A large part of the Italian welfare system is designed and implemented at the very local level, leading to a high degree of heterogeneity in the type and the generosity of available programs across the country. As a consequence, studies of welfare use based on standard household surveys may fail...

Unskilled workers in low productivity jobs typically experience higher labour turnover. This paper shows how this empirical finding is related to variation in the efficiency of the matching process across occupations. A simple theoretical model of employers' search shows that firms find it...

In this paper we estimate the short-run elasticity of substitution between male and female workers, using data on employment and wages from Italian provinces from 1993-2006. We adopt a production function approach similar to that of Card and Lemieux (2001a) and Acemoglu, Autor and Lyle (2004)....