Maria Gabriella Campolo

Immigrants and Italian labor market: statistical or taste-based discrimination?

Types of discrimination are usually distinguished by economic theory in statistical and taste-based. Using a correspondence experiment, we analyze which of the two affects Italian labor market the most. In this respect, we studied the difference in discrimination reserved to first- and second-generation immigrants, taking gender differences into account. Even if we want to admit a rational discrimination based on perceived productivity differences (statistical discrimination) against first-generation immigrants (concerning language and education gaps), the same would not be reasonable for second-generation ones. Since they are born and educated in Italy, where they have always lived, the associated discrimination must be taste-based.Subject classification codesC93, J71, J15

How Do Life Course Events Affect Paid and Unpaid Work of Italian Couples

The paper analyzes the impact of life course events, and in particular of parenthood, on the paid and unpaid working activity of dual-earner couples in Italy. To this purpose, we use the panel dataset provided by the 2003--2007 Istat Multipurpose Survey. To correct misspecification due to unobserved variables, we adopt a difference-in-differences specification of simultaneous equations of market and domestic work supply. Our results show that the negative effect of transition to parenthood on female paid work supply is stronger than the positive effect of wages.

Parenthood and labour division in Italian two-earner couples

Purpose Lack of robustness of findings characterizes the empirical studies about the effect of the transition to parenthood on partners’ labour division. In this analysis, the purpose of this paper is to solve these problems through the conjoint use of methodological instruments of regression analysis, allowing the authors to correct for the effects of omitted variables. Design/methodology/approach A correction method is here applied to a longitudinal simultaneous equation model. In particular, the authors impose specific constraints on the covariances of the error terms of the longitudinal simultaneous equations of the paid and domestic work of both partners. For the empirical analysis, use is made of the Italian National Institute of Statistics Multipurpose Panel Survey in the years 2003 and 2007 to select a survey sample of dual-earner Italian couples. Findings The authors found that the negative influence of motherhood on the Italian women’s paid work supply is stronger than the positive effect of wage. The authors found that having a child (whatever the order) decreases a woman’s paid work hours by 17 hours a week, while woman’s domestic work increases by 20 hours a week as the effect of the birth of the first child. Originality/value Compared to Fixed Effect or Change-Score models suggested for longitudinal studies the Seemingly Unrelated Regression Equations-Difference-in-Differences procedure let us obtain estimations also for the effect of time-invariant variables. In addition, the methodological approach allows us to correct estimates for the common effects that latent variables exert simultaneously (e.g. the bargaining process) on paid and unpaid work equations of both partners.