This paper explores the link between the presence of unions in the workplace, the adoption of decentralized labor agreements and technical efficiency, using a large sample of Italian manufacturing firms. We apply the Data Envelopment Analysis, and its robust version based on bootstrap theory, to...

We provide evidence on the effect of ICT investment on the propensity to offshore for a sample of Italian manufacturing firms. To deal with the endogeneity of ICT investment we adopt an innovative identification strategy based on the availability of local broad band facilities. Contrary to...

The German employment miracle, with a weak decline in employment and low unemployment during the great recession, seems to be a good example for a successful labour market reform. Nevertheless, there are concerns about rising inequality in the labour market. In this paper we analyze the quality...

During the last decade, economists have intensively searched for evidence on the importance of the Balassa-Samuelson (B-S) hypothesis in explaining nominal convergence. One general result is that B-S can at best explain only part of the excess inflation observed in the European catching-up...

This paper analyses immigrants' education-occupation mismatch as well as its impact on their wages in Spain. Using cross-sectional data from the National Immigrant Survey of Spain 2007, we estimate a probit model taking into account the possible problem of selection bias. We show that the...

Like most other developing countries, China experiences huge migration outflows from rural areas. Their most striking characteristic is a high geographical and temporal mobility. Rural migrants keep going back and forth between origin villages and destination areas. In this paper, we show that...

Bivariate duration data frequently arise in economics, biostatistics and other areas. In bivariate frailty models, dependence between the frailties (i.e., unobserved determinants) induces dependence between the durations. Using notions of quadrant dependence, we study restrictions that this...