A Microsimulation of the Impact of Tax Reforms on Child Poverty: the Case of Italy. Bruges European Economic Research (BEER) Papers 29/February 2014

Microsimulation models have been used in order to find efficient counteractive instruments to poverty. The objective of this paper is to analyse the impact of fiscal policy on poverty, insisting on child poverty rates. Empirical analysis suggests that in fighting poverty, a mix of policies need to be in place, fiscal reforms increasing tax allowances such as child benefit granted to parents with dependent children, are not sufficient to reduce child poverty.

Labor Market Policy Decentralization in Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy - Dynamics and Reasons. ACES Working Papers No. 5, 2008

This article argues that welfare-to-work or activation policies, which have been adopted across a range of OECD countries during the last two decades, do not only have led to changes in the substance of the welfare state but also to transformations in its institutional configuration. This institutional transformation includes the spatial reconfiguration of the welfare state, which has given new roles to the supra-national, national, and sub-national levels of government as well as private actors in the management and creation of labor market policies. By bringing institutions into these debates, this article seeks to expand the literature on welfare-to-work and activation as to date authors working on this topic have said very little about the degree, types, and reasons for the spatial re-configuration of welfare-to-work policies across different states. To fill a gap in the literatures on changes in the welfare state and its territorial configuration in particular, we compare trends in the re-configuration of welfare-to-work policies in Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. We find that there is a cross-national trend, when it comes to the institutional effects of the implementation of activation. These trends bear a tension between decentralization and centralization, as both central and sub-national levels of government have acquired new responsibilities to implement the activation paradigm.

Italy and the EU in historical perspective. ACES Working Papers, August 2009

This paper will deal with relations between Italy and the European Communities in a historical perspective. It will take into consideration both exogenous and endogenous variables. As regards the exogenous, relations with the United States are of particular relevance. As for the endogenous, the focus will be on the way political parties have perceived the process of European integration. Here, one can distinguish three periods: from the origins to the late 1970s; from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s and from the mid 1990s to today. The first period was characterized by the opposition of the left to European and Atlantic integration, on the basis of ideological contraposition; the second witnessed a shared consensus by all political parties on integration - especially European; in the latest period, domestic political divisions at times lead parties to oppose European integration.