In this paper we apply quantile regressions to investigate the evolution of Educational Wage Premia (EWP) in Italy from 1993 to 2004. Using the Survey of the Household Income and Wealth (SHIW - Bank of Italy) and different classifications for educational attainments, we show that in the private...

In this paper we show that wage inequality decreased in the Italian private sector, both in the upper and in the lower tail of the distribution, in the period 1993-2006. By applying a quantile decomposition procedure we find that the decrease of the 90/50 ratio is almost totally related to a...

In this paper, we investigate the influence of the education of entrepreneurs, which we hypothesise to be a signal of talent, on the adoption of variable pay (VP) schemes in the Italian economy. We estimate to what extent differences in the diffusion of VP between Italian firms reflect...

New digital technologies are shaping the transformation of production activities. This process of change is characterised by growing digitization, inter-connectivity and automation. The diffusion of new technologies is, however, very uneven, and firms display different adoption behaviours. By...

In this paper we develop a Cournot duopoly model to assess how workplace unions affect process and product innovation. We consider an industrial relations system where firm- and industry-level organizations coexist. In the spirit of the literature on voice, we assume that local bodies decrease...

We explore the long run determinants of current differences in the degree of cooperative labor relations at local level. We do this by estimating the causal effect of the medieval communes –that were established in certain cities in Centre-Northern Italy towards the end of the 11th century–...