voters and align with their preferences.

Supervisor: Leonardo Becchetti
Examiners: Leonardo Becchetti, Marina della Giusta (U. Torino), Tommaso Reggiani (Cardiff University).

June 4, 2025
4.30 pm, Aula Marini (2nd floor, bldg B)

Three Essays in Labor Economics
Gian Marco Pinna

Abstract

In this dissertation, I examine how job loss, industrial policy, and historical shocks influence labor market dynamics. The three papers that comprise this work investigate (i) the root causes of recursive unemployment in displaced workers' careers, with a focus on how displacement affects the job security associated with the occupations workers obtain after dismissal; (ii) the impact of easing access to credit for small and medium-sized enterprises to acquire technological capital on employment and other firm-level outcomes; and (iii) the effect of male soldier fatalities during World War II on women's labor market outcomes in Italy, both in the immediate postwar period and over the longer term. Together, these studies explore how labor markets respond and adapt to disruptive events and policy interventions, with the aim of uncovering the underlying mechanisms behind these phenomena and informing the design of more effective labor market policies.

Supervisor: Federico Belotti, Co-supervisor: Jaime Arellano-Bover (Yale University)
Examiners: Jaime Arellano-Bover (Yale University), Federico Belotti, Raffaele Saggio (U. of British Columbia), Giovanna Vallanti (LUISS).

May 6, 2025
9.00 am, Aula Marini (2nd floor, bldg B)

Essays in Public Procurement and Intermediaries’ Competition
Roberto Pezzuto

Abstract
This thesis analyses situations in which, due to informational frictions, competition is imperfect, and a subset of the economic agents involved in the interaction hold some form of market power. Specifically, the exchange protocol is auction-based, rather than the standard Walrasian market protocol. In each chapter, it investigates how certain features that coexist on top of the auction-like exchange protocol - such as debarment rules in public procurement, discrete capacity constraints, or platform business models - affect consumer surplus, the incentives of the involved parties, and ultimately the regulatory or policy implications aimed at promoting consumer welfare. 
 

Supervisors: Eloisa Campioni, Albero Iozzi
Examiners: Daniel Cardona Coll (U. of the Balearic Islands), Dimitri Paolini (U. of Sassari), Juha Tolvanen.

March 14, 2025
3.00 pm, Aula Marini (2nd floor, bldg B)

Commitment and private communication in principal-agent analysis
Lorenzo Bozzoli

Abstract
This thesis explores commitment frictions in principal-agent relationships with moral hazard. It shows that allocative distortions from renegotiation can be fully offset through mediated mechanisms and outlines a new micro-foundation for limited commitment, where the principal may design contracts allowing unilateral termination despite having full commitment power. These findings challenge the traditional view of imperfect commitment as an exogenous constraint that engenders conflicts in the principal’s sequential rationality, showing that the associated welfare effects depend on arbitrary contract space restrictions. Instead, they advance an alternative perspective, treating contractual commitment as an endogenous choice of the parties.

Supervisor: Andrea Attar
Examiners: Eloisa Campioni, Matteo Escudé (LUISS Guido Carli), Thomas Mariotti (Toulouse School of Economics)

March 11, 2025
2.30 pm, Aula Marini  (2nd floor, bldg B)

Essays in Environmental Macroeconomics
Marco Carli

The disastrous effects of climate change are making increasingly evident the need for drastic reductions in anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. The goal of the thesis is to provide insights on climate change-related issues and recommendations on policies suited to address them. The first chapter analyzes the performance of alternative climate policies and their interaction with macroprudential regulation in an environmental dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model where polluting firms are hit by idiosyncratic shocks and can default. The second chapter studies how misperceptions and losses of confidence about the productive potential of the non-polluting sector can affect the transition to a low-carbon economy and the implementation of environmental policies. The third chapter explores the transmission of climate policy shocks and the response of optimal monetary policy when the economy depends more on fossil resources and energy in the short-run.

