Abstract: I investigate the long-term effects of theocracy on political preferences and religiosity, exploiting a river that separated the theocratic Papal States from secular states for three centuries. To disentangle the effect of theocracy from other confounders, I propose a novel extension to geographic regression discontinuity designs, the Difference-in-Geographic Discontinuities (DIG). While religiosity and political preferences descriptively differ discontinuously at the river, the causal effect of theocracy is null. Using existing and novel datasets spanning eight centuries, I suggest that pre-existing inheritance norms affected religiosity and political preferences by increasing collectivism and social capital, thereby neutralizing the impact of theocratic institutions.

Abstract: We investigate tailoring information framing to recipients’ backgrounds to boost vaccination uptakes. 7616 Swedish mothers stratified by education and immigration background received a leaflet on their children's upcoming HPV vaccination opportunity. The leaflet’s framing was randomized between emotional and scientific, with control units receiving an uninformative announcement. Mothers with compulsory schooling exposed to scientific framing increased their uptake by 5.7 percentage points (7.25%). The effect was driven by attentive readers with little previous HPV knowledge. Emotional framing decreased uptake by 4.8 percentage points (5.41%) among high school-educated mothers who read superficially and were more hesitant at baseline.

Abstract: Creativity and grit are widely recognized as vital components for the success and prosperity of individuals, even more so for younger people who will have to deal with the complex challenges connected to the digital era. Yet, whether these skills can be learnt or are innate traits is still subject to debate, which is further complicated by the difficulty of defining and, in turn, assessing these concepts. In this study, we challenge the idea that creativity and grit cannot be learnt and show that creative pedagogy activities, such as those offered by FabLabs, are powerful tools to enhance these non-cognitive skills. We conduct a pilot randomized controlled trial in which 710 students from five Italian high schools are randomly assigned to creative STEM courses. The courses are delivered by FabLabs, small-scale workshops that offer access to tools for digital fabrication and employ a hands-on pedagogical approach expected to impact students' creativity and grit positively. Assignment to the courses is at the class level: only students in classes randomly selected to join the Fablab activities can participate, and they may decide whether to enrol or not on a voluntary basis. We address noncompliance by adopting an instrumental variable approach. We use two modalities to measure creativity: a self-assessment through the Short Scale of Creative Self and an assessment made by an independent expert using an index of creativity developed by the authors. While the effect on self-assessed creativity is not significant, results show that the external, independent assessment of students' creativity can capture a significant effect of Fablabs' courses. It also emerges that FabLab activities have a positive significant effect on students' grit, measured through the Duckworth scale. The encouraging results obtained for a relatively small sample of students should prompt a replication of the experiment on a broader scale.  

Abstract: We investigate the effect of executive female representation in local governments on the provision of different social services, in the context of Italy. While Italy is a high-income country, many families still rely on women to take care of children, the elderly, and family members in need of assistance. We exploit a 2014 reform that mandated 40% gender quotas in the executive committees of municipalities with more than 3000 inhabitants. To account for confounding policies introduced at the same cutoff, we employ a difference-in-discontinuities empirical strategy with additional identifying assumptions. We find that while the policy was effective in increasing female representation, it did not have an impact on any social services expenditures.