Sebastiano Bavetta is Professor of Economics at the Università di Palermo (Italy) and visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania (USA) where he teaches 'Economics of Freedom' in the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Program. He received his PhD in the Philosophy of Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research interests have been concerned with issues in positive and normative economics and in political theory. He has published several books, including The Economics of Freedom, with Pietro Navarra (Cambridge University Press, 2012). His work has also appeared in several journals including Social Choice and Welfare, the Journal of Theoretical Politics, Constitutional Political Economy, Theory and Decision, and Economic Affairs.

Francesca Lipari is a visiting Research Scholar at the ”Philosophy, Politics, and Economics” (PPE) program at the University of Pennsylvania with a dissertation, entitled ”Essays on Decision Making in a Complex World”.

Her research merges Economics of Networks and Information, uncertainty and incentives (including game theory and behavioral economics). Those theoretical issues present interesting applications in areas such as social mobility, inequalities or family economics.

HHB welcomes Andrew Dabalen – World Bank Lead economist, Poverty and Equity Global practice – as a new HHB researcher.

Mr Dabalen focuses on policy analysis and research in development issues, such as poverty and social impact analysis, inequality of opportunity, program evaluation, risk and vulnerability, labor markets and conflict and welfare outcomes. He is the co-author of a substantial body of work on poverty measurement, vulnerability and inequality in Africa, and led multiple Poverty Assessments on the continent.

“Between World War I and World War II, at the height of Fascism, droves of Italians abandoned the countryside and small villages to converge on the big cities of the centre and north of the country. […] Previously unpublished documentation found in Rome’s Capitoline Archives provides us with a very detailed view of the dual phenomenon of internal immigration and spontaneous slum settlements in Rome during Fascism.”

The HHB working paper no.6 is an invitation to explore the roots of Rome’s informal settlements.

Covering 136 families in the three cities of Dakar, Saint Louis and Thies in 1954-1955, this study stems from the willingness to promote household budget surveys in the so far neglected French West Africa. Among the three studies, a thorough report is available for the city of Thies for 43 Muslim families. Information include family structure, total income and expenditure but also food consumption (in terms of both expenditure and quantity), energy use, household maintenance and social and religious dues.

The HHB team is still looking for the detailed records of the other 93 families. Given that the country gained independence in 1960, this source represents a precious piece of information about standards of living near the end of the colonial era.

The survey was directed by Yvon Mersadier, a French economist from the Institut de recherche pour le developpement (IRD), and published in the Senegalese Institut Francais d’Afrique Noire (IFAN) bulletin where he was seconded in the 50s. He is considered a pioneer in household survey researches in the region.