The aim of this paper is to analyse the link between flexible pay systems (FPS) and labour productivity, with a close look at wage premium determinants as elements disclosing specific managerial strategies. The analysis was conducted on a sample of more than 500 manufacturing firms located in...

The crisis of work in Europe and in Italy. Towards a radical change The economic crisis since 2008 has reduced income and destroyed jobs, and the economic recovery announced in 2014 will not reabsorb unemployment especially in Europe. ILO and IMF forecast a jobless recovery. Nevertheless, the...

EDF 2014: The Missing Sources for Growth. The Economic and Financial Document (EFD) 2014 for Italy describes a country which does not grow and will hardly grow even in the near future. The document announces a programme of structural reforms in the labour market and for competitiveness which...

The no-reform of the Italian labour market. Many different and passionate comments have been published in the past weeks about the Italian labour market reform. The topic is for sure very relevant from the economic and political perspective, and it is also a sort of “litmus paper†of...

Expansionary Austerity, Expansionary Precariousness and the Jobs Act. In the last years of the crisis, the devaluation policy on labour has exacerbated the negative effects of austerity on domestic demand. Nevertheless, the European Commission, also in the recent countries recommendations, keeps...

The Jobs Act of Matteo Renzi's Italian Government has been announced as urgent structural reform requested by Europe to make the extremely rigid Italian labour market more flexible, in order to contrast the dualism among protected workers and those without protections at all, and to guarantee...

La crisi europea origina anche da una crescita delle disuguaglianze e dalle deregolamentazioni nei mercati finanziari, dei beni e del lavoro, che invece di curare il malato ne aggravano la malattia. "Austerità espansiva" e "riforme strutturali" sono i due pilastri di un Europa che ha perso la...

Five actions for growth and employment, in a context of policy against "expansionary austerity". Economic crisis in Italy cannot wait for political uncertainty. We need urgently some interventions to tackle with the need to contrast the double-dip in real economy, and support growth and...

Agenda Monti is the electoral programme of the Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti for the next national election, due in 2013 spring. In this paper we discuss a specific issue of this Agenda: Performance Related Pay. We argue that the concept of flexible wage through firm level bargaining is a...

Wages, productivity, and the "rule of lead" of the ECB The ECB suggests that hourly nominal wages should increase in line with real hourly labour productivity, and not exceed it. The "vicious" countries which do not follow this rule loose progressively competitiveness. This is the "rule of lead"...