Current teaching

2018-present

Public Finance

Lecturer

Universitat de Barcelona, Department of Economics

2018-present

Hisenda Pública (Public Finance)

Lecturer

Universitat de Barcelona, Department of Economics

2020-present

Fonaments de la Fiscalitat (Principles of Taxation)

Lecturer

Universitat de Barcelona, Department of Economics

Past teaching

2017-2018

EC338 - Econometrics 2

Lecturer

University of Warwick, Department of Economics

2017-2018

EC9760 - Econometrics, WBS

Teaching Assistant

Warwick Business School

2017-2018

EC9A3 – Advanced Econometric Theory

Teaching Assistant

University of Warwick, Department of Economics

2015-2017

EC902/EC907 - Econometrics A (MSc)

Teaching Assistant

University of Warwick, Department of Economics

2013-2018

EC226 - Econometrics 1

Teaching Assistant, Senior Tutor

University of Warwick, Department of Economics

2016-2017

Introduction to statistics and Stata

Teaching Assistant

Warwick Business School

2014-2016

Econometrics

Teaching Assistant

Warwick Economics Summer School

Office hours:

Office hours: to book an appointment, please send me an email to m.gamalerio@ub.edu

Office: 6103, Torre 6, Universitat de Barcelona, Facultat d’Economia i Empresa, c/ John M. Keynes 1-11, 08034, Barcelona

I am an applied economist, working on topics in the areas of political economy, public economics, economics of migration and applied econometrics. I am currently working as postdoctoral research fellow at the UB School of Economics and the Institut d’Economia de Barcelona (IEB), University of Barcelona.

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matteo.gamalerio

m.gamalerio@ub.edu

matteo.gamalerio@gmail.com

IEB page

http://ieb.ub.edu/en/researcher/gamalerio-matteo/

Twitter

@matteogamalerio

Song of the month

Maria del Mar Bonet - Alenar

published papers

Feb 2020

Manager or professional politician? Local fiscal autonomy and the skills of elected officials. Regional Science and Urban Economics, Volume 83, July 2020.

With

M. Bordignon and G. Turati

media coverage

LINKS

We provide a theoretical and empirical assessment of why local fiscal autonomy can affect the skills of elected officials in sub-national governments. We first develop a model of politics with different types of politicians and show that -- following a tax decentralization reform increasing local fiscal autonomy -- politicians with high administrative skills are elected in rich jurisdictions while politicians with high political skills are elected in poor ones. As a result, voter welfare increases only, or mainly, in rich jurisdictions. We then look for empirical support to these predictions by exploiting the decentralization reforms affecting Italian municipalities in the '90s. These reforms introduced both the direct election of the mayor and new autonomous tax tools for municipalities characterized by large differences in their tax bases. Our estimates -- robust to several alternative stories -- emphasize a differential change in elected officials at the municipal level between rich and poor jurisdictions. These findings provide a new explanation for the observed poor performance of local governments largely financed by grants.

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Jan 2020

Do national political parties matter? Evidence from Italian municipalities. European Journal of Political Economy, Volume 63, June 2020.

LINKS

EJPE

SSRN

Recently several countries have experienced a drop in popularity of national political parties, accompanied by the success of independent movements (e.g. “Civic Lists” in Italy). I exploit the success of “Civic Lists” in Italian municipalities and use them as a comparison group for party-affiliated politicians, to test whether national parties affect fiscal discipline. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD), I show that party-affiliated mayors are more fiscally responsible: they run lower deficits, accumulate less debt and reduce expenditures. The effect is significant only for municipalities not constrained by fiscal rules. This suggests that national parties act as a substitute for fiscal rules in constraining politicians. Besides, I provide evidence that the discipline of party-affiliated politicians is linked to better career prospects: party-affiliated mayors have a higher probability of being re-elected and better chances of being promoted to higher levels of government. Alternative stories find less support in the data.

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working papers

Apr 2021

The Political Economy of Open Borders. Theory and Evidence on the role of Electoral Rules [submitted]

with

M. Morelli and M. Negri

Institutions matter for the political choice of policies. We study, theoretically and empirically, how different electoral systems affect the immigration policy of a country or city, zooming on the labor market as the main source of heterogeneous economic preferences on immigration. The general result is that a polity is more open to immigration the less likely it is that policymaking can be supported by a plurality of voters who do not constitute the absolute majority. There is evidence for this result at all levels in terms of correlations, and we establish causality via regression discontinuity design for the Italian case.

