Guido Tabellini

Università commerciale Luigi Bocconi | Bocconi · Ettore Bocconi Department of Economics

Creativity is often highly concentrated in time and space, and across different domains. What explains the formation and decay of clusters of creativity? We match data on notable individuals born in Europe between the eleventh and the nineteenth centuries with historical city data. The production and attraction of creative talent is associated with...

We present a theory of identity politics that builds on two ideas. First, when policy conflict renders a certain social divide—economic or cultural—salient, a voter identifies with her economic or cultural group. Second, the voter slants her beliefs towards the stereotype of the group she identifies with. We obtain three implications. First, voters...

Using data on bank-firm relationships in Italy during the Eurozone financial crisis, we show that: (i) compared to healthy banks, under-capitalized banks cut credit to healthy but not to zombie firms and are more likely to prolong a credit relationship with a zombie; (ii) in areas-sectors with more low-capital banks, zombies are more likely to surv...

The policy response to COVID-19 includes the provision of credit guarantees to firms, a provision that may generate zombie lending. According to the recent literature, the relative performance of healthy firms deteriorates as the fraction of zombies increases. We argue that this literature faces a serious identification problem, because firm perfor...

We propose a simple theory of social norms that models the distinct influence on behavior of personal values, normative expectations and empirical expectations. The first and second moments of the distribution of normative expectations affect the strength of social norms' pull on behavior. We test the empirical predictions of the model through an e...

We analyze the role of the media in coordinating and mobilizing insurgency against an authoritarian regime, in the context of the Nazi-fascist occupation of Italy during WWII. We study the effect of BBC radio on the intensity of internal resistance. By exploiting variations in monthly sunspot activity that affect the sky-wave propagation of BBC bro...

This paper studies how voters’ selective ignorance interacts with policy design by political candidates. It shows that the selectivity empowers voters with extreme preferences and small groups, that divisive issues attract most attention, and that public goods are underfunded. Finer granularity of information increases these inefficiencies. Rationa...

This paper studies electoral competition over redistributive taxes between a safe incumbent and a risky opponent. As in prospect theory, economically disappointed voters become risk lovers, and hence are attracted by the more risky candidate. We show that, after a large adverse economic shock, the equilibrium can display policy divergence: the intr...

We analyze the role of the media in coordinating and mobilizing insurgency against an authoritarian regime in the context of the Nazi-fascist occupation of Italy during WWII. We study the effect of BBC radio on the intensity of internal resistance. By exploiting variations in monthly sunspot activity that affect the sky-wave propagation of BBC broa...

The standard economic approach has been challenged by political scientists, based on extensive empirical and survey evidence. Sociology and psychology, much more than economics, hold promise to explain individual political preferences.

We compare single round vs. runoff elections under plurality rule, allowing for partly endogenous party formation. With large and sufficiently polarized groups of moderate voters, under runoff elections, the number of political candidates is larger, but the influence of extremist voters on equilibrium policy and hence policy volatility is smaller,...

Employing a wide range of individual-level surveys, we study the extent of cultural and institutional heterogeneity within the European Union and how this changed between 1980 and 2009. We present several novel empirical regularities that paint a complex picture. Although Europe has experienced both systematic economic convergence and an increased...

We compare single round versus runoff elections under plurality rule, allowing for partly endogenous party formation. Under runoff elections, the number of political candidates is larger, but the influence of extremist voters on equilibrium policy, and hence policy volatility, is smaller because the bargaining power of the political extremes is red...

The ECB may soon launch QE. Two of Europe’s leading macroeconomists argue that QE is the ECB’s last anti-deflation tool – it must not be sacrificed to political expediency. The risk-sharing debate is secondary to the programme’s size and duration – one example would be €60 billion per month for one year, or until inflation expectations rose to near...

What are the main lessons to be drawn from the European financial crisis? This column argues that the Eurozone really is at a major cross-roads. Without a common fiscal policy, and without adequate instfitutions for aggregate demand management, European leaders have to constantly alter the rules. Currency risk will be the major concern of financial...

Deirdre McCloskey is right, economists interested in comparative development ought to pay more attention to the history of ideas. But, which ideas? And how do they emerge? In this short paper I argue that other ideas, besides the bourgeois ethics, are at least as important. And that a new emphasis on ideas does not make institutions less important,...

Over the last millennium, the clan and the corporation have been the loci of cooperation in China and Europe respectively. This paper examines – analytically and historically – the cultural and institutional co-evolution that led to this bifurcation. We highlight that groups with which individuals identify are basic units of cooperation. Such loyal...

