Suchergebnisse

PurposeThe Covid-19 pandemic appears to have engendered heterogeneous effects on individuals' labour market prospects. This paper focuses on two possible sources of a heterogeneous exposition to labour market risks associated with the pandemic outbreak: the routine task content of the job and the teleworkability. To evaluate whether these dimensions played a crucial role in amplifying employment and wage gaps among workers, we focus on the case of Italy, the first EU country hit by Covid-19.Design/methodology/approachInvestigating the actual effect of the pandemic on workers employed in jobs with a different degree of teleworkability and routinization, using real microdata, is currently unfeasible. This is because longitudinal datasets collecting annual earnings and the detailed information about occupations needed to capture a job's routine task content and teleworkability are not presently available. To simulate changes in the wage distribution for the year 2020, we have employed a static microsimulation model. This model is built on data from the Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (IT-SILC) survey, which has been enriched with administrative data and aligned with monthly observed labour market dynamics by industries and regions.FindingsWe measure the degree of job teleworkability and routinization with the teleworkability index (TWA) built by Sostero et al. (2020) and the routine-task-intensity index (RTI) developed by Cirillo et al. (2021), respectively. We find that RTI and TWA are negatively and positively associated with wages, respectively, and they are correlated with higher (respectively lower) risks of a large labour income drop due to the pandemic. Our evidence suggests that labour market risks related to the pandemic – and the associated new types of earnings inequality that may derive – are shaped by various factors (including TWA and RTI) instead of by a single dimension. However, differences in income drop risks for workers in jobs with varying degrees of teleworkability and routinization largely reduce when income support measures are considered, thus suggesting that the redistributive effect of the emergency measures implemented by the Italian government was rather effective.Originality/valueNo studies have so far investigated the effect of the pandemic on workers employed in jobs with a different degree of routinization and teleworkability in Italy. We thus investigate whether income drop risks in Italy in 2020 – before and after income support measures – differed among workers whose jobs are characterized by a different degree of RTI and TWA.

Erasmus+ is one of the most popular programmes financed by the European Union. It provides international mobility grants to university students while staying enrolled at their home university. This paper brings novel evidence on the effect of participating in the programme on students' academic outcomes, using rich administrative data from one of the largest public universities in Italy. We rely on a fuzzy Regression Discontinuity Design, since the selection of applicants to Erasmus mobility programmes depends on a continuous score assigned during the application process. Our results show that Erasmus mobility does not delay graduation at the home university and, in addition, it has a positive and significant impact on undergraduates' final degree mark. Investigating possible heterogeneous effects, we find that Erasmus mobility improves graduation results for undergraduate students in scientific and technical fields (STEM) and for those who apply for the Erasmus grant in the first year of their studies. Finally, the positive impact on performance at graduation appears to be stronger for students who visit foreign universities of relatively lower quality compared with their home university and for those who stay abroad for more than six months.