This paper studies the impact of demographic shifts, energy prices and climate factors on Italian households� energy budget. The pattern of energy expenditure of Italian households is studied using the Italian Household Budget Survey. The expenditure for heating, private transport and...

This paper offers a micro-founded general definition of poverty set in the context of utility theory. Poverty and non-poverty are described as two structurally different types of local non-satiation: the former entails a strong need for further consumption and social marginalization, the latter...

This paper studies the demand for tobacco products in post-unification Italy. We construct a very detailed panel dataset of annual consumption in the 69 Italian provinces from 1871 to 1913, which is then used to estimate the demand for tobacco products. We find support for the Becker and Murphy...

The act of choosing can influence maximizing behaviour for at least two distinct reasons: 1) process significance and 2) decisional inescapability. The constructive programme of the paper is combined with critical appraisal of the implications of these concerns for rational decisions about...

The labour market status of many non-working persons is at the boundary between unemployment and inactivity. Like the unemployed, they seek and are available for work; unlike them, their last search action was not recent enough to meet the ILO definition of unemployment. In this paper we examine...

A long-standing economic tradition maintains that labour supply reacts to market tightness; its sensitivity to job quality has received less attention. If firms hire workers with both temporary and open-end contracts, does participation increase when more permanent jobs are available? We...

One of the most widely cited labour market indicators, the unemployment rate, is based on a conventional definition of unemployment. In Italy, following the ILO recommendations, the �unemployed� category comprises all persons who state to look for a job, to be immediately available for...

Compared with other European countries, the Italian labour market stands out for the low level of both female participation and fertility. In this paper we focus on the employment patterns of Italian mothers around the time of childbirth. Our hypothesis is that the difficulties involved in...

Despite stringent dismissal restrictions in most European countries, rates of job creation and destruction are remarkably similar in European and Noeth American labor markets. This paper shows that relative-wage compression is conducive to higher employer-initiated job turnover, and argues that...

In this paper we examine whether and how the inflow of female immigrants who �specialize� in household production affects the labor supply of Italian women. To identify the causal effect, we exploit the family reunification motive and the network effects - i.e. the tendency of newly...