Domenica Romeo

University of Catania | UNICT · Department of Economics and Business

This paper aims to assess the impact of a cash transfer programme implemented in Italy since 2014, known as the '80 euro bonus', on health outcomes as gauged by mortality rates. Using municipality-level data over the period 2010-2019 and a difference-indifferences approach, we find a significant reduction in mortality rates associated with the size...

Our experiment assesses the level of coordination on clinical best practice among physicians and investigates whether the release of guidelines helps in supporting coordination. Based on three clinical vignettes using current national guidelines, physicians evaluate the appropriateness of each of the proposed courses of action. Afterwards, physicia...

In recent decades, austerity measures have been widely adopted in public healthcare systems, so as to cope with financial constraints. This paper assesses the impact of a specific austerity policy implemented in Italy since 2007, with the purpose of reducing the budget deficit of regional governments originated by an excessive healthcare expenditur...

Experimental economics is, nowadays, a well-established approach to investigate agents’ behavior under economic incentives. In the last decade, a fast-growing number of studies have focused on the application of experimental methodology to health policy issues. The results of that stream of literature have been intriguing and strongly policy orient...

Physicians behave differently depending on the payment systems, giving rise to several problems such as patient dumping in which patients are refused because of economic or liability reasons. This paper tests whether and to which extent the adoption of either fee-for-service or Salary system induces physicians to practice patient dumping. Through t...

Ageing demographics have prompted widespread pension reforms across Latin America. This has left several countries with a significant financial burden related to the transition from one system to another. In this article, we evaluate two alternative methods of financing the recent pension reform in the Dominican Republic. We build on a simple real...

The role of discretion in public procurement has been the subject of wide debate in regulation literature and practice. Greater discretion potentially may allow for greater efficiency in procurement. However, when social capital and institutional quality are low, more discretion can easily open the door to bribery and corruption. In this paper, ado...

In recent decades, austerity measures have been widely adopted in public healthcare systems, so as to cope with financial constraints. This paper assesses the impact of a specific policy implemented in some Italian regions since 2007 with the purpose of reducing their healthcare spending deficit, the so called Recovery Plans (Piani di rientro), on...

Investments in space programmes appear to bring significant economic benefits to society, but they pose new challenges. This chapter proposes the first methodological approach empirically investigating the efficiency of satellite launches. Specifically, it proposes a model for evaluating satellite launch activity and apply it to a sample of satelli...

By employing a large sample of both laboratory and field data, we investigate whether attitudes towards risk significantly vary between physicians, medical students and non-medical students. Also, we look for differences in risk propensity between laboratory and artefactual field experimental sessions and control for individuals' characteristics th...

Our experiment assesses coordination among healthcare providers and investigates whether national health guidelines help in supporting coordination. Based on three clinical vignettes using current national guidelines, physicians evaluate the appropriateness of each of the possible actions. Afterwards, physicians are permitted to ask which action co...

Experimental economics is, nowadays, a well-established approach to investigate agents' behavior under economic incentives. In the last decade, a fast-growing number of studies have focused on the application of experimental methodology to health policy issues. The results of that stream of literature have been intriguing and strongly policy-orient...

In the last few years, countries and commercial firms are increasingly interested in space activities for civil, military, and commercial purposes (Undseth et al., 2020). As it has been shown in NASA report (2019), investment in space program drives to significant economic benefits to the whole society. We propose the first methodological paper...

Coordination is the key to the success of any organization such as the healthcare sector, where higher level of coordination result in greater promptness and quality of care and lower mortality rates. In a framed field experiment, we assess the level of coordination among healthcare providers and monitor whether common practices are adopted in a me...

This study aims to offer a formal analysis which relates provision of cultural goods to the society’s level of cultural capital. Such a level is assumed to already exist in society and is increasable thanks to individual support for the offer of cultural goods. The achievement of the highest levels of cultural capital increases satisfaction coming...