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Poverty and informal employment are often regarded as correlated phenomena. Many empirical studies have shown that informal employment has a causal impact on household poverty, mainly through low wages. Yet other studies focus on the reverse causality from poverty to informality, arising from a range of constraints that poverty poses to jobholders. Only recently have empirical researchers tried to study the simultaneous two-way relationship between poverty and informality. However, existing studies have relied upon cross-sectional data and static econometric models.

This chapter takes the next step and studies the dynamics of poverty and informality using longitudinal data. Our empirical analysis is based on a bivariate dynamic random-effect probit model and recent panel data from Argentina. The method used provides a means of assessing the persistence over time of poverty and informal employment at the individual level, while controlling for both observed and unobserved determinants of the two processes. The results show that both poverty and informal employment are highly persistent processes. Moreover, positive spillover effects are found from past poverty on current informal employment and from past informality to current poverty status, corroborating the view that the two processes are also shaped by interrelated dynamics in segmented labor markets.

This paper seeks to explore whether temporary jobs are a port of entry into permanent employment and to argue that the answer crucially depends on the type of temporary contracts being considered.

The paper bases its empirical evidence on a longitudinal sample of labour market entrants in Italy and estimates dynamic multinomial logit models with fixed effects to allow for the non‐random sorting of workers into the different types of contracts.

The authors show that the transition to permanent employment is more likely for individuals who hold any type of temporary contract than for the unemployed, thus broadly confirming the existence of port‐of‐entry effects. Yet, not all temporary contracts are the same. An order among non‐standard contracts with respect to the probability of taking an open‐ended job emerges, with training contracts at the top, freelance work at the bottom, and fixed‐term contracts outperforming apprenticeships. Strong SSC rebates, lack of training requirements, and low legal constraints concerning renewals result in poor port‐of‐entry performance, as in the case of freelance contracts. Instead, mandatory training and more binding legal constraints on the use, extension, and renewals of training contracts tend to enhance the probability of getting a standard job.

Most of the existing empirical literature aggregates temporary contracts in a single category, thereby ignoring a relevant source of heterogeneity.

Volume 18 of Research on Economic Inequality contains selected papers from the Society for the Study of Economic Inequality's Third Annual Meeting (July, 2009) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The volume collects eleven papers, five of which focus on inequality and poverty in Latin America. The Latin American papers address basic needs and poverty, multidimensional poverty, educational mobility, poverty dynamics, and the role of cash transfer programs in addressing inequality. The second half of Volume 18 collects other papers by ECINEQ members. The topics covered include taxation and inequality, evaluating poverty orderings, testing for mobility dominance, measuring relative deprivation, estimation of the costs of maintaining a child, and evaluating nutritional inequality.

The Saint Valentine's Decree (1984) and the ensuing hard‐fought referendum (1985), which reduced the automatisms of scala mobile, started a process of redefinition of wage fixing in Italy, which culminated with the final abolition of scala mobile (1992) and the approval of Protocollo d'intesa (1993). Since then, following new corporatist principles, a national system of centralised wage bargaining (concertazione) and so‐called “institutional indexation” have governed the determination of wages. Does incomes policy generate greater coordination in the process of wage formation? Does it cause greater co‐movement of wages, prices, labour productivity and unemployment? This paper aims to answer these questions with reference to one of the G8 economies.

After testing for unit root each component by using the ADF, Phillips and Perron, DF‐GLS and Zivot and Andrews statistics, the paper tests for co‐integration the so‐called WPYE model using different methods. The Engle and Granger approach is used to assess the impact of incomes policy on the speed of adjustment of real wages, productivity (and unemployment) to their equilibrium value, while the Gregory and Hansen procedure serves as a means to endogenously detect the presence of a regime shift. The paper estimates coefficients before and after the structural break.

Incomes policy based on the 1993 Protocol has caused a regime shift in the process of wage determination. The long‐run estimates of the WPYE model do not generate stationary residuals except when a dummy for 1993 is added. The share of wages over GDP reduces by about ten percentage points in the early 1990s and has stood at about 57 per cent since 1995. The link with productivity is close to one‐to‐one only before the break. The feedback mechanism, as measured by the coefficient of lagged residuals in short‐run estimates, is increased from −0.46 in the pre‐reform to −0.79 in the post‐reform period, suggesting that incomes policy has increased real wage flexibility indeed. In recent years the link between real wages and (very low) labour productivity growth has weakened. In a sense, incomes policy has introduced a new form of (upward) wage rigidity. Last but not least, incomes policy has changed the correlation with the unemployment rate from positive to not statistically significant.

Future developments will focus on disentangling the impact of incomes policy vis‐à‐vis other policy interventions on WPYE and on unemployment.

The analysis calls for a careful revision of the 1993 Protocol aimed at better protecting the purchasing power of real wages without losing control on inflation, and introducing growth‐generating mechanisms.

The paper studies the impact of incomes policy on WPYE and the Phillips curve by means of co‐integration and structural break analysis. It proposes to interpret the effect of incomes policy on the Phillips curve as changing the coefficient of the error correction mechanism that leads real wages to their long‐run equilibrium value.

A network of partners helps and assists a crowdfunding platform (CFP) in scouting, assessing and selecting projects. This cooperation increases the number of successful projects by attracting a sizable number of investors, proponents and attracting marginal investors when a campaign falls short of the threshold for success. This study examines the role of partner networks in a platform ecosystem, specifically in terms of number of different partners and their diversity in the performance of the crowdfunding campaign.

Using logistic and linear regressions, we analyze a sample of 233 projects, both funded and not funded, launched by 10 Italian equity CFPs between 2014 and 2018.

Our findings indicate that the variety of partners in a platform's network influence the probability of campaign success and how much capital the proponent company raises. CFPs are resource-constrained new ventures, and a network with a wider variety of partners ensures the strategic resources and competencies that are required in an early stage market, thus facilitating campaign funding.

The variety of partner networks could help CFPs to offer unique and strategic value propositions and define the competitive positioning of platforms.

This study provides a deeper understanding of the determinants of equity crowdfunding campaign performance by emphasizing the role of CFP's network of partners on the entire crowdfunding ecosystem and its underlying organizational elements.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether and how inter-firm cooperation and firm age moderate the relationship between family ownership and productivity.

We first estimate the total factor productivity (TFP) of a large sample of Italian firms observed over the period 2010–2018 and then apply a Poisson random effects model.

TFP is, on average, higher for non-family firms (non-FFs) than for FF. Furthermore, inter-organizational cooperation and firm age mitigate the negative effect of family ownership. In detail, it is found that belonging to a network acts as a moderator in different ways according to firm age. Indeed, young FFs underperform non-FF peers, although the TFP gap decreases with age. In contrast, the benefits of a formal network are high for older FFs, suggesting that an age-related learning process is at work.

The study provides evidence that FFs can outperform non-FFs when they move away from Socio-Emotional Wealth-centered reference points and exploit knowledge flows arising from high levels of social capital. In the case of mature FFs, networking is a driver of TFP, allowing them to acquire external resources. Since FFs often do not have sufficient in-house knowledge and resources, they must be aware of the value of business cooperation. While preserving the familiar identity of small companies, networks grant FFs the competitive and scale advantages of being large.

Despite the wide but ambiguous body of research on the performance gap between FFs and non-FFs, little is known about the role of FFs’ heterogeneity. This study has proven successful in detecting age as a factor in heterogeneity, specifically to explain the network effect on the link between ownership and TFP. Based on a representative sample, the study provides a solid framework for FFs, policymakers and academic research on family-owned companies.