LIBRI DI ALESSANDRO PETRETTO

After the Stability and Growth Pact suspension to face the Covid-19 emergency and subsequent financial crisis, a novel fiscal discipline must be designed for the Euro Area. In this short paper, we formally analyze and compare three budget rules and their efficacy in pursuing a reasonable public debt reduction target, explicitly envisaged by them. The rules we refer to are: (a) the structural adjustment toward a budget medium term objective, required by Fiscal Compact discipline; (b) the expenditure rule proposed by European Fiscal Board and (c) the Musgrave Golden rule. By a simple simulation exercise we argue that the rule proposed by EFB seems to be, for a country with a low rate of growth and a high level of public debt, preferable to the other two.

The article analyses the specific features of "spending review" procedures in medium-large Italian municipalities. The author recalls as the local public expenditures is oriented, more than in all other sectors of Public Administration, to directly enhance the welfare of citizens, and it has direct effects on potential growth of the local territory where the municipality is working. The work emphasizes the implications of spending review in terms of quantitative and qualitative levels of public service and in terms of investments on local infrastructures maintenance. It presents the case of Florence municipality that has applied spending review procedures in 2012 and 2013. Finally, it deals with the perspectives for these procedures by the public accountancy reform recently carried on in Italy.

The aim of this paper is to underline the theoretical foundations of the Report "Stato dei lavori della Commissione per lo studio della riforma tributaria" (hereafter CSRT, 1964) with reference to the second objective of the reform itself, i.e. to realize an "equalizing, efficient and transparent progressivity of the Italian tax system". CSRT (1964), as a White Paper directed to the Treasury, could not dwell on designing the theoretical foundations of the proposals, but, at the end, these ones stand out. In looking at them, the author finds a sort of ideal theoretical "bridge" between the main scholars of Italian tradition of public finance, Haig and Simons, Richard Musgrave and James Mirrlees. In any case, the CSRT (1964) fiscal proposals are characterized by a great pragmatism and concreteness within the specific Italian institutional setting.

The funding of National Health Service in Italy follows a top-down two stages decentralized system, according to which the central Government feeds the National health-fund with specific taxes and distributes it among Regions. Further, each Region funds the so called Essential levels of Assistance (LEA) expenditures of its local health authorities (Aziendesanitarie locali, ASL). This mechanism pursues equity aims, but it can be, as well, efficiency enhancing if based on standardized quantities, hence on a fixed-price type transfer, i.e. established ex-ante independently of actual expenditures and costs. This note provides a technical analysis of possible allocation criteria with this purpose, and, at the same time, coherent with the procedure established by D.L. 68/2011. The aim is at establishing feasible analytical procedures for combining both equity and cost-efficiency concerns in defining the distribution formula. The idea is to introduce in the latter some incentive elements, even if only as signals, for boosting Regions to control unitary costs of health-care services, besides to produce and provide adequate levels of them.

I risultati di una ricerca del CREI dell’Università Roma Tre sulla “Legge di Stabilità e la politica economica in Italia”, che intende fornire elementi di riflessioni utili per lo sviluppo del Paese. Anche nella Legge di Stabilità per il 2013, difatti, le semplificazioni, le liberalizzazioni, le privatizzazioni, una minore tassazione del lavoro, una riforma delle relazioni finanziarie intergovernative, l’abbandono dell’universalismo delle prestazioni, sembrano rimasti sullo sfondo.

La rilevanza dei temi dell’organizzazione e della gestione dei sistemi tributari, e degli effetti delle imposte sugli incentivi e sulla crescita economica, hanno indotto la Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica a dedicare la sua XX riunione scientifica all’Economia della tassazione – la ricerca sui modelli impositivi, sulle ragioni, le funzioni e gli effetti dei tributi. Questa raccolta offre una selezione di contributi, rappresentativa di alcuni dei filoni di studio oggi più importanti e fecondi.

Il Rapporto sulla finanza locale 2008 affronta una questione di grande portata: l’approvazione da parte del Governo di un Disegno di legge delega per l’attuazione dell’art. 119 della Costituzione, la norma che ha introdotto nell’ordinamento italiano il federalismo fiscale. Una svolta legislativa da tempo attesa per la definizione di un nuovo assetto dei rapporti finanziari tra Stato, Regioni ed Enti locali, nella prospettiva di un maggior decentramento.

L’Economia del Capitale Umano ha recentemente conosciuto notevoli sviluppi in relazione sia ai suoi effetti sull’accumulazione delle conoscenze e sulla crescita economica, sia ai suoi effetti sulla equità sociale. La Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica ha dedicato la XIX Riunione scientifica a un esame dettagliato di tutti gli aspetti salienti in materia. Il volume fornisce uno spaccato dei risultati del Convegno tenutosi a Pavia nel 2007, raccogliendo alcuni emblematici contributi.

Il volume raccoglie alcuni dei lavori presentati alla riunione annuale del 2006 della Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica sul tema dei servizi pubblici. Gli studi raccolti forniscono una panoramica articolata dei diversi temi sul tappeto, attraverso l’analisi delle tematiche generali – i problemi della liberalizzazione e della privatizzazione, la definizione dei rapporti pubblico-privato e i profili di articolazione territoriale dei servizi pubblici – e delle tematiche specifiche collegate ai diversi settori: energia, servizi idrici, mobilità e trasporti.

The recent reform of local public services resulted in the establishment of an articulated structure based on separation of public functions. The article summarized herewith provides with economic tools to understand and operate within this new structure. Such reform is based on the general principle of the «separation of institutional duties», concerning ways of separating different functions: co-ordination and planning on one hand and service management on the other. The above reform also determines a vertically articulated diversification of activities based on technological criteria such as property of infrastructures, management of infrastructures and utility supply. The article demonstrates how such «technological separation» appears to be a convenient tool in achieving a more efficient «separation of institutional duties». In conclusion, the article underlines the difficulties in applying the principle of «technological separation » in several local public utilities.

In this paper we discuss the interaction between optimal linear income taxation and education policy. Education is characterised as a mixed investment good: it has both private and public components and affects utility only indirectly via the wage rate. First, we show that, in order to boost the purchase of marketed education - thereby enjoying a larger public good effect and a stronger investment effect - the tax system loses progressivity with respect to the standard case. Second, we derive a sufficient condition for public provision of education, or alternatively, for price subsidisation, to be welfare-improving. We argue that the characterisation of education as an investment good generating positive esternalities does not make obvious that it should be object of a dedicated policy; indeed, it might suggest that the purchase of marketed education is supported by the income tax schedule alone. We also briefly spell out some implications of our analysis for the negative income tax schemes. JEL Classification: H42, I28