"This paper analyses the cyclical behaviour of male real wages in Italy, distinguishing between North and Centre-South, using the European Community Household Panel 1994–2001. We separate job stayers (remaining in the same job), from within- and between-company job movers. Stayers are the large majority. We find stayers in the North to have high procyclicality of real wages, higher in fact than the USA and the UK. Procyclicality is highest in small firms and the private sector, as expected. In contrast, we find that real wages in the Centre-South exhibit little cyclicality, responding rather to Northern than to local unemployment conditions."

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