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As the role of central banks expanded, demand for public scrutiny of their actions increased. This paper investigates whether parliamentary hearings, the main tool to hold central banks accountable, are fit for this purpose. Using text analysis, it detects the topics and sentiments in parliamentary hearings of the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve from 1999 to 2019. It shows that, while central bank objectives play the most relevant role in determining the topic, unemployment is negatively associated with the focus of hearings on price stability. Sentiments are more negative when uncertainty is higher and when inflation is more distant from the central bank’s inflation aim. These findings suggest that parliamentarians use hearings to scrutinise the performance of central banks in line with their objectives and economic developments, but also that uncertainty is associated with a higher perceived risk of under-performance of central banks.

Since the crisis financial regulators and supervisors have been given increased independence from political bodies. But there is no clear evidence of the benefits of these reforms on the stability of the banking sector. This paper fills that void, introducing a new dataset of reforms to regulatory and supervisory independence for 43 countries from 1999-2019. We combine this index with bank-level data to investigate the impact of reforms in independence on financial stability. We find that reforms that bring greater regulatory and supervisory independence are associated with lower non-performing loans in banks’ balance sheets. In addition, we provide evidence that these improvements do not come at the cost of bank efficiency and profitability. Overall, our results show that increasing the independence of regulators and supervisors is beneficial for financial stability.

Over the last decade, the erosion of trust in public institutions and traditional media sources have been proceeding in parallel. As recent developments in media consumption have led to a proliferation of politically charged online misinformation, it is no wonder that many have been questioning whether the spread of fake news has affected the results of recent elections, contributing to the growth of populist party platforms. In this work, we aim to quantify this impact by focusing on the causal effect of the spread of misinformation over electoral outcomes in the 2018 Italian General elections. We exploit the presence of Italian and German linguistic groups in the Trento and Bolzano/Bozen autonomous provinces as an exogenous source of variation, assigning individuals into distinct filter bubbles each differently exposed to misinformation. To do so, we introduce a novel index based on text mining techniques to measure populism. Using this approach, we analyse the social media content of each party and their leaders over the course of the electoral campaign for the 2013 and 2018 elections. We then collect electoral and socio- demographic data from the region and, after constructing a proxy for exposition to misinformation, we measure the change in populist vote across the two groups in-between the two general elections, using a combination of difference-in-difference and two-stages-least-squares inference methods. Our results indicate that misinformation had a negligible and non-significant effect on populist vote in Trentino and South Tyrol during the Italian 2018 general elections.

This paper aims to identify the main dividing lines that determine the voting behaviour of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and how they evolved throughout the crisis. Introducing a new database that collects and classifies the full population of plenary votes from 2004 to 2019, this work uses principal component analysis to identify the latent patterns on which MEPs ally and divide. Focussing on economic votes, it finds that, while pre-crisis votes were mainly determined by differences across the left-vs-right spectrum and, only secondly, by differences in support for European integration, the crisis inverted this trend, making support for Europe the most relevant dividing line in the European Parliament. In support of this evidence, the paper introduces a new vote-scraping technique to investigate the ideological nature of these dimensions. Vote scraping reveals that the left-right cleavage is mainly ideological but with limited impact on budgetary resources, whereas the European dimension mostly reflects a conflict over the budget, with higher legislative impact and seemingly low ideological content.

This paper describes the role of social cooperatives in Italy as a type of economic, non-profit organization and their role in contributing to the economic and social growth of the country. The purpose of this paper is to learn more about the experience of the Italian social cooperatives in promoting the work integration process of disadvantaged workers, especially those suffering from mental disorders, from a theoretical and an empirical point of view. Social enterprise is the most popular and consolidated legal and organizational model for social enterprises in Italy, introduced by Law 381/91. Developed during the early 1980s, and formally recognized by law in the early 1990s, social cooperatives aim at pursuing the general interest of the community to promote the human needs and social inclusion of citizens. They are orientated towards aims that go beyond the interest of the business owners, the primary beneficiary of their activities is the community, or groups of disadvantaged people. In Italy, Law 381/91 distinguishes between two categories of social cooperatives, those producing goods of social utility, such as culture, welfare and educational services (A-type), and those providing economic activities for the integration of disadvantaged people into employment (B-type). The main purpose of B-type social cooperatives is to integrate disadvantaged people into the open labour market. This goal is reached after a period of training and working experience inside the firm, during which the staff works to improve both the social and professional abilities of disadvantaged people. During the years, B-type social co-ops acquired a particular relevance in the care of people with mental disorders by offering them with job opportunities. Having a job is central in the recovery process of people suffering from mental diseases, meaning that B-type social co-ops in Italy play an important rehabilitative and integrative role for this vulnerable population of workers. The recent literature has highlighted that difficulties with employment are a feature of mental disorders, with high unemployment rates and short job tenure. Yet, success in employment for this population can be expected when they are provided with adequate support and opportunities. B-type social cooperatives in Italy are found to be very useful in order to help this disadvantaged category of workers find and keep a job. The work environment is more flexible and allows a better integration with less stigma and better work accommodations compared to the open labour market and/or other public/private organizations. Results from B-type Italian social cooperatives studies show that mentally ill workers value the importance of working, are highly satisfied with their job, are motivated to continue working, are engaged in their job and willing to work in the competitive labour market. Also, studies show that environmental characteristics of the social cooperative, such as the implementation of work accommodations and the possibility to work in an environment that is highly supportive, have an impact on increasing the likelihood of being highly satisfied with the job, which in turn is positively related to job tenure. In sum, this article shed light on the historical background that led to the development of social cooperatives in Italy. Furthermore, the features of B-type co-ops that play a central role in facilitating the work integration of people with mental disorders are described in this paper. In general, Italian B-type social cooperatives are found to provide a meaningful work experience to people with mental disorders, that help them increase not only vocational outcomes, but also psycho-social outcomes, and generally to help them better integrate into society.

Resume La recherche presentee ici s'inscrit dans le debat instruit par Bandura concernant le niveau de generalite–specificite auquel il convient d'apprehender les croyances d'efficacite. Elle pose qu'il s'agit moins de recuser ou non l'interet d'une prise en compte du sentiment general d'efficacite personnelle (compare aux sentiments d'efficacite personnelle specifiques, referes a des registres d'activites particuliers), que d'etudier les conditions de son efficience, par exemple dans la regulation de certaines perturbations. Aupres d'une population de 157 professeurs des ecoles recemment recrutes et en reference au modele du systeme des activites, elle s'attache a monter que le sentiment general d'efficacite personnelle des sujets attenue les effets d'une perturbation professionnelle (les decalages percus au niveau de la maitrise des competences requises) sur la satisfaction professionnelle et le bien-etre psychologique, a condition que ces sujets aient instaure entre leurs differents domaines de vie un niveau d'echanges median (ni trop faible, ni trop eleve).