The appeal of the ‘Micro-foundations’ project, which requires that all macroeconomic propositions are reduced to or derived from microeconomic ones, is strongly supported by the considerable force of what Lakatos calls the discipline's ‘hard core’. This is particularly...

Sustainable energy systems of the future will need more than efficient, clean, low-cost, renewable energy sources; they will also need efficient price signals that motivate sustainable energy consumption as well as a better real-time alignment of energy demand and supply. The Power Trading Agent...

This paper provides a simple model which explains the choice between permanent and temporary jobs. This model, which incorporates important features of actual employment protection legislations neglected by the economic literature so far, reproduces the main stylized facts about entries into...

Using longitudinal data on individuals from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) for eleven countries during 1995–2001, I investigate temporary job contract duration and job search effort. The countries are Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the...

The papers published in this issue of the Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali have been selected from those contributions presented at the workshop on ‘‘Employment opportunities and unemployment over the economic downturn’’ held on 18th May 2012 at the Universita` Cattolica del...

This paper studies labour market transitions out of temporary jobs in Italy, focussing on the period that immediately follows the last 2003 labour market reform, and immediately preceding the economic downturn of the second half of 2007. The data-set used is the 2004-2007 IT-SILC individual...

This paper analyses a matching model in which labor market participants use temporary employment as a waiting station between searches. Searchers entering the market see all available options. The best match, however, may not be particularly productive. Since all currently available traders are...