Regional Adjustment to Employment Shocks: Italy 1960-1994

In this paper I study the dynamic response of regional variables to employment shocks in Italy 1960-94. Considering an univariate model I find low persistence of the regional unemployment rate in deviation from the national mean. This confirms previous results (Eichengreen 1992) and suggests that some other mechanisms besides migration are at work to restore regional labour market equilibrium in Italy. Using multivariate VAR analisys we obtain that movements in partecipation rather than in migration of workers explain the low persistence of regional relative unemployment in the average Italian region. Wage response to employment shocks has very mild effects on employment and migration dynamics. Adjustment dynamics are very different in the North and the South. The southern regions show a very persistent unemployment and very low interregional migration in response to employment shocks. The lack of interregional migration in the South could be an explanation of the growing gap in unemployment rates between North and South, at least for the part not due to changes in regional natural rates.

Employment protection legislation and wages

In a perfect labor market severance payments can have no real effects as they can be undone by a properly designed labor contract (Lazear 1990). We give empirical content to this proposition by estimating the effects of EPL on entry wages and on the tenure-wage profile in a quasi-experimental setting. We consider a reform that introduced unjust-dismissal costs in Italy for firms below 15 employees, leaving firing costs unchanged for bigger firms. Estimates which account for the endogeneity of the treatment status due to workers and firms sorting around the 15 employees threshold show no effect of the reform on entry wages and a decrease of the returns to tenure by around 20% in the first year and by 8% over the first two years. We interpret these findings as broadly consistent with Lazear’s (1990) prediction that firms make workers prepay the severance cost. JEL Classification: E24, J63, J65Costs of Unjust Dismissals, Regression Discontinuity Design, Severance Payments

Risk Aversion and Schooling Decisions

We develop a non-rational expectation econometric model of sequential schooling decisions. Using unique Italian panel data in which individual differences in attitudes toward risk are measurable (with error), we investigate the effect of risk aversion on the probability of entering higher education. This allows us to characterize the subjective (as opposed to the objective) effect of higher education on marginal risk exposure. Because the measure of risk aversion (the classical Arrow-Pratt degree of absolute risk aversion) is posterior to schooling decisions, it depends on current wealth realizations and we must therefore take into account its endogeneity. We also allow risk aversion to be measured with error. After taking into account both the endogeneity of wealth and measurement error, we find that risk aversion is a key determinant (comparable to parents' educational background) of the decisions to enter higher education. Precisely, risk aversion acts as a deterrent to higher education investmentdynamic discrete choices, éducation, ex-ante risk, risk aversion

Firms' Heterogeneity in Capital/Labor Ratios and Wage Inequality

This paper provides some empirical evidence and a theory of the relationship between residual wage inequality and the increasing dispersion of capital/labor ratios across firms. I document the increasing variance of capital/labor ratios across firms in the US labor market using Compustat data. I also show that the increase in the variance of capital/labor ratios across firms is related to the increasing variance of wages. To explain these empirical regularities I adopt a search model where firms differ in their optimal composition of capital between equipment and structure. As the relative price of equipment falls over time the distribution of capital/labor ratios becomes more dispersed across firms. In a frictional labor market this force generates wage dispersion among identical workers. In the model the increase in wage inequality is due only to job changers as they are randomly matched to an increasingly wide variety of jobs (capital/labor ratio). This feature of the model is consistent with recent evidence that indicates that the bulk of the increase in wage inequality took place between plants rather than within plants. Simple estimation of the model indicates that the dispersion of capital/labor ratios can explain up to one half of the total increase in residual wage inequality.wage inequality, capital intensity, search models

The Effect of Product Demand on Inequality: Evidence from the US and the UK

This paper examines the relationship between product demand and the pattern of rising skill premia and rising employment of skilled workers in the US and the UK since the 1980s. If more skilled workers demand more skill-intensive goods, then an increase in relative skill supply will also induce a shift in relative skill demand. This channel reduces the need to rely on technology and trade to explain the patterns in the data. This paper shows that in the US more educated and richer workers demand more low skill-intensive services (such as cleaning and personal services) but also more skill-intensive services (such as education and professional services). The parametrization of a simple model suggests that this induced demand shift can explain around 7% of the total relative demand shift in the US between 1984 and 2002. Similar results are provided for the UK.wage inequality, product demand, income elasticity

Product Demand Shifts and Wage Inequality

The UK and the US have experienced both rising skill premia and rising employment of skilled workers since the 1980s. These trends are typically interpreted as concurrent shifts of relative skill supplies and demands, and the demand shifts are attributed to skill biased technological change or changes in international trade patterns. If more skilled workers demand more skill intensive goods, then an exogenous increase in relative skill supplies will also induce a shift in relative demand. This channel reduces the need to rely on technology and trade to explain the patterns in the data. In this paper, I illustrate this mechanism in a simple two-sector general equilibrium model. The empirical part of the paper demonstrates that more educated and richer workers indeed demand more skill intensive goods in the UK. Calibration of the model suggests that this induced demand shift can explain 12% of the total relative demand shift in the UK between 1981 and 1993. The baseline model only explains between industry shifts in skill upgrading and wage inequality, while empirically, most of these changes took place within industries. An extension of the model with different qualities of goods and labor is also able to explain some of the within industry changes.

Improved convergence theorems for bubble clusters. I. The planar case

We describe a quantitative construction of almost-normal diffeomorphisms between embedded orientable manifolds with boundary to be used in the study of geometric variational problems with stratified singular sets. We then apply this construction to isoperimetric problems for planar bubble clusters. In this setting we develop an improved convergence theorem, showing that a sequence of almost-minimizing planar clusters converging in $L^1$ to a limit cluster has actually to converge in a strong $C^{1,\alpha}$-sense. Applications of this improved convergence result to the classification of isoperimetric clusters and the qualitative description of perturbed isoperimetric clusters are also discussed. Analogous results for three-dimensional clusters are presented in part two, while further applications are discussed in some companion papers.Comment: 50 pages, 1 figures. Expanded overview sectio