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Dec 2020

Dismantling the “Jungle”: Migrant Relocation and Extreme Voting in France [submitted]

with

P. Vertier and M. Viskanic

Media coverage

links

SSRN, IPL working paper series

Large migrant inflows have spurred anti-immigrant sentiment, but can small inflows have a different impact? We exploit the redistribution of migrants after the dismantling of the ``Calais Jungle" in France to study the impact of the exposure to few migrants. Using instrumental variables, we find that in the presence of a migrant center (CAO), the growth rate of vote shares for the main far-right party (Front National (FN), our proxy for anti-immigrant sentiment) between 2012 and 2017 is reduced by about 11.9 percentage points. Given that FN vote shares increased by 20\% on average between 2012 and 2017, this estimation suggests that the growth rate of FN votes in municipalities with a CAO was only 40\% compared to the increase in municipalities without a CAO (which corresponds to a 3.9 percentage points lower increase). These effects, which crucially depends on the inflow's size, point towards the contact hypothesis (Allport 1954).

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Aug 2020

Is this the real life or just fantasy? Refugee reception, extreme-right voting, and broadband internet [new version coming soon]

with

M. Luca, M. Viskanic and A. Romarri

Media coverage

LINKS

How does the reception of refugees affect the electoral performance of extreme-right parties? Does the effect change across areas with heterogeneous access to broadband internet? Using data on Italian refugee centers and an instrumental variable approach based on pre-existing group accommodation buildings, we show that hosting refugees leads to a decrease in extreme-right parties' vote shares. We estimate that municipalities that opened a refugee center between the 2013 and the 2018 national elections experienced a change in the votes shares of extreme-right parties approximately 7 percentage points lower than municipalities that did not open a refugee center. The negative effect is stronger for municipalities that opened smaller refugee centers and with lower access to broadband internet.

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Jun 2020

Fiscal rules and the selection of politicians: evidence from Italian municipalities [new version coming soon]

with

F. Trombetta

AWARD

Winner of the EEA Young Economist Award at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the European Economic Association – Motivation letter here

Despite the wide adoption, there is little evidence on the consequences of fiscal rules on the quality of candidates running for office. We build a simple model of career-concerned politicians with endogenous entry into politics. We show that fiscal rules negatively affect the share of high education politicians willing to run for office when the share of politicians biased in favor of public spending is sufficiently low. We test the predictions of the model using data from Italian municipalities and a difference-in-discontinuity design. Consistent with the model, the empirical analysis shows that fiscal rules negatively affect politicians' education levels and that this happens precisely in municipalities with a lower pre-existing deficit. These results highlight a new trade-off to fiscal rules. Reducing policymaking discretion may alleviate inter-jurisdictional externalities and pork-barrel spending. However, it may also lower the political class's quality.

Apr 2019

Not welcome anymore: the effect of electoral incentives on the reception of refugees [new version coming soon]

media coverage

lavoce.info

LINKS

SSRN

Do electoral incentives affect immigration policies? I study this question in the setting of Italian municipalities making decisions about the reception of refugees. The localized control of the reception policy, combined with the exogenous timing of policy decisions and staggered elections, enables me to study the effect of electoral incentives on the reception of refugees. Although municipalities receive fiscal grants for hosting refugees, I find that the probability of opening a reception centre is 24 per cent lower for municipalities in the final year of the electoral term (i.e. just before new elections), compared to municipalities in other years of the term. The results suggest that electoral incentives may induce politicians to make decisions that are potentially detrimental from an economic perspective.

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Dec 2019

Stop invasion! The electoral tipping point in anti-immigrant voting [new version coming soon]

with

M. Bordignon, E. Slerca and G. Turati

LINKS

SSRN

Why do anti-immigrant political parties have more success in areas that host fewer immigrants? Using regression discontinuity design, structural breaks search methods and data from a sample of Italian municipalities, we show that the relationship between the vote shares of anti-immigrant parties and the share of immigrants follows a U-shaped curve, which exhibits a tipping-like behavior around a share of immigrants equal to 3.35 %. We estimate that the vote share of the main Italian anti-immigrant party (Lega Nord) is approximately 6 % points higher for municipalities below the threshold. Using data on local labor market characteristics and on the incomes of natives and immigrants, we provide evidence which points at the competition in the local labor market between natives and immigrants as the more plausible explanation for the electoral success of anti-immigrant parties in areas with low shares of immigrants. Alternative stories find less support in the data.

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