Essays on worker mobility, firm organisation and the political economics of elections

Sforza, Alessandro (2018) Essays on worker mobility, firm organisation and the political economics of elections. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

This thesis looks at different aspects of workers mobility, firms organization and the political economy of elections. In the first chapter, I analyse—both theoretically and empirically—the effect of an exogenous credit supply shock to the organization of the firm. The understanding of these mechanisms is fundamental to rationalize the real economic consequences of an aggregate negative shock at the micro level and to understand how the organization of the firm can be the target of specific policies that can attenuate the impact of capital shortage on the real economy. The second chapter considers knowledge as a key determinant to the competitiveness and the success of a firm. I start from the idea that firms and their managers acquire knowledge via a variety of different channels, which are often difficult to track down and quantify. By matching employer-employee data with trade data at the firm level-which is itself a novelty in the trade literature the chapter sheds light on the nexus between the export experience acquired by managers in previous firms and their current firm performance. The third chapter embeds labor mobility in multi-country dynamic version of an Eaton and Kortum framework to explain how migration, together with trade, affects the welfare of natives and migrants in different regions in Europe. In the last chapter, I look at the effect of higher turnout on political outcomes. I exploit the exogenous variation in weather conditions on the day of elections and the geography of a country—Italy—to instrument for turnout. Results of the instrumental variable combined with a first difference model explain how a larger political participation affects the electoral outcome.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2018 Alessandro Sforza
Library of Congress subject classification:	H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
Sets:	Departments > Geography and Environment
Supervisor:	Overman, Henry G.
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/3718

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