
Marco ModicaGran Sasso Science Institute | GSSI · Social Sciences
Marco Modica
Phd in Economics
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51
Publications
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Introduction
Marco Modica currently works at Gran sasso Science Institute - GSSI. Marco does research in Risk Management and Insurance, Environmental Economics and Economic Geography.
Publications
Publications (51)
Traduzione in italiano della versione originale in inglese, intitolata: The migration, environment and climate change nexus: exploring migrants’ contribution in addressing climate change challenges in Italy’s mountain areas.
Migration in a changing climate can be both a reaction to negative environmental impacts and a driver of resilience and climate change adaptation. In rural and fragile areas of the Global North, migration can contribute to mitigate the socioeconomic effects of depopulation, demographic ageing and economic decline, and countering the environmental d...
Il cambiamento climatico nella metromontagna padana apre inedite prospettive per intervenire sulla attuale distribuzione della popolazione in rapporto al territorio, attualmente del tutto sbilanciata - come del resto in tutta le penisola - tra aree montane e interne a elevata rarefazione socio-abitativa e aree urbane a altissima densità insediativa...
This paper aims to empirically test the dynamics of budget outcomes of Italian municipalities in the aftermath of floods by accounting for heterogeneous levels of resilience and vulnerability to natural disasters. Our findings are based on a dynamic difference-in-differences model after propensity score matching. They point to substantial impacts i...
Italy has been affected by many different shocks in recent years, from the Great Recession to many natural hazards. While many studies have analysed the effects of natural and socio-economic shocks on urbanized and developed areas, very few have focused on locked-in and less developed regions. In this study we focus on the pernicious effects of thr...
Hazards, territories, and communities are not all the same and the relation between these objects might result in post-event fuzzy scenarios that will increase the complexity of reconstruction activities in the aftermath of extreme events. Thus, risk might be dependent to territories according to their socio-economic exposure, vulnerability, and re...
This paper evaluates the role of related variety in the industrial resilience of US counties against the 2008 economic shock. We use employment data on six-digit industries and measure industrial resilience by the extent to which a county maintained or improved entry rates of new industrial specializations in the post-crisis period of 2009–14 as co...
The degree of social acceptance of biogas as a renewable green energy source is still somewhat disregarded. Although many initiatives have focused on the construction of new biogas plants around the world, local protests on the construction of new plants often arise. This study aims to analyse the determinants of citizens’ perceptions regarding the...
In past decades, much of the focus of the literature on economic growth and development was centered on urbanization. Cities were often cited as the engines of growth for regions and/or countries, with little to no attention being paid to more peripheral areas. However, in recent years, this lack of attention to urban areas has been criticized. The...
This work investigates the impacts of the 2012 Emilia-Romagna earthquake and looks at the capacity of the regional economic system to adapt to the shock generated by the seismic event. We contribute to the literature by distinguishing two different effects: direct (i.e. damages to production factors of the focal firm) and indirect effects (e.g. dis...
The paper provides a conceptual framework for a multi-dimensional assessment of risk associated to natural disasters. The different components of risk (hazard, exposure, vulnerability and resilience) are seen in a combined natural and socio-economic perspective and are integrated into a Disaster Risk Assessment Tool (DRAT). The tool can be used to...
The results of the elections have increasingly brought to the forefront the long-standing issue of lagging regions – also labelled as “places that don’t matter” – since they had a great influence on the electoral outcomes. In this paper, we focus on the municipal results of the Italian senate elections, held in March 2018. Italy is a peculiar count...
Earthquakes can generate large volumes of debris which may threaten public health, hinder reconstruction and impact the environment. The present paper aims at investigating how the current Italian regulatory framework may be further developed to improve communities’ ability to manage debris from earthquakes. Since the lack of preparedness for manag...
The Italian economy is characterised by a large number of micro and small firms and by a long‐lasting gap between North and South Italy. Hence, global shocks ‐ such as the Great Recession ‐ have had a heterogeneous impact at the local level: the collapse in private demand was unequally distributed across different products, services and regions. Th...
