The disappointing performance of the school system in Italy is one of the likely factors that reduce growth in this country. We take it as a case study with interesting implications for other European countries with similar school systems. Lack of funding is not the answer. The Italian school...

Decomposing wages into worker and firm wage components, we find that firm-fixed components are sizeable parts of workers' wages. If workers can only imperfectly observe the extent of firm-fixed components in their wages, they might be misled about the overall wage distribution. Such...

In 1996 Austria introduced a tax for the layoff of older workers, which was tightened in 2000. The regulation requires employers to pay a tax of up to 170% of the gross monthly income when they give notice to employees aged 50 or more. We use data from Austrian social security records to...