Ukraine, Russia and the EU : Breaking the deadlock in the Minsk process

Although the Minsk process brought about a de-escalation of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, not all of its 13 points have been implemented, including a ceasefire and withdrawal of heavy weaponry. In the absence of a military option, economic sanctions have become the core instrument of the EU and the US, to respond to Russia’s aggression. At the end of June 2016, when EU Heads of State and Government meet to discuss the extension of sanctions against Russia, they should bear in mind that Russia did not implement the commitments it took upon itself in the framework of the Minsk agreements. Given the persistent deadlock in the Ukraine crisis, the leaders of the EU ought to agree to prolong the sanctions against Russia, push for the renegotiation of the Minsk II agreement and widen the ‘Normandy format’ to include the US and bolster reforms in Ukraine

Employment protection legislation and wages

In a perfect labor market severance payments can have no real effects as they can be undone by a properly designed labor contract (Lazear 1990). We give empirical content to this proposition by estimating the effects of EPL on entry wages and on the tenure-wage profile in a quasi-experimental setting. We consider a reform that introduced unjust-dismissal costs in Italy for firms below 15 employees, leaving firing costs unchanged for bigger firms. Estimates which account for the endogeneity of the treatment status due to workers and firms sorting around the 15 employees threshold show no effect of the reform on entry wages and a decrease of the returns to tenure by around 20% in the first year and by 8% over the first two years. We interpret these findings as broadly consistent with Lazear’s (1990) prediction that firms make workers prepay the severance cost. JEL Classification: E24, J63, J65Costs of Unjust Dismissals, Regression Discontinuity Design, Severance Payments

“We are against Islam!”: The Lega Nord and the Islamic folk devil

© 2012 the Author(s). This article has been published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. Without requesting permission from the Author or SAGE, you may further copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the article, with the condition that the Author and SAGE Open are in each case credited as the source of the article.Since 1995, the Italian Lega Nord (LN) political party has depicted itself as the defender of Padania, a territory that covers the mainly affluent regions of Northern Italy. Around this politico-spatial territory, the LN has shaped an identity based on the notion of Popolo Padano (the Padanian People). Since the new millennium, LN rhetoric has increasingly focused—stemming more from the demands of realpolitik than those of conviction—on opposing irregular immigration per se and, more specifically, Islam and Muslim immigration. In the eyes of the LN propagandists and their media, the theology of Islam and its practitioners represent a growing threat to the modern Italian and Padanian identity (and tradition). The LN has not been alone in using the media to oppose Islam; the Italian media has reinforced LN messages; Muslims are generally depicted as dangerous and compared with terrorists and their religion and culture are described as the opposite of Italian/West values. Something approximating to a “moral panic” around this issue has ensued. Integral to this are notions of morality combined with practices of moral entrepreneurship. What follows seeks to highlight the LN’s stereotypical depictions of Islam. This evaluation is important because the LN was a major player in former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government (2008-2011) and is still a significant party among the Italian political spectrum. Integral to what follows are the following questions: “Is contemporary Islamic immigration a threat to the Italian (and Padanian) way of life?” and “Are the perceived threats to be found in the periodic uncertainties that societies suffer or might we need to search for wider processes?

The Italian Wage Curve. The Effects of the Recent Labour Market Reforms.

The Italian Wage Curve. The Effects of the Recent Labour Market Reforms The paper examines some effects of the recent reforms aimed at increasing flexibility in the Italian labour market. It shows their incapability to respond to the “inclusion” problem which still characterises the country. New temporary low-skill jobs were created but the reforms have neither enforced industrial competitiveness nor increased productivity. Far from solving the problems of a dual economy, de-regulation of Italian labour market has reinforced them and has concurrently eroded civil rights thereby making a departure form standards of health and morality. Excessive turnover of workers and firms is a major obstacle to human capital accumulation. A hostile territory produces social inequality, poverty and under- consumption that severely compromises growth. Key words: Labor and Demographic Economics; Wages, Compensation and Labor Costs; Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials JEL Classification: J, J3, J31 Final version received May 200

Convergence among Italian Regions, 1861-2011

In 150 years, the trends in regional disparities in economic development within Italy have differed depending on whether they are gauged by longitude or by latitude. The disparities between western and eastern regions first widened and then closed; the North-South gap, by contrast, remains the main open problem in the national history of Italy. This work focuses on the underlying causes of the turning points in regional disparities since national unification in 1861. The first came in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, with the industrialization of the so-called "industrial triangle". This was followed by the "failed new turn" during the interwar years: not only were the beginnings of convergence blocked but the North-South gap, until then still natural, inevitable, was transformed into a fracture of exceptional dimensions. The second turning point, in the twenty years after the World War, produced the first substantial, lasting convergence between southern and northern Italy, powered by rising productivity and structural change in the South. The last turning point was in the mid-1970s, when convergence was abruptly halted and a protracted period of immobility in the disparity began.Italy, regional disparities

Italy and Neutrality: Cultural, Political and Diplomatic Framework

talian history at the beginning of WWI was well harmonised with other events in the Old Continent, while the domestic picture featured a delicate set of links, between Triplicist, neutralist, and nationalist environments, parties and movements, with "nationalism" acting as a shaping factor in Italy's public scene. But different elements emerged in Italian nationalism that would grow into the interventionist policy of an aspiring “great power”, interpreted by some as a line of continuity between liberal and fascist foreign policy. The period of neutrality and the events that led to Italy's intervention were in the spotlight of historiographical analysis in the post-war years, with both focus on fascist Italy's non-belligerance at the surge of WWII and special attention to documentation and the strategies of protagonists (e.g. Giolitti, Salandra, di San Giuliano, Sonnino, D’Annunzio, etc.), as well as to careful reconstruction of events the growing consensus for intervention, the personalisation of stances for and against intervention, the many elements at play within and outside the country and the clever combination of popular mobilisation and parliamentary strategy by supporters of intervention in the weeks between the Treaty of London and war. The goal of the paper is to present the evolution of the Italian position from neutrality to the intervention in the war alongside the Entente, with a particular attention to international context, to the protagonist of the neutrality period in Italy through the memories and the main historiography on the subject

Precautionary recapitalisation: time for a review? Bruegel Policy Contribution Issue n˚21 | July 2017

While precautionary recapitalisation is a legitimate instrument for bank crisis management, the conditions set for it by BRRD (Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive) are restrictive and have so far been effective to prevent its inappropriate use on insolvent banks. Nevertheless, the European Stability Mechanism should be empowered to participate in future precautionary recapitalisations