Contingent Worksharing

In a setting that focuses on efficient dynamic hours-workers substitution we show that contingent worksharing contributes to workers retention during bad business spells and to sustained hiring during good spells. As a consequence, average employment increases on both accounts. We also show that worksharing interacts with firing costs in affecting workforce decisions and determines the sign of the employment impact from an increase in firing restrictions.Temporary worksharing, Firing Costs, Stochastic methods.

Job protection, industrial relations and employment

In a dynamic stochastic monopoly union model we show that firing costs have a small and ambiguous impact on the level of employment if the union precommits to future wages. Further, in comparison with the commitment equilibrium and for very general union preferences, the no-commitment equilibrium exhibits higher wages and a lower employment level. Since commitment-like equilibria are more likely in cooperative bargain environments, these results suggest that, coeteris paribus, the interaction between employment protection and the quality of industrial relations reduces unemployment. We provide evidence on OECD countries which is consistent with this predictions.Firing costs, unemployment, industrial relations.

Fiscal Policy, Government Polarization, and the Economic Literacy of Voters

We model a two-parties electoral game in an environment where voters are imperfectly informed on the administrative ability of each party. In equilibrium, parties try to manipulate voters’ beliefs and implement fiscal policies that are looser than the social optimum. The size of this deviation from optimality increases with the incentive of parties to manipulate, the voters’ information disadvantage, and the interaction between these two elements. We test our theoretical predictions on a sample of 23 OECD countries over the period 1999–2008. We measure the incentive to manipulate voters’ beliefs through the ideological cohesion of the cabinet (i.e. government polarization), and the scope to manipulate such beliefs through the level of voters’ economic literacy. We find that polarized governments tend to worsen fiscal balances, and this is more likely in countries where the voters’ economic literacy is low. However, such tendency vanishes as literacy increases, suggesting that polarization leads to biased fiscal policies only when there is enough room for manipulation. Our results remain stable after controlling for potentially confounding differences across countries and over time – such as individuals’ education attainments, electoral and institutional systems, voter turnout –, several types of falsification tests, time dynamics and unobserved heterogeneity

Fiscal Policy, Government Polarization, and the Economic Literacy of Voters

We model a two-parties electoral game in an environment where voters are imperfectly informed on the administrative ability of each party. In equilibrium, parties try to manipulate voters’ beliefs and implement fiscal policies that are looser than the social optimum. The size of this deviation from optimality increases with the incentive of parties to manipulate, the voters’ information disadvantage, and the interaction between these two elements. We test our theoretical predictions on a sample of 23 OECD countries over the period 1999–2008. We measure the incentive to manipulate voters’ beliefs through the ideological cohesion of the cabinet (i.e. government polarization), and the scope to manipulate such beliefs through the level of voters’ economic literacy. We find that polarized governments tend to worsen fiscal balances, and this is more likely in countries where the voters’ economic literacy is low. However, such tendency vanishes as literacy increases, suggesting that polarization leads to biased fiscal policies only when there is enough room for manipulation. Our results remain stable after controlling for potentially confounding differences across countries and over time – such as individuals’ education attainments, electoral and institutional systems, voter turnout –, several types of falsification tests, time dynamics and unobserved heterogeneity

Growth history and quasar bias evolution at z < 3 from Quaia

We make use of the Gaia-unWISE quasar catalogue, Quaia, to constrain the growth history out to high redshifts from the clustering of quasars and their cross-correlation with maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) lensing convergence. Considering three tomographic bins, centred at redshifts z̅i = [0.69, 1.59, 2.72], we reconstruct the evolution of the amplitude of matter fluctuations σ 8(z) over the last ∼ 12 billion years of cosmic history. In particular, we make one of the highest-redshift measurements of σ 8 (σ 8(z = 2.72) = 0.22 ± 0.06), finding it to be in good agreement (at the ∼ 1σ level) with the value predicted by ΛCDM using CMB data from Planck. We also used the data to study the evolution of the linear quasar bias for this sample, finding values similar to those of other quasar samples, although with a less steep evolution at high redshifts. Finally, we study the potential impact of foreground contamination in the CMB lensing maps and, although we find evidence of contamination in cross-correlations at z ∼ 1.7 we are not able to clearly pinpoint its origin as being Galactic or extragalactic. Nevertheless, we determine that the impact of this contamination on our results is negligible

Confronti salariali, contratti ed equilibrio macroeconomico

Dottorato di ricerca in strutture e comportamenti economici. 8. ciclo. Tutore S. Beretta. Tutore esterno C. Dell'AringaConsiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Biblioteca Centrale - P.le Aldo Moro, 7, Rome; Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale - P.za Cavalleggeri, 1, Florence / CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle RichercheSIGLEITItal

Unions and Workforce Adjustment Costs

We present an economy composed of many sectors. In each sector, a simple dynamic stochastic game is played between a wage-setting union and many competitive firms that choose employment. Firms are subject to linear workforce adjustment costs whilst the union, along with employment and wages, is also concerned with limiting the number of insiders fired during business downturns.We show that the interaction between mandated firing costs and the protection of insiders operated by the union through the wage policy reduces the effect of the former on the job turnover rate. In particular, the negative relationship between turnover and firing costs may be so weak that it could easily escape empirical detection. Thus, the paper offers a potential explanation for the surprisingly similar patterns of aggregate job turnover exhibited by OECD countries despite large differences in the stringency of legislated employment protection.

Contingent worksharing

In a setting that focuses on efficient dynamic hours-workers substitution we show that contingent worksharing contributes to worker retention during bad business spells and to sustained hiring during good spells. As a consequence, average employment increases on both accounts. We also show that worksharing interacts with firing costs in affecting workforce decisions and determines the sign of the employment impact from an increase in firing restrictions.Temporary worksharing Firing costs Stochastic methods

Rational inattention and politics: how parties use fiscal policies to manipulate voters

We model a two-party electoral game with rationally inattentive voters. Parties are endowed with different administrative competencies and announce a fiscal platform to be credibly implemented in case of electoral success. The budgetary impact of each platform depends on the party’s competence and on a stochastic implementation shock. Voters rely on the announced platform to infer a party’s unobserved competence. In addition, voters receive noisy signals on the impact of each fiscal platform with noise depending ultimately on a voter’s cognitive skills. We predict that the interplay between the desire of parties to win the election (the incentive to manipulate voters’ beliefs) and voters’ (lack of) cognitive skills (the scope for manipulation) distorts fiscal policies towards excessive budget deficits. The mechanism is that parties attempt to manipulate inferences on their competencies by implementing a loose fiscal policy. The predictions are tested empirically on a sample of advanced economies over years 1999–2008. Our results remain stable after controlling for potentially confounding differences across countries and over time, along with unobserved heterogeneity. Finally, alternative mechanisms potentially driving our results are investigated and ruled out