Training, firing taxes and welfare

This paper shows that the distortion of privately provided training caused by hold up an justify the introduction of positive firing tax in economies populated by risk neutral or perfectly insured agents. More precisely we highlight two results. First, an efficient economic policy, which makes use of a small lay-off tax and hiring subsidies, always increases employment, productivity and the welfare of unemployed workers. Second, with no hiring subsidies, the relationship between firing penalties and welfare depends on the returns to training. In this case, if returns to training are high enough, the introduction of a small firing tax causes an increase in job tenure, training investment and the welfare of unemployed.

Bubbles, External Imbalances & Demand for International Liquidity in the Bretton Woods II System

Global structural factors both monetary and real played a prominent role in the burst of subprime crisis: 1) the Bretton Woods II international monetary system; 2) the reduction of US real investment return compared with competing countries. We develop a theoretical model to analyze the impact of these factors and macroeconomic policies on US current account and asset prices. The excess saving of U.S. nonfinancial corporations from 2000-2001 has undermined the stability of the Bretton Woods II system. Accommodative US monetary and fiscal policies have mitigated the imbalances but in the long term structural factors have prevailed. Only a recovery of US real capital profitability can ensure long run coexistence between present model of global development and current international monetary system.Current Account, Bretton Woods II, External imbalances, Saving Investment, International Liquidity, Asset Prices.

Chameleon fields and solar physics

In this article we discuss some aspects of solar physics from the standpoint of the so-called chameleon fields (i.e. quantum fields, typically scalar, where the mass is an increasing function of the matter density of the environment). Firstly, we analyze the effects of a chameleon-induced deviation from standard gravity just below the surface of the Sun. In particular, we develop solar models which take into account the presence of the chameleon and we show that they are inconsistent with the helioseismic data. This inconsistency presents itself not only with the typical chameleon set-up discussed in the literature (where the mass scale of the potential is fine-tuned to the meV), but also if we remove the fine-tuning on the scale of the potential. Secondly, we point out that, in a model recently considered in the literature (we call this model "Modified Fujii's Model"), a conceivable interpretation of the solar oscillations is given by quantum vacuum fluctuations of a chameleon.Comment: 17 pages including figure

Decentralised bargaining and performance related pay: new evidence from a panel of Italian firms

Purpose: This paper examines two institutional aspects closely related: (i) the extent to which collective bargaining has been decentralized at firm or district level; (ii) the extent to which, at this level of bargaining, Performance Related Pay (PRP) have been used. Design/methodology/approach: On the basis of a unique database, which contains recent information on nationwide sample of firms, panel estimates aimed at identifying the main factors which have favoured the adoption of the second level of bargaining and PRP are presented. Findings. unions, after size, is the main factor associated to the probability of the second level of bargaining and PRP. Significant estimates are also found for training. Research limitations/implications – Further research based on additional data should enable us to identify causal effects. Practical implications: It offers new evidence to evaluate ongoing reform proposals to implement firm-level agreements more tailored to firms’ specific needs. Originality/value our estimates are based on a unique dataset which contains recent information and a nationwide sample of firms, representative of the whole Italian economy (other studies on Italy are more limited in scope, since they focus on specific sectors or regions). Second, it addresses the question of training, an aspect so far not examined in relation to PRP in Italy.Performance–related pay, unions

Performance-Related Pay, Unions and Productivity in Italy: evidence from quantile regressions

Purpose – This study analyses the effects on productivity of Performance-Related Payments (PRP) and unions, and examines to what extent heterogeneity between firms characterises these influences. Design - For the Italian economy, the study presents firm-level quantile regressions for Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and controls for various observed characteristics of firms, worker composition and labour relations. Findings - The paper shows the significant effect of PRP and unions on the whole economy and on firms operating in the manufacturing industries. In these industries, the uniform incentive effects of PRP but the increasing impact of unions are estimated along the productivity distribution. Conversely, the role of management - significant in all sectors- is more efficacious in prospering large firms operating in services. Research limitations – The adoption of PRP schemes and the presence of unions maybe endogenous to firms’ productivity, and our estimates do not prove causal links but simply suggest correlations. Practical implications - The limited incentive effects of PRP schemes in services contribute towards explaining the slowdown in Italian productivity, whereas the role of unions is quite uniform among sectors. Originality- The paper addresses the hitherto poorly developed issue of firm heterogeneity and TFP, and offers the first Italian study of PRP and unions, which covers all dimensional classes of firms and non-agricultural sectors of the Italian economy.Performance – related pay, productivity.

