The aim of this paper is to assess the relationship between individual skills and labour market performance of immigrants residing in Lombardy during the period 2001-2005. We use a recent dataset collected by the NGO ISMU, which includes information on individual characteristics and the legal...

We describe the evolution of the relative earnings of young male workers and the evolution of the age-earnings profiles across cohorts in the last three decades. We draw on administrative records to document a significant deterioration of entry wages over the 1990s in the presence of basically...

Activity and employment rates for immigrant women in many industrialized countries display a great variability across national groups. The aim of this paper is to assess whether this well-known fact is due to a voluntary decision (i.e. large reservation wages by the immigrants) or to an...

This paper analyzes the effects of international trade on the relative demand for skilled workers in Italian local labor markets. We find that exports cause a sizable skill upgrading in the labor force by increasing the average level of education of the workforce and the share of white-collars...

We test whether natives correctly assess the effects of immigration on their own labour market opportunities. We relate self-reported job loss and job finding probabilities to the presence of foreign-born residents in a native's neighborhood. We interpret coefficient estimates through the lens...

The Bank of Italy quarterly econometric model (BIQM) is a large-scale ‘semi structural' macro-econometric model. It tries to strike the right balance between theoretical rigour and statistical fit to the data. This paper provides an update of the features and the properties of the model,...