Documents Ricci, Andrea 13 results

"In questo lavoro si analizza empiricamente l'effetto esercitato da un innalzamento (inatteso) dell'età di pensionamento sulle scelte di assunzione delle imprese italiane. A tal fine si utilizzano i dati della Rilevazione su Imprese e Lavoro (RIL) condotta dall'INAPP nel 2015 su un campione rappresentativo di società di persone e società di capitali operanti nel settore privato extra-agricolo. Si mostra così che, nel periodo 2012-2014, l'approvazione della legge 214/2011 (cosiddetta "Riforma Fornero") ha indotto il 2,2% delle aziende a rinunciare ad assunzioni già programmate. Ciò ha comportato una perdita di nuove assunzioni pari a circa 43.000 lavoratori. Sulla base di tali evidenze sembra dunque confermata l'ipotesi che l'allungamento dell'età di pensionamento abbia generato una contrazione di nuova occupazione. L'applicazione di semplici modelli di regressione permette poi di verificare in che misura queste mancate assunzioni si sono accompagnate a uno spiazzamento generazionale e a modifiche nell'organizzazione del lavoro all'interno delle aziende. I risultati delle stime indicano che a seguito della riforma vi è stata una contrazione dell'occupazione dei giovani con meno di 35 anni e una parallela riduzione nell'uso dei contratti a tempo determinato, mentre è aumentata la quota di lavoratori coinvolti in attività di formazione professionale. Infine, i risultati delle regressioni mostrano che la riforma si è accompagnata a una contrazione dell'occupazione femminile."

Among the steps to improve a country's competitiveness, several commentators and international institutions include a general emphasis on deregulation and decentralization of industrial relations. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by studying whether and how firm-level unionism and collective agreements affect workplace training, a key ingredient to competitiveness. Theory provides inconclusive predictions on the various channels and processes through which firm-level industrial relations may affect workplace training. Quantitative and qualitative analyses, when used in isolation, have also proved insufficient for an adequate account of the various factors at play. This is where our paper mostly contributes. In the spirit of opening the "black box" of firm-level unionism and collective bargaining, we mix together quantitative and qualitative strategies. Our results suggest that workplace unionism, and especially decentralized collective agreements, favor workplace training in subtler and often more dynamic ways than commonly understood."

"New technologies can shape the production process by affecting the way in which inputs are embedded in the organization, their quality, and their use. Using an original employer-employee dataset that merges firm-level data on digital technology adoption and other characteristics of production with employee-level data on worker entry and exit rates from the administrative archive of the Italian Ministry of Labor, this paper explores the effects of new digital technologies on labor flows in the Italian economy. Using a Difference-in-Difference approach, we show that digital technologies lead to an increase in the firm-level hiring rate – particularly for young workers - and reduce the firm-level separation rate. We also find that digital technologies are positively associated with workplace training, proxied by the share of trained employees and the amount of training costs per employee. Furthermore, we explore the heterogeneity of effects related to different technologies (robots, cybersecurity and IoT). Our results are confirmed through several robustness checks."

"This article analyses the role of green investments (GIs) in the adoption of decentralised bargaining and the single aspects negotiated therein. Using data on a large representative sample of Italian firms, we find that investing in green technologies increases the overall probability of decentralised agreements. Further, GIs lead to an increase in negotiations on performance-related pay and welfare benefits. These results are robust to an econometric strategy that controls for unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity issues. Our explanation for this evidence is that the current ecological transition in production processes is likely causing significant organisational changes. Managing these changes requires increased flexibility in negotiating critical issues at the company level, such as wage premiums and non-monetary benefits to employees."

"This article examines national and industry-level differences in total factor productivity (TFP), or efficiency, for 14 European countries and ten industries for the period 1995–2007. The main aim is to ascertain the extent to which employment protection legislation (EPL) for workers with temporary contracts affects TFP, based on difference-in-difference estimations. The results show that the deregulation of temporary employment negatively affects TFP growth in European economies and that, at industry level, this liberalization affects industries with a higher propensity to use temporary workers. Furthermore, the authors find that the deregulation of temporary employment discourages training and the acquisition of firm-specific skills."

"This paper investigates the effect of workplace unionization and product market volatility on firms' propensity to use temporary employment. Using Italian firm level data, we show that unionization and volatility have a positive impact on the share of temporary contracts. However, as volatility increases the union effect becomes negative, suggesting that in a highly volatile economic environment unions may be concerned about the weakening of their bargaining power associated with an extensive use of temporary workers. Furthermore, these effects are at work only for the use of non-training temporary contracts, while training temporary contracts are not affected by unions, volatility and their interplay. We argue that this occurs because non-training temporary contracts can be used by firms as a buffer stock to cope with uncertainty and by unions to protect insiders, while training temporary contracts are more likely to be used as a screening device for future permanent positions."

"Liberalisation of temporary contracts has become an important component of recent labour reforms but up to now available research has not paid attention to the impacts of these institutional changes on functional income distribution. The present paper intends to fill this gap by focussing on the reduction in strictness of employment protection of temporary jobs and analysing its effects on factor shares. We have estimated labour share, as well as its components, worker pays and employment, by considering country-sector evidence for 14 EU economies and the sample period 1995-2007. We have found that these legislative changes, that have favoured the extensive use of temporary contracts, have contributed to instability of working conditions and caused negative effects on workers' pays. These impacts have more than counterbalanced the scanty positive effects on employment (due to greater access to the labour market of additional workers, likely young and women), thus leading to a decrease in income share accruing to workers."

"Liberalisation of temporary contracts has become an important component of recent labour reforms but up to now available research has not paid attention to the impacts of these institutional changes on functional income distribution. The present paper intends to fill this gap by focussing on the reduction in strictness of employment protection of temporary jobs and analysing its effects on factor shares. We have estimated labour share, as well as its components, worker pays and employment, by considering country-sector evidence for 14 EU economies and the sample period 1995-2007. We have found that these legislative changes, that have favoured the extensive use of temporary contracts, have contributed to instability of working conditions and caused negative effects on workers' pays. These impacts have more than counterbalanced the scanty positive effects on employment (due to greater access to the labour market of additional workers, likely young and women), thus leading to a decrease in income share accruing to workers."

"This paper investigates empirically the relation between wage inequality, employment structure, and skill-biased change in Italy between 1993 and 2004. Applying quantile decomposition analysis, we point out that changes in wage inequality are mainly driven by a decrease in educational premia over time, whereas changes in employment structure play a negligible role. This evidence suggests that changes in wage inequality in Italy can hardly be interpreted in terms of a skill-biased change, and the evidence is further reinforced by a set of descriptive statistics showing that the increasing educational attainments of the workforce might have been crowded out by a stable trend in the demand for skills."