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This paper reconsiders the nexus between the abundance of resources and the origins of Sicilian mafia by exploiting a new set of historical data on the Sicilian sulphur industry in the late 19th century, obtained from official reports of the Royal Corps of Mining Engineers at the municipal level. We find that the impact of local production on mafia was smaller -or nil- in the areas richest in sulphur. We also find that mechanization in the extraction process was associated with lower incidence of mafia. Taken together, our findings suggest that larger lodes encouraged better and more orderly working conditions for the miners, possibly reducing physical and psychic strain and, consequently, inclination to violence.

Populist parties' propaganda portrays immigrants as a threat to native workers' jobs. When propaganda materializes as an electoral success, it may drive changes in natives' attitudes towards immigrants. As shown experimentally by Bursztyn et al. (2020), electoral results may signal a change in social preferences about immigration and make individuals more likely to express anti-immigrant resentment that they were previously hiding. We employ Italian administrative data to explore whether this mechanism implies actual differences in native and foreign workers' labor market outcomes. We estimate the impact of the electoral results of an Italian populist party, the Lega Nord, on natives and foreigners' workplace injuries and wages. We show that, on average, a 1% increase in the votes for the Lega Nord increases within-job-spell injury rates of foreign workers by 0.9%. Firms below fifteen employees benefiting from less employment protection drive the result. We argue that this is due to a reallocation of hazardous tasks to immigrant workers only in contexts characterized by higher job insecurity. The evidence is weaker for wage reductions, arguably due to labor market rigidity.

We investigate whether network closure in the supply chain can explain the heterogeneity observed in import premia. Using unique panel data on trade flows among beef farms in the Italian region of Piedmont, we analyze a purely sequential supply chain characterized by the co-existence of two competing production systems: domestic cattle, of lower quality and less risky, and imported cattle, of higher quality and exposed to higher risks. Our findings indicate that trust and mutual cooperation, computed in terms of network closure, are associated with increasing gains from imports and may promote the use and investment in inputs of superior quality.

This paper analyzes the policy response and labor market adjustment of Latvia, which faced the most severe recession in Europe and globally. Latvia's adjustment and recovery from the 2008 economic crisis represents "a rare case study", which "has been an object of intense attention" (Blanchard et al., 2013) as country's authorities, despite many experts' recommendations, decided to maintain its currency peg and adjust through fiscal austerity and internal devaluation implementing major structural reforms. Three years later Latvia returned to a positive growth path and in 2014 joined the Euro zone. The main question in the literature is whether this adjustment represents a success story and can provide a lesson for other countries in the Euro area. We provide details on the adjustment in the Latvian labor market employing individual level data over the years 2002 to 2012. We show that with flexible labor markets, weak unions and relatively low employment protection, adjustment takes place predominantly at the extensive margin since it is driven by flows from permanent wage employment to unemployment. Underemployment constitutes another important adjustment channel, while the evidence for informal employment is more mixed. Wage regressions suggest that job mobility is not associated with increased labor productivity during and immediately after the crisis. We also identify groups particularly affected by the crisis and provide suggestions for the right mix of policy interventions.

Applying propensity score reweighting to Italian administrative data covering the period 1994-2012, we study the conditional distributions of injuries by wage of native and foreign workers and distinguish between the component that is explained by observable characteristics and the component that is instead attributable to the immigrant status. Our analyses highlight some stylized facts. Besides a substantial gap in wage and injury risk that cannot be attributed to differences in the characteristics, foreign workers face higher levels of risk by the same level of wages. The gap is significantly above the level predicted by their observable characteristics by remunerations that are close to the minimum wage level set by collective bargaining. After this threshold, injury rates decline, but less steeply for foreign workers than their observable characteristics would predict. We show that the hedonic wage model could explain the first result as a corner solution whereby workers with low wage potential are forced to accept higher levels of risk due to the lower bounds on minimum wage. The second results could simply be explained by assuming different utility functions for natives and foreigners. We also show that the hedonic wage model is compatible with the marked reduction in injury rates and in the gap that we observe in the recession years.

