The paper estimates the gender wage gap in Italy, taking into account two salient features of the economy: the low rate of women�s labour market participation and the high share of self-employment. It exploits the Bank of Italy�s survey on household income and wealth, which contains...

The paper evaluates gender differences in labour market transitions in Italy. Women have a lower employment rate than men, owing to their shorter periods of employment and lower probability of entering into employment. The shorter duration of periods of employment for women is related to a...

In this paper we estimate the short-run elasticity of substitution between male and female workers, using data on employment and wages from Italian provinces from 1993-2006. We adopt a production function approach similar to that of Card and Lemieux (2001a) and Acemoglu, Autor and Lyle (2004)....

In this paper, we test whether micro firms run by migrants pay more for credit than firms run by natives and whether the differences in the cost of credit for these two groups of entrepreneurs decrease as the informational and cultural gaps narrow. We employ a large and unique data set providing...

In this article we test whether Italian female entrepreneurs are more reliable payers than men, by carrying out a survival analysis of micro enterprises that utilize a credit for the first time in the period January 2005 to December 2008, and monitoring the quality of their exposure until...

We analyze data from the Bank of Italy's most recent recruitment rounds, in an effort to explain why men consistently score better than women. We focus on the pre-screening stage of the hiring process, a multiple-choice test, where men acquire a preliminary advantage. After observing a higher...

This paper explores the effects of husbands' commuting time on their wives' labour market participation and on family time allocation. We develop a unitary family model of labour supply, which includes commuting times and household production. In a pure leisure model longer commuting time for...

This paper studies whether the allocation of municipal expenditure in Italy is influenced by female representation in Municipal Councils. Despite the existence of gender-specific preferences in society, we find no clear evidence that the amount of resources distributed among different spending...

A gender gap indicator is constructed for the Italian regions, with the aim of highlighting the geographical differences underlying Italy�s backwardness at European and international level. The indicator, which adapts the Gender Equality Index developed by Plantenga et al. (2009) for 25...

This paper uses ECB survey data to assess whether gender matters in the small firms� financial structure and access to credit. Firms owned or managed by women (female firms) use smaller amounts and less heterogeneous sources of external finance than their male counterparts. According to...