Inspite of the centralized nature of wage bargaining in Italy, we find some evidence suggesting the existence of firm-wage policies. Firstly, the ratio of the between-firm wage variability relative to total wage variability is sizeable, and not very dissimilar from that reported for other...

Why did employment growth – high in the last decade – take place at the expense of young workers in the countries of Central and Southern Europe? This is the question addressed in this paper. Youth unemployment has approached or exceeded 20% despite a variety of factors, common to most EU...

Forecasting errors pose a serious problem of identification, often neglected in empirical applications. Any attempt of estimating choice models under uncertainty may lead to severely biased results in the presence of forecasting errors even when individual expectations on future events are...

The European Commission has for many years advocated fiscal policies in order to improve the employability of young people. This paper aims at providing a preliminary rough estimate of the cost-effectiveness of rebates on social security contributions granted to employers that Italy has utilized...