Using data from the Bank of Italy’s Household Survey we find that a wage curve exists in Italy after the 1992-93 wage reforms for annual and monthly wages but not for hourly wages. Consistently, after the reforms we find a negative elasticity of annual hours and months worked with respect to...

This paper considers a sample of 228 Italian organisations providing communal services with the aim of measuring their technical efficiency using the DEA (Date Envelopment Analysis) method and of testing the existence of efficiency differentials among nonprofit, forprofit and public...

We analyse the impact of business incentives on the technical efficiency of Italian manufacturing firms. Using DEA allows a novel treatment of the omitted-variable and sample-selection bias. Through DEA one carries out direct comparisons between similar observations akin to those carried out in...

Relying mainly on the use of the "OECD Diagnostic Tool", we highlight the skill demand-supply imbalances existing across the Italian territory, as well as some of their determinants. Having clarified that the promotion of the matching between skill demand and supply is an essential element of...

In this paper we show how the nature of economies of scale can be assessed using a set of procedures based on non-parametric frontier analysis. Through these procedures it is possible to characterise qualitatively the nature of returns to scale for each observation, yielding important...

In the present work we argue that in order to appraise the explanatory power of the existing explanations of dualism in the Italian economy it is important to examine their empirical predictions relatively to the territorial dispersion of some efficiency measures. Applying the non-parametric FDH...

In this paper we test the nexus between financial development and economic growth upon territorially highly disaggregated data from Italy, paying particular attention to the role of market power of local banks and cooperative banks. Profit efficiency, computed using the so-called “true...

This essay attempts to understand the factors determining the satisfaction that volunteers derive from their own activity, and then to compare them with those determining the satisfaction of paid workers. The novelty of this approach is that volunteers and paid workers are compared in the same...

This paper analyses Italian social cooperatives as a typical delivery service firm focusing on employee incentive systems characterized by “role tension” linked to the dual position of being employee and owner at the same time. In line with this idea, the answers to three questions: “Why...

This essay is devoted to investigate the ownership-related wage differentials using a sample of US nursing homes, distinguishing between nonprofit, forprofit and local government organizations. It focuses on within-organization across-occupation wage dispersion, controlling for important factors...