Socio-Natural Disasters are a global issue that need context-specific solutions. Similar hazards could indeed result in different (or no) disasters depending on the territorial peculiarities of the area they affect. Italy is an interesting case in this respect due to its physical geography. Three out of the four major seismic events of the last dec...
An accurate understanding of physical and socio-economic effects of landslides is fundamental to develop more refined risk management, mitigation strategies and land use policies. In this paper we develop a measure to consider the interconnection between physical and economic exposure, i.e. what we call the economic landslide susceptibility, namely...
This paper examines the housing market response to the earthquake that hit northern Italy in May 2012. The available literature shows that the average price of houses decreases after a disaster because of the potential underestimation of disaster risk by households, or because of a higher risk perception in reaction to the unforeseen emergency. The...
Extreme natural events require effective emergency procedures to minimize adverse effects on a region’s population and economy. Such procedures typically involve the effort of several different teams of first responders (e.g., fire fighters, public administrations, police departments, utility companies), hence coordination is fundamental to the eff...
We explore whether investment in school infrastructure a�ects students'
achievement. We use data on extra funding to undamaged state high schools after the 2012 Northern Italy earthquake and apply a quasi-experimental design and an instrumental variable strategy. We �nd that spending on school infrastructure increases standardized test scores in Ma...
We explore whether investment in school infrastructure affects students’ achievement. We use data on extra funding to state high schools after the 2012 Northern Italy earthquake and apply a quasi-experimental design and an instrumental variable strategy. We find that spending on school infrastructure increases standardized test scores in Mathematic...
The economic recession which followed the 2008 financial crisis has raised important issues on differences in the impact, especially from a spatial perspective, of the socio-economic shocks—at both the regional and the community level, especially in the European Union Member States. These differences may be due to the different levels of vulnerabil...
On April 6th 2009, at 3:32 a.m., a seismic event of magnitude 6.29 (Mw) affected the city of L’Aquila and its surroundings. The earthquake caused huge damages in terms of losses of life, properties, infrastructures and heritage buildings. According to the Italian Department of Civil Protection (DPC, 2011), the victims were 309, with more than 1,500...
The authors would like to make the following corrections to the published paper [...]
Although several contributions have studied the efect of related variety on the economic performance of frms and regions, its infuence on regional resilience—that
is, regions’ capacity to adapt to external shocks—has received little attention. This
paper contributes to this debate by analysing empirically the relationship between
related variety an...
This paper focuses on the response of Italian inner areas to the Great Recession. Inner areas represent the majority of the Italian territory and are very heterogeneous in terms of (unstable) growth trajectories and industrial composition. One key issue that has partially hindered a thorough empirical analysis of the development paths of these area...
RCrES) per la realizzazione del Progetto "PON Governance e Capacità Istituzionale 2014-2020" Programma per il supporto al rafforzamento della governance in materia di riduzione del rischio sismico e vulcanico ai fini di Protezione Civile. Al fine di realizzare delle linee guida d'intervento per il miglioramento dell'operatività del sistema di gesti...
Il concetto di resilienza regionale, recentemente introdotto e rapidamente diffusosi nelle scienze sociali (e in particolare territoriali), sebbene non ancora univocamente definito tanto sul piano teorico che su quello metodologico, presenta un forte potere esplicativo. Intesa nei suoi termini più generali, la resilienza è interpretata come la capa...
Gibrat’s law and Zipf’s law describe two very well-known empirical regularities on the distribution of settlements. Many studies have focused on the analysis of both these regularities, stimulated by the idea that an accurate description of the distribution of people in space is important for both policy-relevant purposes and for specifying more ap...
Although several contributions have studied the effect of related variety on the economic performance of firms and regions, its influence on regional resilience-that is, regions' capacity to adapt to external shocks-has received little attention. This paper contributes to this debate by analysing empirically the relationship between related variety...
