The 1993 Income Policy Agreements (concertazione) reformed wage setting institutions in Italy. This change introduced a relevant ability in absorbing macroeconomic shocks and a curb in inflation- ary expectations, at the cost of stagnant aggregate real wages. The firm-level wage premia remained...

This paper reviews Heinz D. Kurz's edited collection of Critical Essays on Piero Sraffa's Legacy in Economics. Besides providing an evaluation of the various contributions to the volume, the paper discusses some broad issues such as the notion of 'price' emerging from Sraffa's Production of...

This special issue collects a selection of the papers presented at the conference-Festschrift in honor of Giancarlo Gandolfo held in Rome on September 20-21, 2010. The conference was organized by Giuseppe De Arcangelis (Sapienza University of Rome), Pier Carlo Padoan (OECD and Sapienza...

In this paper we build up a theoretical continuous time model to study how future constraints affect current investment decisions. We show that firms constrained in the future, but currently unconstrained, select an optimizing investment trajectory different from that of an identical firm that...

Abstract We use a matching framework to explore the hypothesis that firing costs are a decreasing function of labor market tightness. Conventional wisdom suggests that differences in employment protection legislation (EPL) cause differences in labor market performance. Our hypothesis suggests a...

We use a matching framework to explore the hypothesis that firing costs are a decreasing function of labor market tightness. Conventional wisdom suggests that differences in employment protection legislation (EPL) cause differences in labor market performance. Our hypothesis suggests a reverse...

We address theoretically and empirically the impact of R&D and innovation activity (IA) on the use of external numerical flexibility (ENF). We build a firm-sided model showing that a first-order stochastic dominance shift in the productivity distribution function decreases the probability of...

In this paper we build up a theoretical continuous time model to study how future constraints affect current investment decisions. We show that firms constrained in the future, but currently unconstrained, select an optimizing investment trajectory different from that of an identical firm that...