This paper investigates the economic and non‐economic determinants of interregional migration for unskilled and skilled migrants in Italy for the period 1985–2006. In addition to the traditional variables of the Harris and Todaro model, we consider the impact of house prices, carbon dioxide emission and crime. Using a dynamic two‐step panel generalized method of moments, the traditional model omits some important variables and may not be representative of migration flow. Our analysis confirms that for different periods we have to take into account different determinants. Moreover, the externalities are significant, indicating the importance of including broader quality of life as explanatory variables.
This paper investigates the causality dynamics between happiness and per capita GDP growth and the impact of the recent financial crisis using a VAR-GARCH model for 10 European EMU countries divided in peripheral and non-peripheral members. The rationale of the analysis is to look at the two different dimensions (mean and variance) of economic growth and happiness within a time-series framework. The results show that GDP growth has significant positive effects on happiness in all countries considered, particularly in the PIIGS countries; happiness volatility is responsive to economic uncertainty. The size of this effect is bigger following the most recent crisis period, especially for the PIIGS countries. Our findings confirm the important role played by economic growth in determining population happiness and, most importantly, provides new evidence on the existence of causality linkages between economic uncertainty and happiness volatility.
Purpose
Making citizens able to monitor and evaluate public spending activities is a fundamental issue in public financial management literature. The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether fiscal transparency, measured by the Open Budget Index, has an effect on public spending performance, measured by the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report data.
Design/methodology/approach
Research methods rely on random-effects panel regression models on a country-level panel data set of 82 world countries observed in the 2008–2015 time interval.
Findings
Results show that the potential positive effects of fiscal transparency are mediated by the level of democracy of the country. In detail, in democratic countries, a higher degree of disclosure of fiscal information is correlated with a higher efficiency of government spending while, in non-democratic countries, fiscal transparency does not seem to provide any effect.
Social implications
The results suggest that fiscal transparency can be a powerful device where politicians can be held accountable for their actions, while it could fail to provide positive results where a strong and effective vertical accountability is missing.
Originality/value
The novelty of the paper is twofold. First, it provides new additional evidence about the positive effect that fiscal transparency has on public spending efficiency by advancing previous research on this topic (Porumbescu, 2017; Montes et al., 2019). Second, the paper investigates conceptually and empirically how the positive effect on public spending efficiency determined by fiscal transparency depends on the degree of democracy present in the institutional environment in which fiscal information disclosure is implemented.
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