The Process of Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Italian Economy

ABSTRACT: Longitudinal analysis of labour flows provides a number of important indications on the characteristics of job creation and job destruction in the Italian economy, and on the role played by small firms in this process. The main indications may be summarized as follows: 1)the ratio of total separations to total work-force is remarkably high, and almost completely independent of the business cycle: one out of four workers leaves his/her position each year in the economy at large. In the small firms sector alone turnover is much higher, with total separations almost approaching 50|X% of employment; 2)as the economy takes a downturn, it is mainly the number of jobs created through expansion of existing firms that follows this cycle, while separations remain roughly constant; 3)the proportion of jobs created via the establishment of new firms is modest compared to that attributable to the expansion of existing plants (16.0-14.491)). Likewise, the proportion of job losses due to closures visi vis employment shedding by contracting firms, is of the same order of magnitude; 4)job creation and destruction is very high in the small firm sector. Employment in firms of dimension (0-19) is 25.8 % of total employment at the beginning of the observation period (1978) and reaches 28% at its end (1984). Yet the proportion of job creation attributable to small firms is approximately 60% of the new positions due to expansion of existing firms in manufacturing, and 68% in the services. The fraction of jobs destroyed by small firms is somewhat lower: about 46% in manufacturing and 59% in the services; 5)he small firms contribution to net job creation appears even more remarkable both in the aggregate, as well as within all sectors of economic activity and geographical areas. In 1978-80 net employment change in manufacturing is 106,000 units per year; correspondingly net job creation by firms (0-19) is alone 222,000. In the services the proportion between net employment change and the share of the small firms is 1:3. In 1981-83, while in manufacturing over 213,000 jobs are destroyed on average each year, net creation by small firms is still positive (+ 48,000); in the services the overall change is very small (+ 3,000), while the net contribution of small firms is + 53,000.     

Social investments in the knowledge economy: The politics of inclusive,stratified, and targeted reforms across the globe

As countries transition from industrial to post-industrial knowledge economies, education and skills are crucial. Consequently, policy-makers around the globe have increasingly focused on social investment, that is, policies aiming to create, mobilize, or preserve skills. Yet, countries around the globe have developed social investments to different degrees and in highly different forms. Our goal is twofold: First, we introduce a new typology of social investment policies, distinguishing nine types along two dimensions: three distributive profiles (inclusive, stratified, targeted) and three functions (skill creation, preservation, mobilization). This differentiation allows fine-grained analyses of the causes and consequences of different kinds of social investments, thus offering a perspective to study the relationship between efficiency and inclusiveness in a way that goes beyond the mere discussion how social investment policies grosso modo affect inequalities (‘equalizing’ versus ‘Matthew Effects’). Second, we theorize on the politics of social investment. We argue that the interaction of policy legacies and socioeconomic factors is the main explanation for which functions of social investment policies are introduced, whereas their distributive profiles are crucially shaped by political coalitions. We illustrate with empirical material from democracies around the globe.     

Declining inequality in Latin America? Robustness checks for Peru

The Journal of Economic Inequality - Household surveys underreport incomes from the upper tail of the distribution, affecting our assessment about inequality. This paper offers a tractable...     

Entreprise Management in the USSR: is there a Productivity Drive?*

Abstract. According to some neo-institutional economists, the trade-off of perestroika is between the benefits of solving economic problems via institutional changes and the costs of upsetting the nomenklatura. The “sub-institutional” analysis shows instead a series of organizational adjustments of the productive system that can render this dilemma less pressing, provide Western financial aid increases. This aid will ease the social and political tensions of the transition much more than helping the start of a productivity drive in Soviet firms.