Gianluca Monturano

The economic impact of protected areas (PAs) on local development remains a debated topic in regional economics, particularly in peripheral regions facing demographic and economic decline. While protected areas provide essential ecological benefits, their effects on local economies remain debated, with concerns about land-use restrictions potentially limiting economic opportunities alongside potential gains from tourism and ecosystem services. This study investigates the causal effect of PAs on per capita income in Italian municipalities classified as inner areas under the National Strategy for Inner Areas. We exploit variation in the share of municipal land covered by protected areas using a Difference-in-differences approach with continuous treatment in a dose-response framework. The results show a robust, positive, and statistically significant relationship between PAs and local economic growth. The expansion of protected areas is associated with increased per capita income, suggesting that environmental protection contributes to development in Italy’s marginalized inner regions.

This paper investigates the consequences of the introduction of Italy’s 2008 flat–rate tax regime for self-employed earning less than 30 thousand Euros on tax compliance, combining counterfactual, spatial and temporal modeling. Using data from the Labour Force Survey on regional self–employment and administrative data on taxable income, we implement a Difference-in-Differences design to estimate the behavioral responses of self–employed taxpayers at the provincial level. To account for spatial and temporal dependence, we extend the standard DiD specifications with hierarchical spatio–temporal clustering. Results reveal the ambiguous consequences of the reform. On the one hand, it has encouraged individuals to underreport earnings in order to remain below the 30 thousand Euro threshold. On the other hand, it has favored the tax compliance of new self-employed workers, as our findings reveal a negative relationship between the proportion of self-employed individuals and tax evasion. We also observe unintended consequences of the reform in terms of heterogeneous spatial dynamics. In particular, low-income regions have been especially affected by the proportional rate regime, whereas limited evidence of behavioral adjustment has emerged in high-income areas. The effectiveness of the analysed policy is also affected by the traditional north–south divide.

Fuel price fluctuations affect not only the energy sector but also the entire macroeconomic system. Over the past decade, the Italian fuel sector has faced unprecedented events, most notably the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russia–Ukraine war, and the introduction of the regional average price policy, which have altered both demand conditions and competitive mechanisms. These shocks have generated heterogeneous effects across Italian provinces, reflecting underlying differences in mobility patterns and market structure. Using high-frequency data covering 2016–2024, this work provides new evidence on how these shocks have affected the Italian fuel market. Combining structural break tests with a Local Projection framework and a VAR-X counterfactual approach, we show that the three events generated distinct and time-varying adjustments in gasoline and diesel prices. The findings highlight that the evolution of fuel prices in Italy depends less on general market trends than on the way shocks interact with local market conditions and institutional frameworks. Fully assessing the impact of future regulatory or geopolitical events requires accounting for these structural discontinuities and for the spatial heterogeneity that characterizes the Italian fuel market.

This article investigates the effect of government income support programs on voter behavior in contexts characterized by territorial disparities, using Italian Citizenship Income initiative as a case study. By leveraging a unique dataset that merges administrative records of program beneficiaries with electoral outcomes at the municipal level, we employ a difference-in-differences approach to exploit regional variations in program uptake. Our findings indicate that this program substantially increases electoral support for the issue owner party in economically disadvantaged areas while reducing it in more affluent regions. These results shed light on the importance of territorial disparities and contextual factors in shaping the political consequences of policy interventions.