This paper measures the impact of wage zones – minimum wage differentials at the province level – on Italy's local labor markets during the 1950s. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, it finds that for the industrial sectors covered under wage zones there was an increase in...

We quantify the private returns and social costs of political connections exploiting a unique longitudinal dataset that combines matched employer-employee data for a representative sample of Italian firms with administrative archives on the universe of individuals appointed in local governments...

Using different data sources from local labour markets (LLMs) in Italy between 1971 and 2011, we document a number of stylized facts: a) local differences in the ratios of private employment to population are highly persistent; b) the population has a limited reaction to labour demand shocks,...