The aim of this essay is to show how sustained growth in the employment rate, which should be taken as a strategic variable of economic policy, depends - for given growth rates of output and working age population - on two conditions: (a) allowing working hours to decline at the same rate at...

The law proposal on the reduction of the working week submitted to the Italian Parliament provides an opportunity for a critical and constructive reflection on the role that a reduction of standard working time can play in pursuing the goal of increasing and maintaining a high employment rate....

Incomes policy started with the San Valentine's decree of 1984, which marks the beginning of the process that led to the abolishment of Scala Mobile and reached its peak with the Protocollo d'intesa of 1993. The work proposes to study by cointegration analysis the effects of incomes policy on...

Profit share in Italy has been growing between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s, remaining stable at historically high levels since than. After dropping in the first half of the 1970s, owing to an unprecedented rapid rise in wages, profit share started to recover. The rise during the 1980s...

This paper supports the view that the deep roots of the current global crisis, which has taken the form of a mainly financial crisis, are related to a global fundamental unbalance in income distribution. There are two dimensions of the unbalance. The first one is between capital and labour...

Italian Abstract: L'articolo introduce al presente numero, rivedendone i contenuti e ponendoli nel contesto dell'attuale crisi europea.Evidenzia brevemente la rilevanza dell'articolo pubblicato da Josef Steindl in questo numero per la prima volta, così come l'articolo di Nina Shapiro...

Italian Abstract: L'autore discute la politica di mantenere (o non opporsi) un certo livello di disoccupazione come mezzo per promuovere la deflazione salariale e lo identifica come il modo "brutale" di perseguire la stabilità macroeconomica.Al contrario, Sylos Labini identifica il costo della...

Despite the fact that in 2011 Italy will celebrate the 150th anniversary of its political unification, geographical disparities stand out as a prominent characteristic of the country. The paper estimates the trend of the cost-of-living differentials across regions in the half-century after the...