This paper studies the role of government policies to stimulate female labor demand in gender imbalanced labor markets. I focus on a large employer-borne payroll tax cut for new female hires implemented in Italy since 2013. The preferential tax scheme provides more favorable eligibility criteria...

This paper studies the labor market effects of a large employer-borne payroll tax cut for unemployed women, introduced in Italy since 2013. I combine social security data with several empirical approaches, leveraging the time-limited application of the tax scheme and discontinuities in...

This paper studies the labor market effects of a large payroll tax cut for female hires in Italy. Starting in January 2013, the payroll tax rate paid by the employer for female hires was reduced by 50 percent for a period of 12 months for temporary jobs and 18 months for permanent jobs....