Economic policy evaluation: environment and refugee centers
Creators: name: Caruso, Matteo
Publisher: name: Lancaster University
Year: 2024

description: In a world that is growing faster and unexpectedly, the role of national
 and local
 
 governments in addressing social issues becomes much more relevant. Thanks
 to the availability of more advanced and detailed data, economists are
 nowadays more able to analyse and assess the outcomes of specific
 policies, both on firms and individuals. Through the use of new and
 mainstream advanced econometric methods, it is possible to dig deeper into
 unexplored issues and provide guidance for the improvement and
 implementation of those policies. This work aims to address two
 economically and socially relevant topics: the protection of the
 environment in the United States and the management of the refugee crisis
 in Italy.
 
 
 In the first chapter, I explore the effects on high-skilled labour of a
 change in emission standards for cars sold in the United States. Corporate
 Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards establish the average level of miles
 per gallon (mpg) for each automaker’s fleet of vehicles sold on the
 market. They have been in place since the 1970s but they have remained
 stable for many years. In 2010, the Obama Administration announced a new
 relevant variation of those standards for new models starting in 2012.
 Previous literature has explored the impact of those and similar
 regulations on firms’ innovation and productivity. In these works, the
 main outcome variables are often patents or R&amp;D expenditure. I add
 to this strand of research by analysing the impact of these standards on
 suppliers’ labour force. Since innovation requires a relevant amount of
 human capital, I look at technical personnel such as engineers and
 scientists to explore how the industry changed its workforce composition
 to implement research and development investments and meet the new
 criteria. I show how the industry supplying internal combustion engines
 (ICE) displayed a significant increase in the number of mechanical
 engineers compared to other control units. The main tasks of mechanical
 engineers are strictly related to the design and development of new ICEs.
 On the other hand, the same analysis does not show
 
 a similar effect for the industry supplying electric vehicle engines
 (EVE). These
 
 conclusions provide evidence of how the industry responded to the new
 regulation through an incremental innovation rather than a radical one.
 These results are corroborated by the low number of new pure EVs sold in
 the United States compared to standard petrol-based or hybrid models. My
 analysis provides new evidence of the impact that these new standards had
 not only on automotive innovation but also on the composition of its
 workforce.
 
 
 For my second chapter, I study the impact of refugee centres in Italy on
 municipalities’ public spending. Since the beginning of the century, the
 problem of refugees fleeing from wars and persecution has been
 particularly relevant to Italy given its strategic position in the
 Mediterranean Sea. Both local and central governments have tried to
 address this issue through different types of projects to host and manage
 this relevant inflow. Many projects were initially informal and managed by
 the single Italian municipalities, until the central government decided in
 2005 to institutionalise them with the Protection of Asylum Seekers and
 Refugee System (SPRAR). Through this system, municipalities could decide
 to host a refugee centre with the financial help of the Ministry of the
 Interior, financing up to 80% of the cost. SPRAR centres are small in size
 and provide language courses, job orientation, and legal advice to the
 hosted refugees. They are managed by local non-governmental organisations
 (NGOs) and are supervised by the municipality itself. The Arab Spring
 crisis in 2011 exacerbated the refugee crisis and forced the central
 government in 2014 to set up many new Extraordinary Emergency Centres
 (CAS). These centres are instead assigned by the government directly to
 private actors or NGOs and they do not involve the municipality’s
 participation. Municipalities have no saying on where
 
 the prefecture (local representation of the central government) decides to
 establish the centre. CAS centres are not required to provide any type of
 course or formation for the refugee. Using municipality’s balance sheets,
 I study the impact that these two type of centres have on municipalities’
 current spending. I restrict the analysis to municipalities with less than
 5000 residents. Municipalities with SPRAR centres show an increase in
 social spending due to the presence of the centre and other activities
 related to culture. Even when controlling for revenues from the central
 government, this increase is statistically significant. This may suggest
 that the spending for the SPRAR centre has a non-negligible impact on
 municipalities’ own financial resources. Most of this spending comes in
 the form of transfers to families, firms, and local associations. This
 hypothesis is supported by the increase in foreign population (especially
 from North Africa) for municipalities with SPRAR. This is mainly due to
 SPRAR projects requiring refugees to set up their residency into
 
 the municipality. There is no similar increase for municipalities’ with
 CAS centres, where refugees are not required to acquire any residency
 status. These results shed some light over the actual impact that refugee
 centres have on local finances and communities.
 
 
 For the third chapter, I extend the previous analysis on refugee centres
 analysing
 
 what impact they might have on local politics. More precisely, in a this
 joint work with Dr. Giuseppe Migali, I study whether the opening of the
 refugee centre affects the current mayor’s chances of winning a second
 term. Focusing on two types of centers—the System for the Protection of
 Asylum Seekers and Refugees (SAI) and the Extraordinary Reception Centers
 (CAS)— we analyse how these facilities impact voter behavior, especially
 in light of the integration services provided by SAI centers and the more
 temporary role of CAS centers. The main results suggest that SAI centers,
 which promote integration, are positively associated with mayors’
 reelection prospects in regions with high social capital, particularly in
 Northern Italy. CAS centers, in contrast, are found to have minimal impact
 on re-election chances, except in certain areas where they may slightly
 increase support for right-wing parties. We also provide evidence of
 possible bias in the location of this second type of centres due to
 political strategic behaviour of central governments.