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Institutional rigidities and employment rigidity in the Italian large industrial firms

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  • RUSSO, Giuseppe
  • VEREDAS, David

Abstract

Many indicators (OECD 1994) show that the Italian labour market is characterised by a strong pro-workers and pro-unions legislation. This is usually interpreted as a high degree of rigidity. It is known that, in response to shocks, firms in rigid labour markets tend to trade workers adjustment off individual working hours adjustment (Abraham-Houseman (1994)). We analyse this trade-off for the Italian large industrial firms, using the Kalman filter to get the impulse-response functions of employment and working hours to permanent and temporary shocks. We find that in the first 80s the terms of the trade off have changed, and employment has become more responsive to shocks. Firms seem thus to have circumvented the regulation: after the pro-workers "institutional push" of the '70s, a process of capital/labour substitution has allowed them to re-form their profit margins and to minimise the labour input. Institutions have tried t o incentivate new hirings reducing the bias in favour of workers. Consequently, a deregulation process started in 1983-84 is changing the Italian labour market. Nonetheless, deregulation per se is unlikely to cause new hirings in an environment where the labour input has been minimised.

Suggested Citation

  • RUSSO, Giuseppe & VEREDAS, David, 2000. "Institutional rigidities and employment rigidity in the Italian large industrial firms," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2000048, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    • Handle: RePEc:cor:louvco:2000048
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    Cited by:

    1. Carbonari, Lorenzo, 2012. "Quasi-fixed inputs in the Italian manufacturing: The case of the pharmaceutical industry," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 25(1), pages 51-69.
    2. Lorenzo Carbonari, 2009. "How variable is labor input in the Italian manufacturing: the case of the pharmaceutical industry," CEIS Research Paper 140, Tor Vergata University, CEIS, revised 30 Jun 2009.
    3. Lucchetti, Riccardo, 2011. "State Space Methods in gretl," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 41(i11).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    institutions; specificity; Kalman filter.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C10 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - General
    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models
    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand

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