In this paper, we quantitatively characterize the sector specialization of the coastal municipalities
that may affect the environment of the Italian coastal municipalities. We first quantified settlement
pressure on the Italian coasts, then we provide an analysis of economic specializations by
sectors of coastal municipalities. Finally, we develop...
This paper analyses the relation between socio-economic and institutional factors and the dynamics of city populations, the hierarchy of city systems and the urbanization. Particular attention is devoted on the integration process that several European Countries, often structurally so different, have experimented from the beginning of ’90s. Results...
Despite biogas is considered a renewable source of energy, the social acceptability of biogas
plants is controversial due to resistance from local communities who are afraid of potential local
negative externalities. This paper aim at investigating this claim using evidence from the
housing market by means of a diff-in-diff model. Indeed, if househ...
In May 2012 a seismic sequence occurred in Northern Italy that was characterized by two main shocks with a magnitude range between 5.5 and 6. These shocks represent a good case study by which to quantify the monetary losses caused by a moderate earthquake in a densely populated and economically well-developed area. The loss estimation accounts for...
The 2008 Great Recession prompted interest in the concept of regional resilience. This paper discusses and empirically investigates the relationship between industrial relatedness and economic resilience across European Union regions over the 2008–2012 crisis period. The analysis focuses on two types of industrial relatedness: technological and ver...
Even though the correct assessment of risks is a key aspect of the risk management analysis, we argue that limited effort has been devoted in the assessment of comprehensive measures of economic exposure at very low scale. For this reason, we aim at providing a series of suitable methodologies to provide a complete and detailed list of the exposure...
The regional economics and geography literature has in recent years shown interesting conceptual and methodological contributions on the validity of Gibrat’s law and Zipf’s law. Despite distinct modelling features, they express similar fundamental characteristics in an equilibrium situation. Zipf’s law is formalised in a static form, while its asso...
The study aims at quantifying the monetary losses caused by a moderate earthquake happened on a densely populated and economically well-developed area. The loss estimation refers to the damage of residential buildings and takes into account the cumulative effects of the sequence of the 2012 Emilia earthquake, characterized by a series of shocks wit...
The paper proposes a new system of indicators for assessing urban sustainability that can be embodied in a simple decision support system (DSS). The development of this system is based on a multidisciplinary approach. The full version tool can be applied to the city as a whole. A reduced version is developed for urban sub-area. An empirical applica...
This paper examines the housing market response to Northern Italy
earthquake in May 2012. Available literature provides evidence of a drop in
the average price of houses after a disaster mainly due to i) underestimation
by households of disaster risk in area where its occurrence is low or ii)
overreaction because of a higher risk perception trigger...
Evaluating socio-economic losses due to natural disasters
is a challenging task because of the combined complexity of the social and
ecological systems affected. However, also under pressure from the expected
effects of climate change, evaluating the socio-economic costs of natural
catastrophes has become a vital need for policy makers, urban plann...
In the literature, the distribution of city size is a controversial issue with two common contenders: the Pareto and the log-normal. While the first is most accredited when the distribution is truncated above a certain threshold, the latter is usually considered a better representation for the untruncated distribution of all cities. In this paper,...
The regional economics and geography literature on urban population size has in recent years shown interesting conceptual and methodological contributions on the validity of Gibrat’s Law and Zipf’s Law. Despite distinct modeling features, they express similar fundamental characteristics in an equilibrium situation. Zipf’s law is formalized in a sta...
The concept of resilience has been receiving both theoretical and empirical attention in recent years, from different disciplinary fields, including spatial economics where resilience is becoming a ‘popular’ term. In particular, the concept of spatial economic resilience seems to assume slightly different interpretations. Starting from the basic de...
Traditionally, it is assumed that the population size of cities in a country follows a Pareto distribution. This assumption is typically supported by finding evidence of Zipf's Law. Recent studies question this finding, highlighting that, while the Pareto distribution may fit reasonably well when the data is truncated at the upper tail, i.e. for th...