This paper contributes to the literature on firms' productivity and exporting decisions by analyzing the role played by organizational choice aspects. Rather than setting up a vertically integrated structure, manufacturers may act as sub-contractors in both domestic and foreign markets, and produce to satisfy the requirements of other firms. The predictions that the most productive firms self-select into exporting, while the least productive ones work as sub-contractors serving the domestic market only are tested on a sample of Italian firms observed in the 1998-2003 period. The results of our estimates highlight a ranking of firms consistent with the prediction of a "stylized" theoretical model, and provide a clear indication that firms using sub-contracting in foreign markets display lower TFP values as compared to "direct exporters".

A unique dataset from Italy is used to study the effect of unfavorable business cycle conditions at entry on future workplace safety of young workers. We find that higher local unemployment rates at entry have a positive effect both on severe injuries and non-severe injuries. While the impact of unemployment at entry on severe injuries is constant over time, the effect on non-severe injuries is less pronounced and increases with experience, thus indicating that the reporting behavior is affected by initial conditions. In addition, the same cohorts of workers experience slower wage growth, despite being initially compensated for the occupational injury risk. These results suggest that entrants during recession may be persistently locked into low quality jobs and that the mix of hazardous tasks offered by employers throughout the business cycle can be used to overcome wage and other institutional rigidities of the Italian labor market.

We provide evidence on the effect of ICT investment on the propensity to offshore for a sample of Italian manufacturing firms. To deal with the endogeneity of ICT investment we adopt an innovative identification strategy based on the availability of local broad band facilities. Contrary to previous literature focusing on services, we find a negative effect of ICT on offshoring. Furthermore, when splitting the sample according to the technological level, the effect is negative and significant only in the sub-sample of low-tech firms. This suggests that ICT capital substitutes for foreign workers in performing routine tasks in low-tech industries.

[English]:This book belongs to a new Series promoted by the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Federico II University of Naples, in order to facilitate dialogue among scholars from different disciplines and to encourage interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral approaches on topics, both contemporary and historical. The studies collected in this volume offer a graceful synthesis of past and present, as is typical of the humanities, that study human culture in all its form. / [Italiano]: Gli studi raccolti in questo volume costituiscono il primo ‘Quaderno’ della nuova Collana di pubblicazioni della Scuola di Scienze Umane e Sociali dell’Ateneo fridericiano, promossa con l’intendimento di facilitare il confronto e il dialogo tra studiosi di varia provenienza, di sollecitare indagini trasversali e interdisciplinari sia su argomenti lontani nel tempo sia su temi di grande attualità che sono parte del nostro vissuto quotidiano. Il volume rappresenta una felice sintesi tra passato e presente, come è prerogativa delle ricerche appartenenti alla cultura umanistica, che ha a oggetto lo studio dell’esperienza umana considerata nella sua globalità.

Despite its policy relevance there is little evidence on the joint evolution of gender differences in wages and workplace safety. Between 1994 and 2002 Italian micro-level data show a decline in both gaps, as well as an increased concentration of injuries among low-skilled female workers. The reduction in the gender wage gap is driven by sorting of workers across sectors and occupations, while the reduction in the gender injury gap and the increased concentration of injuries among low skilled female workers appears to be driven by changes in unobservables characteristics. Moreover, our findings indicate that in 2002 women became more vulnerable to non-employment spells, which seems to be followed by both wage reductions and increased workplace risk for the re-employed low-skilled female workers.

