Public pension expenditure in Italy has been growing rapidly in the last three decades and is now among the highest in industrialized countries. Despite recent reforms, benefits remain generous by international standards and, unless additional measures are taken, the financial situation of the...

In this paper I address the question of whether wages are affected by current and past labor market conditions. Using microeconomic data from Italy and Spain I obtain three main results. First, the unemployment elasticity of wages is negative and significant, but much smaller than the one...

When information about workers'' abilities is imperfect, past employment histories are important determinants of unemployment duration. This paper studies the effects of employment protection laws on unemployment spells in two countries: Italy and Spain. Italy and Spain''s adoption of fixed-term...

Public pension expenditure in Italy has been growing rapidly in the last three decades and is now among the highest in industrialized countries. Despite recent reforms, benefits remain generous by international standards and, unless additional measures are taken, the financial situation of the...

A new methodology is described which tests between various equilibrium theories of unemployment using matching data. The Paper shows how to correct econometrically for temporal aggregation effects, where the econometrician’s aim is to identify a matching process using data which is recorded...

This paper investigates long-term returns from unemployment compensation, exploiting variation from the UK JSA reform of 1996, which implied a major increase in job search requirements for eligibility and in the related administrative hurdle. Search theory predicts that such changes should raise...

In the mid-1980s, several European countries, characterized by high levels of employment protection, introduced fixed-term contracts. Since then most accessions to employment have been through fixed-term contracts. This Paper studies the duration pattern of fixed-term contracts and the...