Stefano Sacchi

The political economy of work security and flexibility: Italy in comparative perspective

Worker security and the spread of non-standard work Flexibility and security in contemporary labour markets Labour policy developments in Italy in comparative perspective Flexibility and employment security: an analysis of work careers Flexibility and wage dynamics Flexibility and social security A monetary measure of worker (in)security Conclusions.

Non-standard work, low-paid work and employment dynamics: evidence from an occupational perspective

This paper aims to analyze phenomena such as the diffusion of non-standard work and the incidence of low-paid work from a distinctive, and generally neglected angle: that of occupations. Much can be gained from a more fine-grained analysis of labour market dynamics that casts light on which occupations contributed to aggregated trends and how, and highlights different paths for different occupations, or groups thereof. This is what is done in this paper, using the Italian case to provide evidence for an exploratory – and, at this stage, mainly descriptive – study of trends observable in many advanced labour markets (the spread of non-standard work and of low-paid work), carried out within a perspective that focuses on occupations rather than on the whole labour market. After having depicted in the next section the main economic and employment trends over the past 20 years as well as the basic features of the regulatory framework of the Italian labour market, the second section carries out a detailed empirical analysis of the Italian labour market with an occupational perspective looking at the determinants of three outcome variables: non-standard work, part-time and low-pay work, and at the transitions in and out of those employment states. The third section focuses on a selection of specific occupations that are singled out and analysed with the intent to illustrate their distinctive features. The final section concludes.

Conditionality by Other Means: European Union Involvement in Italy’s Structural Reforms in the Sovereign Debt Crisis

This contribution shows the relevance of implicit conditionality in the Eurozone crisis, that is, conditionality based on an implicit understanding of the stakes and sanctions involved, underlain by some measure of power asymmetry. The concept of implicit conditionality is applied to the reconstruction of Italy’s sovereign debt crisis and the structural—pension and labour market—reforms introduced by the Monti government following requests from the EU. Actual or potential access to European Union (EU) financial support, carried out through purchase of Italy’s bonds to alleviate market tensions on its debt, was the carrot. The threat of having to enter formalized, explicit conditional lending programmes with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to avoid default was the stick. Market discipline was the operating mechanism that made implicit conditionality effective, and the role of monitoring by the EU was pervasive. Developments described in this chapter seem to support a revitalization of the fusion hypothesis between EU and member states,at least in the eurozone.