The paper addresses two aspects of the debate that has recently developed in Italy about the reform of the system of industrial relations. One is the introduction of a statutory minimum wage and the other is the reform of collective bargaining. These two problems are jointly analysed and a...

This paper investigates the increase in the relative demand for nonmanual workers using a large panel of Italian manufacturing firms over the 1990s. The results indicate that "within-firm" skill upgrading was the main determinant of this increase, with hightech firms playing a leading role in...

A firm's decision to employ agency workers may be perceived as a replace- ment of directly employed workers or as way to curb union power, which trade unions would oppose. Alternatively, trade unions may encourage the (tem- porary) employment of agency workers in a firm, if they manage to...

Between 1973 and 1978, the Indonesian government engaged in one of the largest school construction programs on record. Combining differences across regions in the number of schools constructed with differences across cohorts induced by the timing of the program suggests that each primary school...

This paper analyses the theoretical relevance of the dynamical aspects of growth on the discussion about the observed positive correlation between per capita real income and real exchange rates. With this purpose, we develop a simple exogenous growth model where the internal, external and...

We estimate selection and sorting effects on the evolution of the private return to schooling for college graduates during China’s reform between 1988 and 2002. We find evidence of substantial sorting gains under the traditional system, but gains have diminished and even become negative in the...

Increased international economic integration and skill-biased technological change are often regarded as the main drivers of the rising inequality in wages and employment witnessed in industrialized countries in recent decades as they are believed to emphasize differences between individuals in...