The role of civic capital on vaccination.

Can civic-minded individuals fight against a pandemic? In this paper, we show that civic capital plays an important role when assessing the level of compliance with COVID-19 vaccination recommendations. Analyzing data on a large sample of municipalities from the Italian region of Lombardy, we show that the share of vaccinated individuals is significantly higher in municipalities with higher pre-determined levels of civic capital. These findings are robust to the possibility of spatial spillovers across neighboring municipalities.

Using newspaper obituaries to "nowcast" daily mortality: Evidence from the Italian COVID-19 hot-spots.

Real-time tracking of epidemic helps governments and health authorities make timely data-driven decisions. Official mortality data, whenever reliable and available, is usually published with a substantial delay. We report results of using newspapers obituaries to "nowcast" the mortality levels observed in Italy during the COVID-19 outbreak between February 24, 2020 and April 15, 2020.

Estimating the severity of COVID-19: Evidence from the Italian epicenter.

We provide results on the level of COVID-19 excess mortality in the Italian region of Lombardy and in the province of Bergamo using official and original data sources. Since February 2020 Lombardy and in particular the province of Bergamo have been severely hit by the novel COVID-19 infectious disease. Combining official statistics, retrospective data and original data (i.

Thank you for not smoking: evidence from the Italian smoking ban.

By 2030, tobacco is expected to be the cause of about 10 million deaths per year worldwide. In Italy tobacco smoking is still a pervasive and relevant phenomenon. Using data from a national health survey, we investigate how individuals react to the introduction of a public smoking ban in Italy.