How do voters allocate costly attention to alternative political issues? And how does selective ignorance of voters interact with policy design by politicians? We address these questions by developing a model of electoral competition with rationally inattentive voters. Rational inattention amplifies the effects of preference intensity, because vote...

•Why has the Italian school system such a disappointing performance? Lack of funding is not the answer•The Italian school system needs to move in the direction of more autonomy given to individual schools, in the management of teachers and in the curriculum•The paper discusses a reform proposal that can achieve this goal, while at the same time lea...

Until very recently, the theory of macroeconomic policy dealt with the economic consequences of given policy rules. Knowing these consequences and the policy objectives, one would then select the optimal policy rule. Implicit in this approach to policy design is a particular view of the policymaker, namely that he is a passive agent that can be pro...

This paper formulates a general theory of how political unrest influences public policy. Political unrest is motivated by emotions. Individuals engage in protests if they are aggrieved and feel that they have been treated unfairly. This reaction is predictable because individuals have a consistent view of what is fair. This framework yields novel i...

Uses a game theoretic approach to explore which economic policies are 'credible' and 'politically feasible', questions that had eluded traditional macroeconomic approaches. © 1990 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association). All rights reserved.

Over the last millennium, the clan and the city have been the locus of cooperation in China and Europe respectively. This paper examines - analytically, historically,and empirically - the cultural, social, and institutional co-evolution that led to this bifurcation. We highlight that groups with which individuals identify are basic units of coopera...

The European welfare states have fundamental problems, in particular high unemployment and a mounting pressure on public pensions. Although these problems have been prominent topics of the political debate for years and years, we have seen little fundamental reform. Why this is so? One of the core hypotheses claims that the current state of affairs...

Does culture have a causal effect on economic development? The data on European regions suggest that it does. Culture is measured by indicators of individual values and beliefs, such as trust and respect for others, and confidence in individual self determination. To isolate the exogenous variation in culture, we rely on two historical variables us...

We introduce a new hybrid approach to joint estimation of Value at Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) for high quantiles of return distributions. We investigate the relative performance of VaR and ES models using daily returns for sixteen stock market indices (eight from developed and eight from emerging markets) prior to and during the 2008 fi...

In this paper, we empirically investigate a channel through which social capital may improve economic wellbeing and the functioning of institutions: political accountability. The main idea is that voters who share norms of generalized morality demand higher standards of behavior on their elected representavtives, are more willing to bear the cost o...

Are structural reforms growth enhancing? Is the effectiveness of reforms constrained by a country's institutional environment or by its distance from the technological frontier? This paper takes a new and comprehensive look at these questions by employing a novel dataset that includes several kinds of real (trade, agriculture and networks) and fina...

The paper studies the effect of additional government revenues on political corruption and on the quality of politicians, both with theory and data. The theory is based on a version of the career concerns model of political agency with endogenous entry of political candidates. The evidence refers to municipalities in Brazil, where federal transfers...

The political process in the United States appears to be highly polarized: ev-idence from voting patterns finds that the political positions of legislators have diverged substantially, while the largest campaign contributions come from the most extreme lobby groups and are directed to the most extreme candidates. Is the rise in campaign contributio...

We study the dynamics of economic and political change, theoretically and empirically. Democratic capital measured by a nation's historical experience with democracy, and the incidence of democracy in its neighborhood, appears to reduce exit rates from democracy and raise exit rates from autocracy. Higher democratic capital stimulates growth by inc...

This paper investigates whether assigning control of government services provision to a politician or bureaucrat affects the cost of government services. Conceptually, bureaucratic control could reduce costs if (a) costs are hard for voters to observe, weakening the incen-tives for politicians to exert effort to reduce costs, or (b) bureaucrats' im...

In einem weltweiten Appell vom 2. Oktober 2008 haben führende Ökonomen aus Europa und den USA, darunter DIW-Präsident Klaus F. Zimmermann, die europäischen Staaten zu einem ge meinsamen Vorgehen in der Finanzmarktkrise aufgerufen. Die Krise sei noch be-herrschbar – nur ein schnelles, europaweit koordiniertes Vorgehen könne aber verhindern, dass sie...

Extensive anecdotal evidence suggests that practices related to familism are widespread in Italian universities. However, systematic evidence is not available since information on family relations is generally unavailable or con dential. We explore the relevance of family ties in the Italian academia as well as the relationship between familism and...

We develop and implement a collocation method to solve for an equilibrium in the dynamic legislative bargaining game of Duggan and Kalandrakis (2008). We formulate the collocation equations in a quasi-discrete version of the model, and we show that the collocation equations are locally Lipchitz continuous and directionally differentiable. In numeri...

