Documents Bratti, Massimiliano 6 results

"In this paper we use newly available individual-level data from the Longitudinal Survey of Italian Households to investigate the factors associated with female labour force participation after the birth of the first child. We focus on the role of pre-marital job characteristics and find that new mothers who worked without a contract are less likely to participate, while those who worked in the public sector or in a large private firm have a higher probability of being in the labour force after childbearing. We suggest that these effects could be at least partly attributed to differences in the level of job protection and employment stability enjoyed by workers. This implies that in Italy women with highly protected and stable jobs might find it easier to combine career and family, whereas those who are less sheltered by the legislation might be more likely to be inactive after becoming mothers."

"This paper studies the role of the expansion of higher education (HE) in increasing the equality of tertiary education opportunities. We examine Italy's experience during the 1990s, when policy changes prompted HE institutions to offer a wider range of degrees and to open new sites in neighbouring provinces. Our analysis focuses on non-mature full-time students and suggests that HE expansion might have had only limited effects in terms of reducing existing individual inequality in HE achievement as it had a significantly positive impact only on the probability of university enrolment but not on that of obtaining a university degree."

"In a period of expanding higher education, the field of study becomes a key determinant of university graduates' labour market success. In this paper, by means of multivariate analyses of the quality of graduates' early employment outcomes, we first describe how the effect of different fields of study on the university-to-work transition changed between 1995 and 2004 in Italy. Second, we put forward some alternative hypotheses to interpret the changes observed over time and assess which ones seem to be more consistent with the data."

"In this paper we describe the hypothesis of effort-based career opportunities as a situation in which profit maximizing firms create incentives for employees to work longer hours than the bargained ones, by making career prospects dependent on working hours. When effort-based career opportunities are effective, they raise working time and output per worker reducing workers' utility. A first attempt is made to empirically estimate the relationship between hours worked and the expected opportunities of promotion using the British Household Panel Survey data set. Our analysis shows that the perceived probability of promotion increases with working time and that this result is robust to various econometric specifications."

"In this study, we leverage on Italy's size-contingent firing restrictions to identify the causal effect of employment protection legislation (EPL) on firm-provided training using a regression discontinuity design. Our analysis demonstrates that higher levels of EPL reduce incentives for firms to invest in workers' training. The number of trained workers falls by about 1.5-1.9 units at the threshold: this is not a negligible effect, corresponding to a 16-20% reduction in the number of trained workers. The results are robust to several sensitivity checks and controls for potential confounding factors (e.g. work councils). The effect of EPL on training is not mediated by different levels of investment in physical capital or propensities to innovate, while it is mostly accounted for by higher worker turnover and more use of temporary contracts, which entail less training, in firms with higher firing costs. Our study highlights the potential adverse effects of EPL on worker training in dual labour markets, owing to larger firms seeking to avoid the higher costs of EPL by means of temporary contracts."

"This study leverages detailed administrative data on firms' job flows and variation across Local Labor Markets (LLMs) in the spread of COVID-19 to investigate shifts in labor demand prompted by the pandemic. To this end, we exploit the large spatial variation in the intensity of the pandemic observed in Italy. Namely, we investigate the effect of COVID-19 intensity on the composition of new hires in terms of jobs suitable for "working from home" (WFH), which emerged as a new standard during the pandemic. Our results reveal a significant increase in teleworkable-job hires in LLMs that were more severely hit by the pandemic, primarily driven by permanent contracts. An event study analysis uncovers substantial heterogeneity over time. Indeed, the effect was short-term and lasted only for two semesters after the pandemic's outbreak. Although this shift was transitory, by involving permanent hires, it had persistent effects on the structure of the workforce. An effect-heterogeneity analysis shows that effects were greater on the demand for female and younger workers and hires of larger firms, of service firms, and of those located in Northern Italy."