Mercato del lavoro, disoccupazione e riforme strutturali in Italia

In this paper we reexamine the simple model of selection under asymmetric information, and consider a situation in which – after the contract has been signed, while it is still in force – both parties observe a piece of information correlated with private information (we call it “correlated signal”). We present an application to the labor market, in which the probability of being assigned to a high productivity job is a function of the correlated signal, and the worker makes an upfront transfer before the signal arrives – a case that is not treated in the literature. The optimum strategy of the employer is to offer a menu of contracts such that the probability of having the high productivity job is a non-monotone function of the worker’s quality. Such strategy shrinks the worker’s information rent. Our results are confronted with the literature à la Crémer-Mc Lean.

Institutional reforms have long been a central focus of the European economic policy debate, and the labor market in particular has been subject to never definitive reforms in the past 20 years, mainly aimed at fostering wage moderation and flexible labor contracts. The employment effects of labor market institutions have been widely analyzed, but the focus on this aspect has overshadowed an equally important but scantily investigated element: their possible dynamic impact on innovation and productivity growth. This paper is a critical survey of the literature which may help shed light on this issue. Growth theory as well as the results of the empirical growth literature teach us that the main drivers of long run productivity growth in advanced countries are innovation, research and development, human capital accumulation. Reforms which enhance labor market flexibility can in principle affect these growth drivers through different channels, but the sign of the effects on productivity growth is ambiguous. Existing empirical evidence shows that wage and numerical flexibility have negative effects on research and development, innovation and firm sponsored training, suggesting that the dynamic effects of labor flexibility are negative. This suggests that the tradeoff between labor market flexibility and productivity growth which has been detected both within many European countries and across European countries is not just a temporary, static, short run effect linked to the employment effect of flexibility enhancing reforms, but may also reflect a more worrying permanent, dynamic, long run phenomenon.

The world trade reduction occurred in the period 2008-09 is known in the literature as "the great trade collapse". The aim of this work is to analyze how such a collapse has modified the trade relationships between Italy and the Rest of the World and, consequently, the transport flows at the regional level. At national level, the data on value added show, in fact, a strong decrease in the air transport and maritime sector relative to land transport. It is consequently interesting verify if and how this shock has impacted the maritime-port system of Friuli Venezia Giulia Region. The analysis is carried out using two distinct data sources: the traffic flows of the Port of Trieste and the value added and production estimates at the regional level estimated via input-output models. The traffic indicators show a fall, in the years 2008-2009, by 8% in terms of tonnes, by 18% in terms of containers, by 13% in terms of ro-ro ships and by 20% in terms of general cargo. The input-output models estimate an average value added and production reduction equal to 13%. Terminal operators are the ones impacted the most, with a decrease of over 15%, followed by the Freight Forwarders and the Public Agencies. All operators faced a decrease in line with the average decrease, with the exception of the Services of General Interest and Services to Ships, that faced a below average decrease. The 2011 value added and production estimates are still lower than the 2008 ones.

This paper describes the main features of the Jobs Act”, i.e. the new legislation on employment protection, unemployment benefits and active labour market policy, that has been approved by the Italian Parliament in 2014. The new policy measures have lowered the firing costs of firms by limiting the right of the worker to be reinstated in the firm following unfair dismissal. This measure has been accompanied by a sizeable fiscal incentive to firms that hire workers with an open-ended contract. Given the short time that elapsed from the implementation of these measures, very few studies have tried to evaluate their impact on the labour market. The available empirical evidence shows that the hiring incentive has boosted the creation of permanent jobs, while the effect of the new rules on unfair dismissals appears so far rather weak. More time will be needed to analyse not only the impact of the now higher labour flexibility, but also the effects of reforming passive and active labour market policies.

