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).

Theoretical considerations suggest that workers holding temporary contracts should accumulate more general human capital than workers under permanent contracts. Using matched employer-employee data, we find empirical support for this hypothesis, by showing that dismissed temporary workers are...

We propose a simple test that uses information on workers’ mobility, wages and firms’ profits to identify the sign and strength of assortative matching. The basic intuition underlying our empirical strategy is that, in the presence of positive (negative) assortative matching, good workers...

Tournaments are designed to enhance participants’ effort and productivity. However, ranking near the top may increase psychological pressure and reduce performance. We empirically study the impact of interim rank on performance using data from international diving tournaments. We find...

This article studies the dynamics and persistence of poverty in Italy during the nineties (1994-2001). Two definitions of poverty are analyzed: income poverty and a multidimensional index of life-style deprivation. For both definitions, poverty exit and re-entry rates are estimated and combined...

There is little evidence on the joint evolution of gender differences in wages and other job amenities. We analyze gender differences in wages and workplace safety using 9 years of Italian administrative micro-level data. We document that a decline in the gender wage gap was accompanied by a...

We propose a test that uses information on workers’ mobility, wages and firms’ profits to identify the sign and strength of assortative matching. The basic intuition underlying our empirical strategy is that, in the presence of positive (negative) assortative matching, good workers are more...

Little is known about the effects of revealing information on relative performance during a dynamic tournament. We empirically study the impact of interim rank on risk taking and performance using data on professionals competing in tournaments for large rewards. As our data allows us to observe...

We study the repeal of a regulation that imposed maximum wholesale and retail markups for all but five fresh fruits and vegetables. We compare the prices of products affected by regulation before and after the policy change and use the unregulated products as a control group. We find that...

This note shows how the Shapley-value can be applied to the regression-based methods that are often used to decompose changes in wage distributions. The method remedies the path-dependency exhibited by existing approaches that compute the contributions due to (i) changes in sample observable...