Documents Manello, Alessandro 2 results

"This paper explores the link between the presence of unions in the workplace, the adoption of decentralized labor agreements and technical efficiency, using a large sample of Italian manufacturing firms. We apply the Data Envelopment Analysis, and its robust version based on bootstrap theory, to get reliable estimates of technical efficiency at the firm level in a standard first stage. We devote particular attention to the specific technology adopted, by distinguishing 20 different sector frontiers, as well as to the presence of outliers. The obtained efficiency scores are analyzed in a second stage applying a truncated regression model estimated via Maximum Likelihood, following the Simar and Wilson (2007, 2011) methodology. Our results highlight that the presence of workplace unionization decreases the level of technical efficiency, while aspects limiting the unions' power such as a strong exposure to international markets, high debt levels or the prevalence of flexible assets partially reduce the negative effect. However, when firms adopt decentralized labor contracts agreements, the effect on efficiency is positive and partially compensates the negative unions' effect. The results are robust to the inclusion of many firm characteristics and to different model specifications."

"Using three waves of a representative survey of Italian private firms, the authors explore the impact of female managers on a firm's use of part-time work. Building on a literature that suggests female leaders display relatively more altruistic values compared to their male counterparts, the authors assess whether these differences manifest themselves in relation to working time arrangements offered by firms. Results, robust to controls for several time-varying firm-level characteristics and unobserved fixed firm heterogeneity, indicate that female managers are significantly more likely to limit the employment of involuntary part-time workers and correspondingly make greater use of full-time employees. Female managers also are more prone to grant part-time arrangements to employees who request them. Results also suggest that increasing the number of female business leaders may mitigate the problem of underemployment among involuntary part-time workers and contribute to the work–life balance of workers with child care or elder care activities."