Employment Subsidies, Informal Economy and Women's Transition into Work in a Depressed Area: Evidence from a Matching Approach

We analyse the effects of an active labour market program for disadvantaged workers recently implemented in an Italian depressed area. Our sample includes 859 workers, mostly women, who entered the program before April 2008 and were subsequently interviewed in 2009-10. We complement the existing administrative data with survey data that enables us to control for numerous individual and labour market characteristics for both treated and non-treated individuals. Using propensity-score matching methods, we do find that the employment subsidy had a positive and significant effect (ATT) on both the probability of finding a job for participants and on their level of income. We also control for effect heterogeneity and find that the outcome of the policy was higher for women and, among them, we also find that the program was more effective on less educated and older female workers. Finally, we exploit unique information on previous contacts between workers and firms and on the use of informal channels for job search activity to explore the role of underground employment relations for the effectiveness of the policy

The knowledge regions in the enlarged Europe

Since the Lisbon agenda in 2000, Europe stated the goal to become the most advanced knowledge economy in the world relying specifically on the increase and strengthen of its human capital and technological endowments. However, given the presence of localized externalities in the knowledge accumulation process, this policy may produce distortive and unwanted consequences at the territorial level reinforcing the existing high inequalities among regions. Another crucial feature to be considered is the recent enlargement process of the European Union which has brought on stage new players characterized by a low average level of knowledge activity accompanied by a huge degree of internal territorial disparity. The aim of this paper is to identify the “knowledge regions” in Europe and to examine their main territorial features. To this aim we first build, for 287 regions belonging to 31 European countries, a comprehensive picture of the two variables - human capital and technological activity - which constitute the main pillars of the knowledge economy. We compute two synthetic indicators for human capital and technology and, on the basis of these two dimensions, we identify 74 knowledge regions, mainly located in the centre and north of Europe. This results are confirmed by a cluster analysis.knowledge, human capital, technological activity, regions, europe

NMDA RECEPTOR FUNCTION IS ENHANCED IN THE HIPPOCAMPUS OF AGED RATS

The density and functional activity of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA)-sensitive glutamate receptor was examined in various brain areas of 3-, 18- and 24-month-old rats. The total numbers of binding sites for the NMDA receptor antagonists [H-3]CGP 39653 and [H-3]MK 801 binding sites were decreased in the hippocampus, cerebral cortex and striatum of 18- and 24-month-old rats, relative to 3-month-old animals. In the hippocampus of 18-month-old rats, the reduced number of NMDA receptors was associated with an increased sensitivity of [H-3]MK 801 binding to the stimulatory action of glycine and glutamate. Thus, 10 mu M glycine and 10 mu M glutamate increased [H-3]MK 801 binding in the hippocampus of Is-month-old rats by 75 and 160%, respectively; in 3-month-old animals, the same concentration of these amino acids increased binding by 37 and 95%, respectively. The sensitivity of [H-3]MK 801 binding to glycine and glutamate was not increased in the cerebral cortex and striatum of aged rats. Moreover, an increased efficacy of glycine and glutamate in stimulating the binding of [H-3]MK 801 in the hippocampus was no longer apparent in the 24-month-old rats. The increased sensitivity of [H-3]MK 801 binding to glycine and glutamate in the hippocampus of 18-month-old rats may reflect an increase in NMDA receptor activity to compensate for the decrease in receptor number