We empirically model individual utility from pay as function of worker’s own wage and the earnings of all other workers within the same establishment. The aims of this paper are twofold: first, to study the mechanisms underlying the importance of relative wages in determining worker...

In this paper we investigate the existence of negative jobless duration dependence and the impact of jobless spells on future wages. Our findings are relatively out of line compared to analogous explorations. We find evidence of very long unemployment duration of the young male labor force, much...

This report is one of the outputs resulting from Workpackage 4, "Social and professional integration" of the WALQING project, SSH-CT-2009-244597 (www.walqing.eu).

This paper investigates the effects of public childcare availability in Italy on mothers' working status and children's scholastic achievements. We use a newly available dataset containing individual standardized test scores of pupils attending second grade of primary school in 2008-09 in...

Our study analyses the costs and benefits of early child care for mothers’ labour supply and child development in Italy, exploring the role of the selection criteria used by local governments to assign child care slots. In Italy, only around 13% of the demand for public child care...

This paper analyzes the implications of unobserved heterogeneity in discrete-time, discrete-choice microsimulation models. We compare the predictions coming from simple pooled probit estimates with those obtained using random effect dynamic probit models, in a dynamic microsimulation of...

Dynamic microsimulation modeling involves two stages: estimation and forecasting. Unobserved heterogeneity is often considered in estimation, but not in forecasting, beyond trivial cases. Non-trivial cases involve individuals that enter the simulation with a history of previous outcomes. We show...

Dynamic microsimulation modeling involves two stages: estimation and forecasting. Unobserved heterogeneity is often considered in estimation, but not in forecasting, beyond trivial cases. Non-trivial cases involve individuals that enter the simulation with a history of previous outcomes. We show...

There is some controversy in the field of household economics regarding the efficiency of household decisions. We make the point that a flexible specification of spousal preferences and the household production technology precludes the possibility of using revealed preference data on household...

While a large literature has focused on the impact of parental investments on child cognitive development, very little is known about the role of child?s own in- vestments. Information on how children invest their time separately from parents is probably little informative for babies and...