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...

This paper explores the “disposable” patterns of workforce utilization in Italy. The term “disposable” reflects the fact that people enter the labor market, their services are “used” as a disposable commodity for few years, after which they leave the labor market and are no longer...

According to the aims of the labour market reforms of the 90s implemented in many European countries, workers may stay at their first job for a shorter time, but should be ble to switch jobs easily. This would generate a trade-off between job opportunities and job stability. This paper addresses...

We analyze the effects of income support on unemployment and welfare dynamics when stigma is attached to welfare provision. Stigma has been modeled in the literature as a cost of welfare participation; in this paper we analyze the effect of income support on unemployment and welfare dynamics by...

I estimate the cyclicality of Italian real wages over the period 1985-2003 controlling for the so-called "composition bias". Aggregate real wage statistics, commonly used to measure real wage elasticity, are affected by the bias arising from the cyclical change in the skill-composition of the...

This research examines theoretically and empirically the origins of agriculture. The theory highlights the role of climatic sequences as a fundamental determinant of both technological sophistication and population density in a hunter-gatherer regime. It argues that foragers facing volatile...

This research examines the economic origins of Islam and uncovers two empirical regularities. First, Muslim countries, virtual countries and ethnic groups, exhibit highly unequal regional agricultural endowments. Second, Muslim adherence is systematically larger along the pre-Islamic trade...

This article studies the dynamics and persistence of poverty in Italy during the nineties (1994-2001). Two definitions of poverty are analyzed: income poverty and a multidimensional index of life-style deprivation. For both definitions, poverty exit and re-entry rates are estimated and combined...

Empirical evidence suggests that goods are highly heterogeneous with respect to the degree of price rigidity. We develop a DSGE model featuring heterogeneous nominal rigidities across two sectors to study the equilibrium determinacy and stability under adaptive learning for interest rate rules...