We study the role of human capital in the restructuring process of the Italian economy. Italy displays a large and persistent gap in the share of college graduates in the population (12% in 2007) with respect to the rest of Europe (24%). The introduction of the 3+2 reform has significantly...

This paper offers a critical survey of the literature on labor market rigidities, developing a simple and unifying analytical framework. The main conclusion that emerges is that firing restrictions do not seem to exert strong direct effects on the unemployment level, while they are important for...

We investigate cross country differences in patent propensity in the European Union using the European Patent Office database and the database on European firms AMADEUS. We ask how much of the differences in patent propensity at the aggregate level can be accounted for by a more disaggregate...