Roberto Ricciuti

Taxation and Political Institutions

In a recent paper, “How do political institutions affect fiscal capacity? Explaining taxation in developing economies”, soon to be published in the Journal of Institutional Economics, Roberto Ricciuti, along with A. Savoia and K. Sen, have determined that stronger constraints on the executive foster the accountability and transparency of tax systems, but they do not find robust evidence that improves their ability to extract revenues; therefore rising revenues from a broad tax base hinges on the type of political institutions and the type of state-society relations they foster.

While visiting CESifo, Mr Ricciutis will work on the determinants of voting behaviour of Italian MPs (personal, political and constituency characteristics) in the first parliaments after unification in 1861 when the fiscal capacity of the new state was established.

Roberto Ricciuti is Associate Professor of Economics Policy at the University of Verona and works on several issues in political economy (mainly institutions, democracy and conflict). He is the Director of the PhD Programme in Economics and Management at the University of Verona from 2015, a CESifo Research Network Fellow and Visiting Professorial Fellow at the Global Development Institute (University of Manchester) since 2014.

Mr Ricciuti received his PhD in Economics from the University of Siena and an MSc in Economics from the University of Exeter. He taught at Royal Holloway University of London and at the University of Florence, and was a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy and a member of the Scientific Committee of the Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice. Roberto Ricciuti was awarded the NEPS Medal for the best paper in peace economics published in 2017.