Temporary job protection and productivity growth in EU economies

The present study examines cross-national and sectoral differences in Total Factor Productivity (TFP) in fourteen European countries and ten sectors from 1995 to 2007. The main aim is to ascertain the role of employment protection of temporary contracts on TFP by estimating their effects with a “difference-in-difference” approach. Results show that deregulation of temporary contracts negatively influences the growth rates of TFP in European economies and that, within sectoral analysis, the role of this liberalization is greater in industries where firms are more used to opening short-term positions. By contrast, in our observation period, restrictions on regular jobs do not cause significant effects on TFP, whereas limited regulation of product markets and higher R&D expenses positively affect efficiency growth.

Pensions reforms, workforce ageing and firm-provided welfare

This paper investigates the impact of an exogenous increase in the legal retirement age on the firms’ propensity to provide welfare services voluntarily to their employees. To this purpose we exploit a unique dataset derived from the Employers and Employees Survey, conducted by the National Institute for Public Policies Analysis (Inapp) in 2015 on a large and representative sample of Italian firms. By referring to the existing sociological and economic literature we make the hypothesis that a sudden increase in the share of older workers may motivate the employers to establish welfare schemes as a way to cope with an ageing workforce. The results obtained from different regression models show that firms which, as a consequence of the Law 214/2011 (the so-called “Fornero pension reform”), were forced to give up previously planned hirings increased the probability of providing welfare services at the workplace. This result also holds if propensity score matching methods are used in order to control for sample selection issues

The potential role of perceived support for reduction of special education teachers’ burnout

Teacher burnout is conceived as a general concern in special education because of the emotionally demanding work context. This study explored the potential role of perceived support for reduction of burnout in a sample of 276 special education teachers working in lower (n=130) and higher (n=146) secondary schools. Participants completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory - Educators Survey (MBI-ES) and a scale on the perceived collaboration and support from general education teachers. To explore the association between perceived support and each burnout measure considered (emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and personal accomplishment), correlation analyses were performed. Then, in order to check the robustness of our empirical findings, multilevel regression models (at teacher-school-administrative area level) were used controlling for several variables (teacher socio-demographic characteristics, teacher training and professional background, inclusive teaching practice and school context). Results suggest the potential role of perceived support in reducing emotional exhaustion and improving personal accomplishment in all the models considered. Instead, the relationship between perceived support and depersonalisation seems to be quite controversial, moreover when adding controls related to teacher’s training and professional background

Performance of a community detection algorithm based on semidefinite programming

The problem of detecting communities in a graph is maybe one the most studied inference problems, given its simplicity and widespread diffusion among several disciplines. A very common benchmark for this problem is the stochastic block model or planted partition problem, where a phase transition takes place in the detection of the planted partition by changing the signal-to-noise ratio. Optimal algorithms for the detection exist which are based on spectral methods, but we show these are extremely sensible to slight modification in the generative model. Recently Javanmard, Montanari and Ricci-Tersenghi [1] have used statistical physics arguments, and numerical simulations to show that finding communities in the stochastic block model via semidefinite programming is quasi optimal. Further, the resulting semidefinite relaxation can be solved efficiently, and is very robust with respect to changes in the generative model. In this paper we study in detail several practical aspects of this new algorithm based on semidefinite programming for the detection of the planted partition. The algorithm turns out to be very fast, allowing the solution of problems with O(105) variables in few second on a laptop computer

Phase Transitions in Semidefinite Relaxations

Statistical inference problems arising within signal processing, data mining, and machine learning naturally give rise to hard combinatorial optimization problems. These problems become intractable when the dimensionality of the data is large, as is often the case for modern datasets. A popular idea is to construct convex relaxations of these combinatorial problems, which can be solved efficiently for large scale datasets. Semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxations are among the most powerful methods in this family, and are surprisingly well-suited for a broad range of problems where data take the form of matrices or graphs. It has been observed several times that, when the `statistical noise' is small enough, SDP relaxations correctly detect the underlying combinatorial structures. In this paper we develop asymptotic predictions for several `detection thresholds,' as well as for the estimation error above these thresholds. We study some classical SDP relaxations for statistical problems motivated by graph synchronization and community detection in networks. We map these optimization problems to statistical mechanics models with vector spins, and use non-rigorous techniques from statistical mechanics to characterize the corresponding phase transitions. Our results clarify the effectiveness of SDP relaxations in solving high-dimensional statistical problems.Comment: 71 pages, 24 pdf figure