Alberto Dalmazzo

Monetary Institutions, Monopolistic Competition, Unionized Labor Markets and Economic Performance

Recent literature on the interactions between labor unions and monetary institutions features either a supply or a demand channel of monetary policy, but not both. This leads to two opposing views about the effects of central bank conservativeness. We evaluate the relative merits of those conflicting views by developing a unified framework. We find that: (i) the effect of conservativeness on employment depends on unions’ relative aversion to unemployment versus inflation, and (ii) for plausible values of this relative aversion (and more than one union), social welfare is maximized under a highly conservative central bank. We also evaluate the effects of centralization of wage bargaining and product market competition on unemployment and inflation.

Resources and Incentives to Reform

This paper models the incentives for a self-interested government to implement “good policies.” While good policies lead to investment and growth, they also reduce the governments ability to reward its supporters. The model predicts that resource abundance leads to poor policies and, consequently, to low investment. The implications of the model are broadly supported by existing evidence. In particular, countries that are rich in natural resources tend to have low institutional quality and poor macroeconomic and trade policies.

Resources and Incentives to Reform: A Model and Some Evidence on Sub-Saharan African Countries

13-alkyl-17-beta-hydroxy-17-alpha-propadienylgona-4,9-dien-3-ones are useful as pharmaceuticals and are obtainable by a multi-step procedure, which involves carrying out a Mannich-type reaction to convert a 17-alpha-ethynyl-substituted 4,9-dien-3,17-beta diol steroid to its 17-alpha-dialkylaminopropynyl-substituted analog, which is then converted to a quaternary ammonium salt, which is then reduced using a complex metal hydride to obtain the corresponding 17-alpha-propadienyl-diol product, which is then oxidized at the 3-position to the corresponding 17-beta-hydroxy 3-keto-final product.

Bank competition and ECB's monetary policy

In a model of oligopolistic competition in the banking sector, we analyse how the monetary policy rule chosen by the Central Bank can influence the incentive of banks to set high interest rates on loans over the business cycle. We exploit the basic model to investigate the potential impact of EMU implementation on collusion among banks. In particular, we consider the possible eAects of the European Central Bank’s policy criteria with regard to the cost of credit in national markets. ” 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Technological Complexity, Wage Differentials and Unemployment

A model is developed to analyse the relation between wages and technological complexity, as characterised by the Oring theory of production. In equilibrium, the adoption of a relatively complex technology induces the employer to pay higher wages. We argue that the model can explain increased within-group wage inequality as a consequence of increased technological heterogeneity among firms. Copyright 2002 by The editors of the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.

O-Ring Wage Inequality

We examine the relationship between technological complexity and wage inequality, using an efficiency wage model that adopts Kremers O-ring production function. The model has two main implications: (i) when the production process becomes more complex, within-task wage differences increase between plants, and (ii) between-task wage differences increase within plants. We study these implications empirically using industry data providing quantified information on the complexity of the tasks. We find that wages increase in all the tasks with the complexity of the production process. Furthermore, the relationship between the complexity of the tasks and wages is steepest in the firms with more complex production processes.

Social Returns to Education : Evidence From Italian Local Labor Market Areas

The paper estimates social returns to education in the Italian local labor markets. It shows that there is an important correlation between local human capital and average wages after controlling for individual characteristics. Estimated social returns to education range from 2 to 3%, whereas the private returns amount roughly to 6–7%. To find some support about causality running from local human capital to wages, the paper performs a number of robustness checks. It shows that: the estimated social returns are unlikely to be driven by spatially correlated omitted variables; they survive to the introduction of individual- and territorial-level variables; they are not due to imperfect substitutability across workers or spatial sorting; they are robust to IV techniques that deal with both local human capital and individual human capital endogeneity.

Liquidation risks in the Rotemberg-Saloner implicit collusion model

Abstract We extend the Rotemberg-Saloners (1986) [Rotemberg, J., Saloner, G., 1986. A supergame-theoretic model of price wars during booms. American Economic Review 76:390–407] “implicit collusion” framework to the consideration of capital market imperfections, captured by a non-zero probability of liquidation of firms in recessionary periods. We show that the Rotemberg-Saloner result of countercyclical markups is quite robust to the extension and, moreover, liquidation risks may even strengthen the degree of markup countercyclicality.

The consequences of public employment: evidence from Italian municipalities

We investigate the consequences of public employment on local economies. We start by presenting a spatial-equilibrium framework, to highlight that the housing market is an important channel through which a variation in public employment affects private employment. We then provide empirical evidence from Italian municipalities, focusing on the strong contraction in the public sector workforce that occurred between the last two Censuses (2001-2011). We use an IV identification strategy that exploits the fact that variations in local public employment were strongly influenced by central government decisions, with little reference to the economic conditions of the municipalities. Our results suggest that exogenous contractions in public employment lead to an increase of private jobs, and that competition in the housing market seems to be a relevant explanation for this finding.