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...

The problem of absenteeism has taken the centre of the stage of public attention when Renato Brunetta, the Public Employment Secretary, launched a reform of the public sector which started with a law on absenteeism. After the law was passed, the first evidence collected showed an average drop of...

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...

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

This paper estimates the effects of innovations on productivity growth and the productivity elasticity of R&D capital. Firms need to introduce or improve products or production processes over time first to satisfy market needs, second to cope with increased competition from diffusion phenomena....

By focusing on the Italian experience, we ask whether the relationshipbetween 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...