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The paper investigates the role of economic indicators as determinants of trust in the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission (EC) and the European Parliament (EP) in eleven countries of the Eurozone, from 1999 to 2013, using country level data from the European Commission’s Eurobarometer survey. This paper aims to shed light particularly on the role played by income distribution, together with standard economic indicators such as unemployment and inflation, in the consolidation of supranational institutions. The empirical analysis also controls for financial market shocks, including domestic bond yields and stock market returns. The additional contribution is to analyze whether the sensitiveness of trust has been strengthened during the recent crisis, associating binary dummies to explanatory variables. The main conclusions can be summarized as follows: a) income inequality negatively affects trust in the EC and the EP in normal times; in crisis times, this relation is strengthened and extended to the ECB for one of the two indexes of trust considered; b) inflation and unemployment significantly affect trust in all European Institutions after the crisis.

The present paper deals with the issue of the governance of migratory phenomena and the desertification processes of whole regions or macroareas. In particular, it studies the effects of immigration on income inequality, attempting to demonstrate, through a critical review of the most recent research on the relationship between migration and inequality and an empirical investigation related to the effects of new internal migration in the Italian case, how out-migration can increase income inequalities, thus hindering economic growth and exacerbating regional disparities, while immigration can reduce income inequalities and mitigate economic imbalances, according to the hypothesis of skilled immigration equalising, formulated in 2008 by Kahanec and Zimmermann. From the analysis of the Italian case emerge, moreover, some useful suggestions to help policy makers and lawgivers in the management of internal migratory phenomena and counteract the human and industrial desertification of whole regions or macroareas.

Nel nostro paese, il problema della povertà ha raggiunto livelli tutt’altro che trascurabili, e richiede, soprattutto al Sud, l’adozione di misure di contrasto in grado di affrontare le differenze, talvolta assai marcate, tra le diverse condizioni di povertà. Una cosa è la condizione dell’anziano che vive di pensione – molto spesso di importo assai limitato - e per il quale sarebbero necessari tipi di interventi diversi dal microcredito, un’altra è quella del giovane, con un alto livello di istruzione, che non ha capitale per avviare un’attività imprenditoriale. In questo caso, la possibilità di usufruire di un finanziamento proveniente dal microcredito potrebbe rappresentare una via di uscita dalla povertà.

Il lavoro ha una natura eminentemente descrittiva e si occupa degli effetti della crisi sulla disoccupazione giovanile utilizzando la banca dati EU-SILC 2008-2010. Il problema della disoccupazione giovanile rappresenta, soprattutto per il Mezzogiorno, una piaga che comporta molte inefficienze e, soprattutto, il rafforzarsi di circoli viziosi di sottosviluppo che rischiano di rendere il Sud sempre più povero e dipendente. I giovani migliori, ad esempio, sono costretti molto spesso a scegliere tra restare disoccupati o emigrare: in entrambi i casi il territorio ne risulta impoverito. L’articolo mette a fuoco gli effetti della crisi economica sullo stato occupazionale dei giovani e lascia intravedere un dato interessante: più che restare pigramente ad assistere agli eventi, i giovani, anche meridionali, si sono dati da fare per cercare soluzioni. Se non hanno avuto successo in questa loro ricerca è, con ogni probabilità, la conseguenza dell’incapacità delle politiche locali, nazionali ed europee di aumentare la domanda di lavoro.

The respect of fiscal parameters is supposed to be – according to the official position of the European institutions – the best recipe for granting stability and growth. This optimistic view appears to be in contrast with the recent increase in poverty. The aim of this paper is to individuate the existence of a relation between governments’ decisions about fiscal policy and absolute poverty in 19 Eurozone countries from 2005 to 2017. The attempt is to answer the question as to whether the effect on growth generated by fiscal policy measures can account for the objective of poverty alleviation. The results support the conclusion that absolute poverty increases in the presence of a restrictive fiscal policy, while it decreases in the opposite case. During declining macroeconomic conditions, national governments belonging to the Eurozone appear to be unable to reconcile the objective of sound public finance with that of poverty alleviation.

