The first wave of Covid-19 pandemic had a geographically heterogeneous impact even within the most severely hit regions. Exploiting a triple-differences methodology, we find that in Italy Covid-19 hit relatively harder in peripheral areas: the excess mortality in peripheral areas was almost double that of central ones in March 2020 (1.2 additional deaths every 1000 inhabitants). We leverage a rich dataset on Italian municipalities to explore mechanisms behind this gradient. We first show that socio-demographic and economic features at municipal level are highly collinear, making it hard to identify single-variable causal relationships. Using Principal Components Analysis we model excess mortality and show that areas with higher excess mortality have lower income, lower education, larger households, lower trade and higher industrial employments, and older population. Our findings highlight a strong centre-periphery gradient in the harshness of Covid-19, which we believe is also highly relevant from a policy-making standpoint. 

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In September 2020 Italy held a constitutional referendum. On the same election days, many municipalities and some regions held municipal and regional elections. We exploit this unique occasion, caused by the unexpected Covid-19 crisis, to obtain a causal estimate of the effects of the overlap of concurrent elections on the referendum results. When the referendum overlaps with either municipal or regional elections, we find a positive effect on turnout and on the proportion of blank and null votes. We also find a quantitatively small but statistically significant effect on the referendum preferences. We interpret the results through the use of the calculus of voting model, exploiting a slightly modified version of the most widespread one in the literature. Our findings are relevant from a policy-making standpoint, with respect to both fostering turnout and reducing election organizational costs. 

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