We investigate the changes in women’s participation patterns across 15 EU countries over the last 20 years using individual data from ECHP and EUSILC databases. Our findings indicate that macro factors, such as social policies and institutional characteristics, can explain a notnegligible...

The employment protection legislation is not enforced uniformly both across and within countries. Among the others, the enforcement of regulation depends on the courts' actions and on the capacity of firms to escape legislation. We exploit the variation in courts' inefficiency across Italian...

Over the last two decades Italy registered notable improvements in the functioning of labour market. However, such improvements have been accompanied by a deterioration in terms of productivity and competitiveness. This paper provides some evidence in this respect evaluating to what extent...