Italians start adult activities such as leaving the parental home at a much later age than is common in other countries at comparable levels of development. In this paper we ask whether this late transition into adulthood influences the lifetime economic opportunities of individuals. A priori, it is not clear if such influence exists, and what is i...

We compare single ballot vs dual ballot elections under plurality rule, assuming sincere voting and allowing for partly endogenous party formation. Under the dual ballot, the number of parties is larger but the influence of extremists voters on equilibrium policy is smaller, because their bargaining power is reduced compared to a single ballot elec...

Policies are typically chosen by politicians and bureaucrats. This paper investigates first the normative criteria with which to allocate policy tasks to elected policymakers (politicians) or non-elected bureaucrats. Politicians are preferable if there is uncertainty about social preferences and flexibility is valuable, or if policy complementariti...

We offer a rationale for the decision to extend the franchise to women within a politico-economic model where men are richer than women, women display a higher preference for public goods, and women’s disenfranchisement carries a societal cost. We first derive the tax rate chosen by the male median voter when women are disenfranchised. Next we show...

How and why does distant political and economic history shape the functioning of current institutions? This paper argues that individual values and convictions about the scope of application of norms of good conduct provide the "missing link." Evidence from a variety of sources points to two main findings. First, individual values consistent with g...

Fiscal policy is procyclical in many developing countries. We explain this policy failure with a political agency problem. Procyclicality is driven by voters who seek to "starve the Leviathan" to reduce political rents. Voters observe the state of the economy but not the rents appropriated by corrupt governments. When they observe a boom, voters op...

What explains the range of situations in which individuals cooperate? This paper studies a model where individuals respond to incentives but are also influenced by norms of good conduct inherited from earlier generations. Parents rationally choose what values to transmit to their offspring, and this choice is influenced by the spatial patterns of e...

This article discusses recent empirical and theoretical research on the electoral rule, which is one feature of modern democracies. It determines that the electoral rule systematically shapes economic policy. An outline of some key objectives of electoral rules is presented in the first section; it further notes the stability and systematic selecti...

How and why does distant political and economic history shape the functioning of current institutions? This paper argues that individual values and convictions about the scope of application of norms of good conduct provide the "missing link". Evidence from a variety of sources points to two main findings. First, individual values consistent with g...

How and why does distant political and economic history shape the functioning of current institutions? This paper argues that individual values and convictions about the scope of application of norms of good conduct provide the "missing link". Evidence from a variety of sources points to two main findings. First, individual values consistent with g...

We estimate the effect of political regime transitions on growth with semi-parametric methods, combining difference in differences with matching, that have not been used in macroeconomic settings. Our semi-parametric estimates suggest that previous parametric estimates may have seriously underestimated the growth effects of democracy. In particular...

We estimate the effect of political regime transitions on growth with semi-parametric methods, combining difference in differences with matching, that have not been used in macroeconomic settings. Our semi-parametric estimates suggest that previous parametric estimates may have seriously underestimated the growth effects of democracy. In particular...

What explains the range of situations in which individuals cooper- ate? This paper studies a theoretical model where individuals respond to incentives but are also influenced by norms of good conduct inher- ited from earlier generations. Parents rationally choose what norms to transmit to their offspring, and this choice is influenced by features o...

This paper investigates the normative criteria that guide the allocation of a policy task to an elected politician versus an independent bureaucrat. The bureaucrat is preferable for technical tasks for which ability is more important than effort, or if there is great uncertainty about whether the policymaker has the required abilities. The optimal...

This paper investigates the normative criteria that guide the allocation of a policy task to an elected politician versus an independent bureaucrat. The bureaucrat is preferable for technical tasks for which ability is more important than effort, or if there is great uncertainty about whether the policymaker has the required abilities. The optimal...

for insightful discussions. We also thank participants at the EPCS conference, at the Workshop on Political Economy in Brussels, at JMA, ESSET, ESEM, as well as seminar participants in ECARES, Mannheim, UQAM, and Rotterdam for useful comments. Abstract Analyses of political competition typically focus on interparty competition. We introduce intrapa...

The variety of constitutional designs found in democratic governments has important effects on policy choices and outcomes. That is the conclusion reached in Democratic Constitutional Design and Public Policy, in which the constitutional procedures and constraints through which laws and public policies are adopted—election laws, the general archite...

We study the joint dynamics of economic and political change. Predictions of the simple model that we formulate in the paper get considerable support in a panel of data on political regimes and GDP per capita for about 150 countries over 150 years. Democratic capital - measured by a nation's historical experience with democracy and by the incidence...