🚨 Here we go on @RegionalStudies ! This new article delves into a topic I’ve been passionate about since the start of my academic journey: the matter of inner areas in Italy. https://t.co/cEmMUTp8uq

Permanent open-access link here:

Strengthening civic engagement and local political participation may provide the foundation for economic and social renewal in smaller territories—areas that are often labeled as politically disengaged, detached from national dynamics.

🔎 Key takeaway: municipal split can serve as a mechanism for small, often underrepresented communities to have their voices heard within a newly-established, more suited administrative framework.

While the impact is still visible in national elections, it is less pronounced, as national political dynamics often extend beyond purely local contexts.

Our findings reveal that in the newly formed municipalities the splits have a strong, positive and persistent effect over time on attachment to local polity, expressed in terms of voter turnout.

🗳 In this study, @augusto_cerqua and I evaluate the long-term electoral effects of municipal splits that occurred in five municipalities in the Italian region of Puglia in the mid-1970s.

However, municipal fragmentation—the opposite process—remains largely unexplored, particularly in terms of its economic and electoral consequences.

📢 New paper out in the @JRS83202671 ! Under parliamentary and institutional push, municipal mergers and consolidations have taken center stage in Italy's territorial administrative reforms over the past 15 years.

New Issue Alert 🚨 Check out our March 2025 issue (Volume 72) We are grateful to all authors for choosing our SCED journal👌 OPEN & FULL access articles ⬇️ https://t.co/l42m5rW360 @dimatteo__d | @mr_ditommaso | @Elena_Prodi | @BarbieriElisa #sced #Economics #Finance

🔎 Key takeaway: potential funding programs for tourism development in small municipalities leveraging on one or more labels should first assess whether the necessary conditions are in place to translate financial support into real tourism efficiency gains.

Findings indicate that the positive effects are rather limited and only emerge in municipalities with a well-established cultural tourism vocation. On the other hand, when the last is absent or weak, the effects can even turn negative for the municipalities exhibiting the label.

Our research followed a two-step approach: first, we measured municipal-level tourism efficiency using a two-stage DEA method. Then, we applied an RDD framework, leveraging a demographic threshold to distinguish eligible municipalities.

🚀 Now out in the Journal of Cultural Economics! Joint with @antonella_ferra , we evaluated the impact of two local authenticity label initiatives in Italy, designed to enhance tourism in small municipalities. https://t.co/4YE5fN73Wb

However, the study also raises an important concern: the mechanisms driving this effect seem to rely predominantly on non-structural interventions, which could pose challenges for long-term sustainability.

Using a counterfactual policy evaluation approach, the findings reveal that SNAI has positively contributed to improving the tourism performance of the municipalities involved.

Nearly a decade after the formal launch of the National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI), this study sheds fresh light on the Strategy’s impacts on one of the most recurring axes in its funded projects: tourism.

NEW in SCED 📒 Structural change and its discontents Great research by: Marco Rodolfo Di TOMMASO (@mr_ditommaso), Elena PRODI (@Elena_Prodi), Dante Di MATTEO (@dimatteo__d), Elisa BARBIERI (@BarbieriElisa) FULL text access 🔽 https://t.co/xVIFpC3VgA #sced #Economics

Key implication suggests that this trajectory, if not reversed, can undermine the sustainability of structural change in the long run Paper available at the following permanent link:

We exploit the potential of a rich dataset on the labour market structure in Italy and find that the loss of stable, quality jobs fuels support for anti-elite movements.