We investigate the role of culture in explaining economic outcomes at individual level analyzing how cultural values from the home country affect the decision to work of immigrants in Italy, using the National Survey of Households with Immigrants. Following the “epidemiological approach”, we...

We investigate the role of culture in explaining economic outcomes at individual level analyzing how cultural values from the home country affect the decision to work of immigrants in Italy, using the National Survey of Households with Immigrants. Following the “epidemiological approach”, we...

This paper compares benefits and costs related to hierarchical and decentralized organizations in an agency framework. We show that the relative efficiency of hierarchy diminishes in contexts with asymmetric information. When effort is not observable, performance-related pay is required in order...

Many empirical studies have analysed the convergence of the Italian regions, but no evidence is provided on the causes of differences in productivity levels. Moving from a recent approach focusing on differences in levels across countries, rather than in growth rates (Hall - Jones 1999), the...

Efficiency wages theories argue that the threat of firing, coupled with a high unemployment rate, is a mechanism that discourages employee shirking in asymmetric information contexts. Our empirical analysis aims to verify the role of unemployment as a worker discipline device, considering the...

Scoppa V. (2007) Quality of human and physical capital and technological gaps across Italian regions, Regional Studies 41, 585-599. This paper evaluates the relative contribution of factor accumulation and technology in explaining output per worker differences across Italian regions. The...

We exploit a natural experiment based on the Italian promotion system for associate and full professor positions to investigate gender differences in the willingness to enter competition. Using data on about 42,000 professors and controlling for productivity and a number of individual and field...

Standard agency contracts are enforced by means of Courts since it is assumed that the output results on which payments to the agents are conditioned are fully verifiable. This implies that the Court and the Principal have the same information. This is unrealistic in many contexts since...

In this paper we investigate whether remedial courses, designed to fill in the gaps in basic skills, bring about any improvement in undergraduate student attainment. Our analysis is based on a project financed by the Regione Calabria, which provided a number of educational/training activities to...