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We compare the intergovernmental health system responses to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy and Spain, two countries where healthcare is managed at the regional level and the impact of the first wave was highly localized. However, whereas in Italy the regional government allowed for a passively accepted central level of coordination without restricting autonomy (“descentralised coordinantion”), in Spain, the healthcare system was de facto centralized under a “single command” (“hierarchical centralization”). We argue that the latter strategy crowded out incentives for information sharing, experimentation and regional participation in decision-making. This article documents evidence of important differences in health outcomes (infected cases and deaths) and outputs (regular and emergency hospital admissions) between the two countries, both at the national and regional levels. We then discuss several potential mechanisms to account for these differences. We find that given the strong localized impact of the pandemic, allowing more autonomy in Italy (compared to centralized governance in Spain) can explain some cross-country differences in outcomes and outputs.

We compare health system responses to the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic in Italy and Spain. In both countries, healthcare is managed at the regional level, but the central government behaved differently in the uncertainty surrounding the first wave, leaving more autonomy to regional governments in Italy than in Spain. Upon documenting national and regional health system responses, we show evidence of a significant gap in the number of infected cases, alongside regular and emergency hospital admissions, and mortality in the two countries, both at the national and at the regional level. We then discuss several potential mechanisms, such as policy stringency, the localization of the pandemic and mobility restrictions, measurement error, and especially the regional autonomy, enjoyed by Italian regions but not by Spanish regional governments amidst a state of alarm in both countries. We find that, given the strong localized effect of the pandemic, allowing more autonomy, and fostering experimentation and local solutions explains the gap between Italy and Spain in the first wave of the pandemic.

Does removing the constraints of time and place of work increase the utility of workers and firms? We design a randomized experiment on a sample of workers in a large Italian company: workers are randomly divided into a treated group that engages in flexible space and time job (which we call "smart-working") one day per week for 9 months and a control group that continues to work traditionally. By comparing the treated and control workers, we find causal evidence that the flexibility of smart-working increases the productivity of workers and improves their well-being and work-life balance. We also observe that the effects are stronger for women and that there are no significant spillover effects within workers of a team.

We explore the role of financial and pension information in increasing women's knowledge and awareness of their future pension status, and consequently, in reducing the gender pension gap. A representative sample of 1249 Italian working women were interviewed to assess their knowledge about pensions and financial issues and about their own savings and personal wealth planned for retirement. The responses showed that their knowledge and awareness of retirement planning was limited. We then ran a randomized experiment to evaluate the effect of increased information regarding pensions on women's awareness, knowledge, and behaviors. Women in the treated group were provided information in the form of three short online tutorials. A follow-up survey shows that these women became more interested and aware of pension schemes and retirement options after completing the tutorials and were more likely to be better informed and keen to obtain further information. When looking at changes in behavior, we find that treated women who are closer to retirement are more likely to believe that they would make different work-life decisions if they received specific pension information in a timely fashion. They are also more likely to have a supplementary pension fund if they are concerned about their standard of living after retirement.