This paper is the first to analyze the costs of job loss in Russia, using unique new data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey over the years 2003-2008, including a special supplement on displacement that was initiated by us. We employ fixed effects regression models and propensity score matching techniques in order to establish the causal effect of displacement for displaced individuals. The paper is innovative insofar as we investigate fringe and in-kind benefits and the propensity to have an informal employment relationship as well as a permanent contract as relevant labor market outcomes upon displacement. We also analyze monthly earnings, hourly wages, employment and hours worked, which are traditionally investigated in the literature. Compared to the control group of non-displaced workers (i.e. stayers and quitters), displaced individuals face a significant income loss following displacement, which is mainly due to the reduction in employment and hours worked. This effect is robust to the definition of displacement. The losses seem to be more pronounced and are especially large for older workers with labor market experience and human capital acquired in Soviet times and for workers with primary and secondary education. Workers displaced from state firms experience particularly large relative losses in the short run, while such losses for workers laid off from private firms are more persistent. Turning to the additional non-conventional labor market outcomes, there is a loss in terms of the number of fringe and in-kind benefits for reemployed individuals but not in terms of their value. There is also some evidence of an increased probability of working in informal jobs if displaced. These results point towards the importance of both firm-specific human capital and of obsolete skills obtained under the centrally planned economy as well as to a wider occurrence of job insecurity among displaced workers.

Having unique data we investigate the link between job separations (displacement and quits) and informal employment, which we define in several ways posing the general question whether the burden of informality falls disproportionately on job separators in the Russian labor market. After we have established positive causal effects of displacement and quits on informal employment we analyze whether displaced workers experience more involuntary informal employment than their non-displaced counterparts. Our main results confirm our contention that displacement entraps some of the workers in involuntary informal employment. Those who quit, in turn, experience voluntary informality for the most part, but there seems a minority of quitting workers who end up in involuntary informal jobs. This scenario does not fall on all the workers who separate but predominantly on workers with low human capital. We also pursue the issue of informality persistence and find that informal employment is indeed persistent as some workers churn from one informal job to the next. Our study contributes to the debate in the informality literature regarding segmented versus integrated labor markets. It also contributes to the literature on displacement by establishing informal employment as an important cost of displacement. We also look at the share of undeclared wages in formal jobs and find that these shares are larger for separators than for incumbents, with displaced workers bearing the brunt of this manifestation of informality.

In the years 2003-2008 the Russian economy experienced a period of strong and sustained growth, which was accompanied by large worker turnover and rising informality. We investigate whether the burden of informality falls disproportionately on job separators (displaced workers and quitters) in the Russian labor market in the form of informal employment and undeclared wages in formal jobs. We also pursue the issues whether displaced workers experience more involuntary informal employment than workers who quit and whether informal employment persists. We find a strong positive link between separations and informal employment as well as shares of undeclared wages in formal jobs. Our results also show that displacement entraps some of the workers in involuntary informal employment. Those who quit, in turn, experience voluntary informality for the most part, but there seems a minority of quitting workers who end up in involuntary informal jobs. This scenario does not fall on all separators but predominantly on those with low human capital. Finally, informal employment is indeed persistent since separating from an informal job considerably raises the probability to be informal in the subsequent job.

This paper is the first to analyze the costs of job loss in Russia, using unique new data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey over the years 2003-2008, including a special supplement on displacement that was initiated by us. We employ fixed effects regression models and propensity score matching techniques in order to establish the causal effect of displacement for displaced individuals. The paper is innovative insofar as we investigate as relevant outcomes fringe and in-kind benefits and the propensity to have an informal employment relationship in addition to monthly earnings, hourly wages, employment and hours worked, which are traditionally analyzed. We find that, compared to the control group of non-displaced workers (i.e. stayers and quitters), displaced individuals face a significant income loss following displacement, which is mainly due to the reduction in employment and hours worked. This effect is robust to the definition of displacement. The losses seem to be more pronounced and are especially large for older workers with labor market experience and human capital acquired in Soviet times and for workers with low education. Workers displaced from state firms experience particularly large relative losses in the short run, while such losses for workers laid off from private firms are more persistent. Turning to the additional labor market outcomes, there is a loss in terms of the number of fringe and in-kind benefits for reemployed individuals but not in terms of their value. There is also some evidence of an increased probability of working in informal jobs if displaced. These results point towards the importance of both firm-specific human capital and of obsolete skills obtained under the centrally planned economy as well as to a wider occurrence of job insecurity among displaced workers.