The rise of youth unemployment has been one of the most serious problems which policymakers have had to deal with over the last two decades. Neoclassical economic theory suggests that the deregulation (i.e. higher flexibility) of the labour market stimulates firms to hire young people and—therefore—reduces youth unemployment. The aim of this study is to empirically test the validity of this hypothesis, analysing data on youth unemployment and labour market regulation index (LMRI) for 28 European countries in the period between 2000 and 2018. The empirical results—using two different econometric techniques (time and fixed effects that allows to take into account the presence of heterogeneity of countries in the model and pooling mean group (PMG) estimator providing results about the short and long run relationship between LMRI and youth unemployment)—do not provide evidence in support of the neoclassical hypothesis. In particular, the effect of higher flexibility of the labour market is negative and statistically significant (at 1%) only when a dummy variable for the Eastern country group is included in the model. Vice-versa, the paper shows that higher economic growth and higher investment in active labour market policy represent the key variables to reduce the youth unemployment. In conclusion, the paper raises many doubts that the introduction of flexibility measures in itself can represent a useful tool to counteract the increase of youth unemployment in Europe.

Was the European Central Bank able to assure the relaunch of the European project after the weakening of the post-crisis period? To answer this question, this paper presents an empirical analysis connecting citizen trust in the European Union with a variable intended to be a measure of the monetary policy strategy of the European Central Bank, namely, the interest rate on government bonds extracted from the 1-year maturity yield curve. The dynamic panel technique, applied to nineteen Eurozone countries for the time span of 2004–2018, estimates the presence of a long-run common relationship between the variables despite allowing different short-run adjustment mechanisms. Results are revealed to be not univocal: the easy monetary policy strategy is associated for the whole period with a decline of trust, and therefore, despite its impressiveness, it was not sufficient to relaunch the European Union project. However, when considering the change in strategy of the post-2013 period, it seemed to have contributed to a slight inversion of the decline of trust. These results highlight the importance of non-conventional measures and call for further support from coordinated policy action as a response to the negative shock deriving from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the effects of flexibility in the labour market on workers’ monetary poverty in 15 European countries in the time span 2005–2016. We estimate how the labour market regulation index (LMRI) affects workers’ monetary poverty through two empirical exercises: in the first one, we use an autoregressive distributed lag model and, in the second one, the generalized method of moments model. The results suggest that greater flexibility of the labour market is positively correlated with greater monetary poverty among employed people. The result does not change significantly when introducing the effect of the economic crisis and the interaction effect between the economic crisis and the LMRI. Therefore, we conclude that the outcome should be considered to be noticeable whatever the macroeconomic conditions occurring in the labour market.Key words: Labour market, Flexibility, Poverty, Dynamic panel data.JEL: C20, I30, J50.

This article highlights the relationship between labor market deregulation and the number of workers living in absolute poverty in 15 countries of the European Union.

The institutional and policy features of Eurozone represent a field of special interest to analyse the process of integration. The aim of this study is to investigate on the existence of a trade-off between the compliance to fiscal rules and trust as a proxy of institutional legitimacy in Eurozone. At this scope, the relation between trust in the European Central Bank and structural adjustment, together with unemployment and inflation in 11 Eurozone countries from 1999 to 2013, is tested. The empirical results showed that a) discretionary policy measures have an opposite sign impact on trust; b) in peripheral countries, the structural adjustment is the main variable affecting trust in ECB; c) unemployment plays a key role; and d) deviation from the objective of 2% of inflation is not significant. These outcomes prove the existence of a trade-off between the fiscal rules commitments and the European institutional consolidation process. Key words: Trust, ECB, Fiscal policy, Eurozone.JEL: E02, E31, E63, D63. Pridržavanje fiskalnih pravila i poverenje u institucije Evrozone: slucaj Evropske centralne banke Institucionalna i politicka obeležja Evrozone predstavljaju oblast od posebnog interesa za analizu procesa integracije. Cilj ove studije je da istraži postojanje trade-off-a između pridržavanja fiskalnih pravila i poverenja kao vestacke promenljive za institucionalni legitimitet u Evrozoni. U tom smislu, ispitan je odnos između poverenja u Evropsku centralnu banku (ECB) i strukturnog prilagođavanja, zajedno sa nezaposlenoscu i inflacijom u 11 zemalja Evrozone od 1999. do 2013. godine. Empirijski rezultati su pokazali da: (i) mere diskrecione politike imaju uticaj suprotnog znaka na poverenje; (ii) u perifernim zemljama, strukturno prilagođavanje je osnovna varijabla koja utice na poverenje u ECB; (iii) nezaposlenost igra kljucnu ulogu; i (iv) odstupanje od cilja od 2% inflacije nije znacajno. Rezultati dokazuju postojanje trade-off-a između pridržavanja fiskalnih pravila i procesa evropske institucionalne konsolidacije. Kljucne reci: Poverenje, ECB, fiskalna politika, Evrozona.