Supervisor: Barbara Annicchiarico (U. Roma Tre)
Examiners: Emanuele Campiglio (U. Bologna), Lorenzo Carbonari, Massimiliano Pisani (Banca d'Italia)

February 28, 2025
10 am, room G

Essays on the Distributional Impact Climate Policies
Benedetta Mina

Achieving climate targets set by the European Union requires a complex policy mix, which is expected to cause a general increase in end-user prices, especially for carbon-intensive goods. This thesis provides a framework to assess the distributional impacts of price changes induced by climate policies coherent with EU targets in Italy. The first chapter estimates a complete demand system for Italian households, with a detailed representation of energy expenditures. The second chapter studies the distributional effects on the uses-of-income side by soft-linking a dynamic CGE model with a microsimulation model. The third chapter studies the effects on the sources-of-income side, by computing the burden imposed on households by changes in the returns to production factors. 

Supervisor: Mariangela Zoli
Examiners: Susanna Mancinelli (U. Ferrara), Elena Paglialunga (U. Roma Tre), Alessandro Palma (Gran Sasso Science Institute)

October 24, 2024
Three Essays in Applied Microeconomics
Irene Di Marzio

Abstract to be added here

Supervisor: Federico Belotti
Examiners: Federico Belotti, Augusto Cerqua (La Sapienza U. di Roma), Edoardo Di Porto (U. Napoli "Federico II")

September 12, 2024
Essay on Regression Discontinuity Designs
Elena Dal Torrione

In settings with interconnected individuals, social and physical interactions can lead to interference and statistical dependence in the data. This thesis addresses these challenges in Regression Discontinuity Designs (RDDs), where assignment to a treatment depends on the value of an observed variable relative to an eligibility threshold. The first chapter introduces a novel analytical framework to incorporate interference in RDDs for networked populations. The second chapter studies the standard RDD local polynomial estimator under network dependence, establishing conditions for consistency and asymptotic normality. The third chapter develops new estimators within the interference framework, and applies the proposed methodology to the PROGRESA/Oportunidades dataset to estimate the direct and indirect effects of cash transfer eligibility on children’s school attendance.

Supervisor: Tiziano Arduini
Examiners: Tiziano Arduini, Fabrizia Mealli (U. Firenze), Enrico Rettore (U. Padova)

September 2, 2024
Three Essays in Causal Inference and Machine Learning
Riccardo Di Francesco

This thesis reflects the adaptability expected of modern economists, exploring a range of subjects from theoretical advancements to applied contributions in causal inference and machine learning. The first two chapters employ tree-based methodologies to develop novel estimators: one focused on uncovering heterogeneous causal effects while maintaining interpretability, and another focused on predictive modeling for ordered non-numeric outcomes. The third chapter measures the extent of anti-LGB sentiments and reactions to coming out, using innovative data sources from an online video game to achieve credible identification.

Supervisor: Franco Peracchi (EIEF)
Co-supervisor: Tommaso Proietti
Examiners: Michael Lechner (U. St. Gallen), Giovanni Mellace (U. Southern Denmark), Franco Peracchi (EIEF)

July 22, 2024
Four Essays in Applied Economics
Sara Mancini

The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the economic literature by providing novel evidence on topics in applied microeconomics by combining social and environmental sustainability with the study of regulatory interventions, global development adaptation policies, and corporate values. These are four essays on people, well-being, climate shocks, and policy interventions promoting improvement actions using impact evaluation techniques. The first chapter investigates the critical role of economic policy instruments as forces pushing companies toward ecological transition. The second one evaluates the impact of climate shocks on household well-being in the Solomon Islands. The third one argues that corporate social responsibility and relational skills are linked to positive effects on productivity. The fourth chapter studies whether sustainability reporting raises corporate effort toward sustainable development.

Supervisor: Leonardo Becchetti
Examiners: Leonardo Becchetti, Giacomo Degli Antoni, Piergiuseppe Morone

April 18, 2024
Essays in Macroeconomics and Finance
Filippo Maurici

This thesis is composed of three essays, each studying topics which are mostly unrelated. Nevertheless, the common thread of these works can be summarized by the role of expectations. We start by considering a theoretical model in which agents take decisions according to the what they consider the worst-case scenario, then we move to analyze the ex post effects of mergers involving banks and fintechs, and, finally, we study how announcements affect economic growth in times of crisis.

Supervisor: Lorenzo Carbonari
Examiners: Barbara Annicchiarico, Michele Battisti, Tommaso Oliviero