This paper explores a process which I denote as “young workforce disposal” (YWD). YWD reflects the fact that many young people enter the labor market as dependent employees, at some later time they are dismissed and (presumably) move into never-ending unemployment. Long term unemployment may...

We generalize the standard search, matching, and bargaining framework to allow individuals to acquire productivity-enhancing schooling prior to labor market entry. As is well-known, search frictions and weakness in bargaining position contribute to under-investment from an efficiency...

The aim of this paper is to describe a method to introduce empirical data in agent based models. Starting from the econometric and calibration literature, it is shown how to select the values of the parameters in the model and which conditions has to be met to have consistent estimations. A...

While there has been an increase in interest in employment protection, for example in the literature on labour market insiders and outsiders, there is a lack of cross-country comparative research on reforms of the employment protection legislation and the regulation of temporary work. This...

The aim of the paper is to assess whether there is free-riding in teams when team production is sequential and when there is competition between teams. This a common case, which, however, has not been considered in the literature so far. We develop a model where team members contributing earlier...

We study how the closeness of electoral race affect the number of invalid ballots under the traditional paper-ballot voting technology. Using a large dataset from the Italian parliamentary elections in 1994-2001, we find a strong positive correlation between the closeness of electoral race and...

The purpose of this paper is to present an exercise where we identify optimal income tax rules according to various social welfare criteria, keeping fixed the total net tax revenue. Empirical applications of optimal taxation theory have typically adopted analytical expressions for the optimal...

This paper addresses the implications of transitory changes in labor market conditions for low versus high educated workers on the decision to acquire education. To identify this effect, I use the improvement in the labor market prospects of low educated workers motivated by the increases in...

This paper deals with a constrained investment problem for a defined contribution (DC) pension fund where retirees are allowed to defer the purchase of the annuity at some future time after retirement. This problem has already been treated in the unconstrained case in a number of papers. The aim...

We consider the portfolio selection problem in the accumulation phase of a defined contribution (DC) pension scheme. We solve the mean-variance portfolio selection problem using the embedding technique pioneered by Zhou and Li (2000) and show that it is equivalent to a target-based optimization...