In this paper we present the results of a network analysis on the mobility of the highly skilled workers in the regional labor market of Friuli Venezia Giulia. We make use of the Social Network Analysis (SNA) methods and of a new dataset on mobility of graduates and PHD’s from the Regional Universities in the period 2005-2013. The new dataset is based on three different sources: the Administrative archives of the three Universities of Friuli Venezia Giulia (graduates and PhD), the Public Labour Agency (individual hiring flows), the Bureau van Dijk (company’s data). The network analysis is performed for the period 2005-2013 and for two sub-periods separately (2005-2008 and 2009-2013) in order to disentangle the possible changes determined by the recent severe economic crisis. Results show that the hiring flows assume a scale-free network configuration, in the overall as well as in the two sub-periods, where the larger and innovative regional firms play a crucial role for the overall connectivity. However, from a micro-level perspective, in the second period emerges an increasing level of homophily, that is the workers’ mobility mostly happen within groups of similar firms (according to our classification of innovative vs traditional firms). Finally, from a methodological point of view, network analysis seems to be a promising approach to better understand labour market structure and dynamics.

In his General Theory Keynes describes Pigou’s Theory of Unemployment as a typical example of an economic orthodoxy without vision and incapable of comprehending the social severity of unemployment. In this note I argue that Pigou’s analysis, contrary to Keynes’s view, takes into consideration not only positions of full employment, but also situations of persistent underemployment, not necessarily associated to labour supply factors. Indeed, Pigou’s “classical theory” gives a prominent role to aggregate demand as a cause of mass unemployment, although he had deep-seated reservations about macroeconomic policies as a tool for achieving full employment.

Il volume raccoglie un insieme di contributi scientifici attorno ad alcuni temi centrali della ricerca economica e della politica economica in Italia. Il libro è dedicato al prof. Fabio Neri, ordinario di Politica Economica del DEAMS, scomparso nel 2015. La sua attività scientifica si è incentrata in grande misura sulle tematiche del mercato del lavoro e delle economie locali. Il DEAMS e, in particolare, i suoi allievi, lo vogliono ricordare con un libro che raccoglie i risultati delle loro ricerche recenti e alcuni contributi di colleghi di altre Università italiane che intervengono sui temi centrali del dibattito economico attuale.

We propose an endogenous growth model with public capital and an imperfect labor market to account for the long run regional development of the Italian economy. A stylized model of a monopolistic Union characterized by heterogeneity in its members’ reservation wage creates a spatially rigid wage. We then include the above mechanism in a growth model where public investment is subject to installation costs and analyze the effects of policy changes in the period 1951-2004 on the long run growth and unemployment rate of the macro areas of Italy: Center-Northern and Southern. The calibration exercise with parameters values grounded in the economic history literature is then performed. Our results indicate that two permanent institutional innovations deeply affected the long run dynamics of the Italian regional development, both in terms of growth and unemployment: the centralization of the wage bargaining and the decentralization of the governmental functions with the birth of the ordinary regions.

This paper analyses the Beveridge Curve across twelve European countries from 1985 to 2013. We employ some novel measures of employment protection legislation and unemployment benefits, and assess the role of globalisation. Structural relationships seem to be stable throughout the 2008-2013 period, suggesting that the Great Recession mainly implied moves along the Curve, while stronger globalisation shifts the Curve outwards. Among institutional variables we find a significant role for the tax wedge, active labour-market policies, union density and employment protection legislation. Unemployment benefits also matter. The unemployment-vacancies trade-off is improved by a higher net retention rate and more strictness in the benefit provision protocol. Both effects can be rationalised in terms of higher search efficiency.

After the 2008-09 global crisis, the recession has been deeper and longer in the EU compared to other areas in the world; even the current recovery is weaker. This problem has particularly concerned the euro area – due to the sovereign debt crisis – and, especially, the peripheral countries. The economic and social impact has been devastating. In some countries unemployment rates have more than doubled, slightly diminishing in the last economic cycle and showing high degrees of persistence; in particular, young people are affected by high unemployment and exclusion from the labor market (NEET). Besides providing new empirical evidence on these phenomena, this chapter focuses on the causes of such negative performance, starting from the EU’s inadequate responses to the double European crisis. Given the collapse of aggregate demand – in particular investment – expansionary macroeconomic policies are needed, going beyond the prevailing austerity approach. While monetary policy has progressively become looser, an adequate fiscal stimulus is still lacking. In addition to an “aggregate demand shock” – for instance a big European investment plan – active labour market policies are required to contrast the unemployment, especially among the youth. Furthermore, some institutional reforms in the governance of the EU are required to make sustainable over time a “genuine” Economic and Monetary Union.