Suchergebnisse

Two decades of unsuccessful marginal labour market reforms provided the political support to reduce the flexibility gap between temporary and open-ended workers by means of a retrenchment of the employment protection benefitting the latter. To support employment levels during the crisis years, these policies have generally been combined with generous employment subsidies. While the theoretical and empirical literature on the two interventions taken in isolation appears generally abundant, almost nothing is known when they come combined. Analogously, no evidence is available about their distributional effects. This paper aims at filling these two gaps by means of non-linear difference-in-differences duration models estimated on high-frequency employer-employee linked Italian data. Taking advantage of the quasi-experimental conditions set by the Italian "Jobs Act", we find that large firms are less sensitive than small ones to hiring subsidies, unless they come combined with lower firing costs. Small firms substitute temporary for permanent employment, while larger ones do not seem to give up on fixed-term contracts, possibly as a probationary period. The reforms have benefitted domestic workers over foreigners, and those with a lower or more general human capital. No gender effects emerge.

Abstract
We measure the impact of employment protection reduction in an uncertain framework on firms' hires and performance, exploiting the Italian 2015 Jobs Act. Results indicate that firms (1) stabilize workforce mainly through contract transformations of low-tenure and low-human-capital incumbent workers performing high-physical and low-intellectual tasks; (2) apply a cost-saving strategy that increases profits and decreases value added per-head. Effects are stronger among non-exporting and non-innovative firms. Our evidence casts doubts on the effectiveness of employment protection reductions in enhancing productivity in the long run.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the impact of unemployment on coronary heart diseases (CHD) in Italy on a sample of male manual workers in the private sector.Design/methodology/approachThe authors investigate the association between CHD and different unemployment experiences (ever unemployed; short, mid and long cumulative unemployment), exploiting a large Italian administrative database on careers and health. The study design is based on the balancing of individuals' characteristics during a 12-year pre-treatment period; the measurement of unemployment occurrence during a seven-year treatment period; the observation of CHD occurrence during a five-year follow up. The workers characteristics and the probability of receiving the treatment are balanced by means of propensity score matching. Standard diagnostics on the balancing assumption are discussed and satisfied, while the robustness to violations of the unconfoundedness assumption is evaluated by a simulation-based sensitivity analysis.FindingsThe authors find a significant increase of CHD probability was found among workers who experience more than three years of unemployment (relative risks (RR)=1.91,p<0.1), and among those who exit unemployment starting a self-employment activity (RR=1.70,p<0.1). Using different selections of the study population, a clear pattern emerges: the healthier and more labour market attached are workers during pre-treatment, the greater is the negative impact of long-term unemployment on health (RR=2.79,p<0.01).Originality/valueThe very large representative sample (n=69,937) and the deep longitudinal dimension of the data (1985-2008) allowed the authors to minimize the risks of health selection and unemployment misclassification. Moreover, the adopted definition of unemployment corrected some undercoverage and misclassification issues that affect studies based on a purely administrative definition and that treat unemployment as a unique career event disregarding the duration of the experience.