Il tema della povertà minorile e lo studio delle sue determinanti è diventato - soprattutto nell'ultima decade - centrale nel dibattito economico e politico. Proprio per questo è importante dedicare grande attenzione a comprendere meglio il fenomeno sotto il profilo delle sue dimensioni e delle caratteristiche concrete che esso assume nel nostro paese. Lo scopo di questo lavoro è principalmente quello di analizzare prevalentemente i dati legati al fenomeno della povertà minorile nel nostro paese, sia a livello nazionale che di macro-area.

Over the decades, many scholars have tried to study the relationship between democracy and human development, even though the results are not unique. According to this context, and considering the political changes occurred in the early ‘90s in the former socialist countries, the aim of this paper is to evaluate – empirically - whether and to what extent, the level of democracy affected the level of HD in these countries. Using data on Polity II and HDI, we find evidence of a positive relationship between democracy and HD. The results are robust also when we checked for a set of control variables as growth rate, unemployment, the degree of openness trade and log population. Moreover, descriptive statistics shows that the impact of democracy on HD was higher effects on HD in the first fifteen years of democracy, after that, as these countries became consolidated democracies, this effect was less evident.

The aim of the paper is to evaluate, through panel data dynamic models, the effects of structural public balance adjustment on relative poverty in 16 Eurozone countries from 2005 till 2013. The estimates are conducted by using the mean group (MG), the pooled mean group (PMG) and the dynamic fixed effects (DFE) estimators. The first two yield estimates of the long-run coefficients without the implausible assumption of identical dynamics in each country allowing to detect a stable relationship even in presence of reduced explanatory variables. They all - through the error correction form - allow for considering the relation between the variables in their level and the dynamic of adjustment in the short-run. All the techniques generate outcomes supporting the conclusion that fiscal retrenchments increase relative poverty both in the short and in the long-run.

The aim of the paper is to evaluate the effects on growth of discretionary fiscal policy measures in selected Eurozone countries in the period ranging from 2001 to 2013. The analysis suggests a positive effect of discretionary fiscal policy measures on GDP and support the conclusion that structural public balance adjustments have negative effects on growth irrespective of macroeconomic conditions. These results show that, if the reduction of the structural balance has to be considered as an objective to be achieved per se, such a goal should not be pursued in times of deteriorating macroeconomic conditions.

This paper investigates the role of the fiscal authority in the case in which a negative shock hits the economic system. We analyze the several kinds of behavior that the fiscal authority can adopt during a crisis and show how the various approaches impact upon the effectiveness of fiscal policy. In general, there are two approaches: a) Adopt a neutral behavior or b) Adopt an active behavior in order to stabilize output volatility caused by a slump. Using a constrained minimization process it emerges that the mere use of a monetary policy is ineffective to counteract the crisis, with the risk of keeping the system in a situation in which aggregate demand falls below the potential output. In this context, an expansionary fiscal policy may be crucial to restore the output equilibrium.

According to some scholars, immigration can have a relevant role in the reduction of inequality. It has happened in the past and it may also happen in the future, as it is possible and desirable. However, migration in itself does not resolve definitely the issue of the inequalities and, moreover, in light of the recent studies on the effect of immigration, the exigency of additional in depth research on the impact of this phenomenon on regional disparities and income inequalities has become evident. The present paper faces these relevant issues, focusing on the regional impact of internal migration and attempting to demonstrate, with reference to the Italian case, how out-migration can increase income inequalities, thus hindering economic growth and exacerbating regional disparities, while immigration can reduce income inequalities and mitigate economic imbalances, according to the hypothesis of skilled immigration equalising, formulated in 2008 by Kahanec and Zimmermann.