Stefano Staffolani

Short-Term Contracts Regulations And Dynamic Labour Demand: Theory And Evidence

We present a dynamic labour demand model where we evaluate the impact of employment regulations on permanent and temporary employment. We consider three different kinds of regulations, namely firing costs, hiring costs and a constraint on temporary contracts. These regulations differently affect the size and composition of employment. The theoretical results are interpreted and questioned on the basis of empirical evidence on the employment effects of the regulation reforms that occurred in the major European countries in the period 1983–1999. The empirical analysis is based on a new set of time‐varying indicators on permanent employment protection, fixed‐term contracts and temporary agency work regulations. We find evidence in support of the hypothesis that fixed‐term contracts have been effective stepping‐stones to permanent jobs during the period under observation. On the contrary, flexible temporary agency work regulations seem to induce a substitution of permanent with temporary contracts.

Student Time Allocation and Educational Production Functions

In this paper we aim to remedy some shortcomings in the economic literature on university student absenteeism and academic performance. We start by introducing a simple theoretical model in which students decide the optimal allocation of their time between lecture attendance, self-study and leisure. Under some specific assumptions, we find a positive relationship between lecture attendance and time devoted to self-study in each course, from which we infer that estimates of student performance regressions which omit self-study might be biased. Thus, we estimate an academic performance regression using data from first year undergraduate students of economics in the academic year 1998-99 at the University of Ancona (Italy) and find evidence that once self-study time is controlled for, the positive and significant effect of lecture attendance for some courses disappears. This is likely to be important especially when student performance regressions are used to evaluate the effectiveness of course attendance and to inform the debate on the introduction of mandatory attendance on some courses to enhance student performance.

Higher Education Reform, Student Time Allocation and Academic Performance in Italy: Evidence from a Faculty of Economics

In this paper we investigate the effect of the restructuring of university studies that took place in Italy after the introduction of the «3+2» reform on student time allocation and performance. We use data from an Economics Faculty and propensity score matching, which allow us to account for many confounding factors that are likely to affect the before-after reform comparison, to investigate changes in student time allocation and performance in the first-year exams. Our analysis provides lower bound estimates of the change in lecture attendance, self-study time and student performance after the reform, showing that despite a decrease in workload, student performance measured in terms of average grades and of number of exam attempts failed improved. We argue that although this can be explained either by an increase in university effectiveness or by grade inflation, several pieces of evidence support the second explanation.

Can Market Power Influence Employment, Wage Inequality and Growth?

We introduce an efficiency-wage mechanism into an innovation-driven growth model. Due to informational problems, the labour market is segmented and homogeneous workers may be employed either in a non-competitive intermediate sector or in a competitive research one. We analyse the impact that variations in the monopoly power of the intermediate firms may have on unemployment, wage inequality and growth. We find that the lower the product market competition in the intermediate sector, the higher the research employment, the lower the intermediate sector employment, the higher the aggregate growth rate. Growth and inequality are negatively correlated whereas growth and unemployment are positively correlated. The last two results are obtained through numerical simulations.

Monopsonistic competition for the “best” workers

In this paper we analyse an economy where firms use labour as the only production factor, with constant return to scale. We suppose that jobs differ in their non-wage characteristics so each firm has a monopsonistic power. Mainly, we suppose that workers are heterogeneous with respect to their productivity. Then, each firm has incentives to offer higher wages in order to recruit the most productive workers. The competition among firms leads to a symmetric equilibrium wage which is higher than the reservation wage and to involuntary unemployment for the less productive workers, that are willing to work at the current wage but are not hired because their productivity is lower than the wage level. If firms have no institutional constraint on paying lower wages for the same job, an endogenous labour market segmentation emerges.

A Microeconometric Analysis of Female Labour Force Participation in Italy

In March 2000 the European Council set out an ambitious target for female employment rates in Lisbon, which should reach the level of 60% by 2010. However, Italy is very far from reaching this target. Indeed, according to the Italian National Statistical Institute (Istat) 2003 official data, only 42% of women aged 14–64 were in employment and less than one in two participated in the labour force.

The Effect of University Costs and Institutional Incentives on Enrolments: Empirical Evidence for Italian Regions

We study the relationship between the enrollment decisions of Italian secondary school graduates and the cost of participating in higher education. In particular, we look into the role of incentives, such as scholarship grants, and of the supply of under-priced accommodation which are policy tools in the hands of regional institutes (Enti Regionali per il diritto allo Studio Universitario, ERSU). We provide empirical evidence by estimating a conditional logit model using the survey of 2004 secondary school graduates issued by the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT). We find that enrollment costs are determinant in students university choices: on average, the elasticity of the probability of enrollment to tuition fees is − 0. 062, the one to expected grants is 0. 028, and the one to expected rent is − 0. 022. Differences between regions are considerable: southern regions show lower elasticities, while small central and northern regions exhibit the largest ones.

Labour Market Transitions During the Financial Crisis in Italy

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the consequences of the financial crisis on the Italian labour market by analysing the determinants of individuals’ transitions between occupational states. For this purpose, we use micro-data micro-data from the Istat Labour Force Survey, a repeated cross-section dataset. In order to identify the determinants of transitions, two strategies are followed:: firstly, we consider the “perceived” employment condition, available at the individual level for the previous year. Then, following the “ecological inference” approach, we get quarterly transition probabilities for the “official” employment condition. The economic crisis has mostly penalized young, migrants, men, and people living in North area as well as couples without children and single parents with children.

Bargaining, distribution and growth

Innovation, Unemployment and Policy in the Theories of Growth and Distribution increases our understanding about the more relevant economic determinants and policy aspects of the interdependence between economic growth and income distribution.