Public finance solutions to high unemployment in Europe have often been advocated during the past years. With unemployment concentrated among the young and unskilled, it has been suggested that the reduction of social security contributions for low wage earnings, financed by a carbon tax, could...

In this paper we estimate the Italian NAIRU using annual data for the period 1951-1996. We find evidence consistent with aggregate wage setting in Italy depending only on the rate of unemployment prevailing in the Northern and Central areas of the country. There is evidence supporting the...

Regional unemployment differentials among Italian regions have widened since the mid 1980s, especially between the leading Northern and Central areas and the underdeveloped South. We suggest that the following elements are important to explain the observed phenomenon: a) employment performance...

By focusing on the Italian experience, we ask whether the relationship between labor taxes and unemployment varies across regions. In spite of similar national labor market institutions, we show that this relationship is significantly stronger in the highly industrialized North than in the...

We study the empirical relationship between labor taxation and pretax wages in Italy. We find that higher tax progressivity increases pretax wages. To explain this result, we introduce in an informal way a relative wage effect and argue that the combination of this effect with the labor supply...

The purpose of this paper is to provide an update of the empirical evidence on the private returns to education in Italy. First, we show that, whilst returns to education in Italy (based on gross wages) are in line with the European average, educational attainment is generally much lower...

This paper studies the turnover of board of directors members in a sample of 72 companies listed on the Milan Stock Exchange during the period 1988-1996. We investigate whether board members change more frequently when company performance is poor, as the literature suggests, and whether and how...