This paper investigates if labour income uncertainty, particularly as related to the development and diffusion of fixed and short-term work contracts, may have played a role in determining the recent decline of the marginal propensity to consume of Italian households. We analyse this issue in...

La présente étude commence par une revue du cadre conceptuel des différentes mesures du chômage structurel et des autres méthodes empiriques qui ont été utilisées pour estimer ces mesures. A partir de là, elle expose une méthode pour estimer, au moyen du filtre de Kalman, les NAIRU...

The paper first reviews the conceptual framework underlying different measures of structural unemployment as well as alternative empirical methods that have been used to provide estimates of them. Drawing on this review, it goes on to develop a method for estimating time-varying NAIRUs across a...

The degree of integration and openness of OECD economies has consistently increased throughout most of the past three decades. By limiting the influence of non-economic factors, and reducing heterogeneity in economic systems, increased integration and openness enhance the emergence of common...

The structural rate of unemployment and associated non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (the NAIRU) are of major importance to the analysis of macro and structural economic developments, although in practice these concepts are not well defined and there is considerable uncertainty and...

Italy promoted one of the most generous renewable support schemes worldwide which resulted in a high increase of solar power generation. We analyze the Italian day-ahead wholesale electricity market, finding empirical evidence of the merit-order effect. Over the period 2005-2013 an increase of 1...