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).

The general elections held in February 2013 marked an earthquake in Italian politics. The two coalitions on the center-left and center-right that had governed Italy alternately between 1996 and 2011 together lost 11 million votes compared to the 2008 elections. The explanations advanced for this...

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...

This paper aims to analyze phenomena such as the diffusion of non-standard work and the incidence of low-paid work from a distinctive, and generally neglected angle: that of occupations. Much can be gained from a more fine-grained analysis of labour market dynamics that casts light on which...

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...

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...

In all European countries, emergency policy measures have been introduced in order to counteract the employment consequences of the economic crisis. In the context of variously composed anticrisis packages, many European countries have used Short-Time Work (STW) schemes, that is measures to...

This paper will be published in M. Magara and S. Sacchi (eds.), The Politics of Social and Industrial Reform, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, forthcoming in 2013.

This paper analyzes the evolution of employment policy in Italy, focusing on the period from the mid-1990s to the economic crisis started in 2008. Two aspects of the policy change process are taken into consideration: its nature and its dynamics. As regards the former, three dimensions -...