This paper investigates the importance that market regulation and financial imperfections have in firm size. We analyse institutions affecting labour market as Employment Protection Laws (EPL) and Product Market Regulation (PMR). Moreover, we study the effects of these institutions on firm...

This paper uses a calibrated life cycle model to quantify the distributional effects of Social Security reforms. We focus only on two countries: Italy and France because they adopted two different strategies to cope with aging. While France marginally modified its defined pension plan, Italy...

A matching theory approach is utilised to assess the impact on the Italian labour market of the 1997 legge Treu, which considerably eased the regulation of temporary work and favoured its growth in Italy. We re-parameterise the matching function as a Beveridge Curve and estimate it as a...

This paper aims to examine to what extent a "ladder" e.ect may contribute to explain changes in unemployment in Spain. The "ladder" e.ect arises when highly-skilled workers who do not find a job that matches their skills, accept jobs that were previously occupied by less qualified staff. We...

This paper aims at examining the interaction between unemployment and inter-regional mobility in the presence of asymmetric productivity shocks. We present an intertemporal two-regions equilibrium model where unemployed workers can migrate from one region to another. The hiring process is...