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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the school‐to‐work transition of graduates in different fields of study, as well as to study programmes in three subsequent generations of graduates in the 2007 to 2009 period. The paper focuses on graduates from the new Bologna‐harmonised programmes and investigates their early career outcomes by comparing them to those of graduates from pre‐harmonised programmes.

The authors apply a probit regression to calculate differences in the probability of employment for different fields of study and propensity score matching to investigate the effect of different study programmes in each field of education on early career outcomes, such as being employed within the first three months of graduation and the first nine months of graduation.

The authors find that graduating from a particular field of study affects the probability of employment in all three years. In general, regardless of the field, the authors observe decreasing probabilities of employment in 2008 and 2009. Using propensity score matching, the authors estimate the effect of the new Bologna‐harmonised programmes on the probability of employment and find a statistically significant negative effect compared to counterparts who finished pre‐Bologna programmes. The findings are robust to the use of different matching criteria.

In the institutional framework of a tuition‐free system in higher education and collective bargaining in the labour market, performance indicators such as employability can provide relevant information regarding student choice and a proxy measure for the quality of higher education in each participating university. In addition, this provides a rare insight into the employability of graduates from Bologna‐harmonised programmes, as well as for a post‐transition country such as Slovenia.

By covering entire populations of full‐time graduates in 2007, 2008 and 2009 who entered the labour market for the first time after graduation, the authors calculate the probability of employment within the first three and nine months of graduation. This allows the authors to infer about the effect of the new Bologna‐harmonised programmes as well as the impact of the recent financial crisis. The paper offers rare evidence of the school‐to‐work transition in a post‐transition and tuition‐free country.

In the last decade the discussion on green innovations has gained in importance, both in practice and in academia. This chapter builds on the idea that performance in innovation capturing environmental aspects doesn’t depend only on inputs but also the synchronization of different stakeholders, firms and policy-makers that make an innovation-driven society. In disruptive periods, green adaptive ability which refers to ability to comply with environmental regulations is based on corporate environmental commitments and their social responsibility as well as on green human capital. Based on corporate environmental commitments, companies seek business opportunities by changing their business models as well as by integrating, building and reconfiguring competences to comply with environmental standards. Green human capital, on the other side, builds organizational culture that supports green innovation. The aim of this chapter is to present a conceptual model that stimulates green innovations at the company level and discusses the proper governance structure supportive of innovation and effective strategies of policy-making.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of the probability of low income for households with disabled members in Italy, over the period 2004‐2007, with special focus on the role of persistence.

Households with disabled members are compared with those without disabled members, and those with disabled members temporary limited. Alternative definitions of disability are considered. The probability of low income is estimated adopting dynamic probit models accounting for unobserved heterogeneity, state dependence and endogenous initial conditions.

Evidence is found of significant true state dependence for households with disabled members. However, true state dependence does not significantly differ from that of other households. The probability of low income for households with disabled members is also determined by some structural variables, such as employment of disabled individuals, living in the South, household's partner employment and household size.

In the short run, money transfer is effective to lift households with disabled members from low income and to prevent the risk of low income in the future. Structural policies are possibly relevant in reducing the long‐term risk of low income. These include interventions to favour employment of disabled members and development of caring services for disabled members to free family members for outside work.

Not much is known about how disability affects the conditions of households with disabled members. The paper contributes to this literature with a novel analysis of low income persistence, providing some policy suggestions.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main “models of growth” characterising the EU countries in the last two decades, with particular reference to the employment‐productivity relationship, and to reveal the key determinants of productivity.

After a survey of the relevant literature, the empirical section analyses the “models of growth” by graphical inspection, identifying four models (for EU‐27 in the 1990‐2008 period): extensive, intensive, virtuous, and stagnant. Then different econometric investigations (beta convergence, dynamic panel with GMM estimation, fixed effects panel, cross‐section) are used to test the “diminishing returns of employment rate” hypothesis (for the 2000‐2006 period), to assess the convergence processes and to determine the key variables affecting productivity.

The main finding is the confirmation of the hypothesis mentioned: high employment growth is likely to lead to slower productivity growth. Moreover, besides verifying the beta convergence of productivity per worker, the most significant determinants of productivity are the following: education, a transition index, some structural indicators, and a “shadow economy” proxy. Finally, the descriptive analysis shows that “old” EU countries, coming from two decades of “jobless growth”, shifted to an “extensive” growth model; in contrast, transition countries (NMS) followed the opposite path: reducing employment and raising productivity.

It would be advisable to extend the period of the analysis, as soon as new data become available.

The main policy implication is to get the EU Lisbon strategy – i.e. to create “more and better” jobs – working effectively.

The most original finding is the clear assessment of an employment‐productivity trade‐off. Also, the different models of growth are categorised simply and effectively.

The purpose of this paper is to quantify the wage gap between native and immigrant women in Spain, taking into account differences in their characteristics and the need to control for common support. If immigrant women are segregated in occupations with few native women, it is important to take this into account to analyse wage differentials between both collectives.

Microdata from the Continuous Sample of Working Histories (Muestra Continua de Vidas Laborales) on wages and other personal characteristics such as gender, country of origin, and age were used to apply the matching procedure and the decomposition of the wage gap, along the lines of Ñopo, for the analysis of wage differentials between native and immigrant women. The advantage of this procedure is that one can simultaneously estimate the common support and the mean counterfactual wage for the women on the common support (i.e. comparing native and immigrant women with similar observable characteristics). In addition, differences not only at the mean but also along the entire wage distribution can be described.

The results obtained indicate that, on average, immigrant women earn less than native women in the Spanish labour market. This wage gap is bigger when immigrant women from developing countries are considered, but the authors’ main finding is that an important part of this wage gap is related to differences in common support (i.e. immigrant women are segregated in certain jobs with low wages different from those occupied by native women). If the need to control for common support is neglected, estimates of the wage gap will be biased.

Studying the case of Spain is particularly interesting because it is a country with abundant and recent immigration. Immigrant women account for more than half of the total immigrants in Spain, and unlike other host countries, they come from a highly varied range of countries, with origins as diverse as Latin America, the Maghreb and Eastern Europe. To the authors’ knowledge, no other study has explicitly focused on the analysis of the wage differential of immigrant women in the Spanish labour market by taking into account the need to control for common support. Moreover, published papers illustrating the potentiality of Ñopo's methodology are also very scarce.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the evolution of labour‐market performance in the Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) over the last decade, considering the robustness of the claims made in an important OECD follow‐up study.

The paper sets up an empirical framework calibrated on an important OECD follow‐up study, and suggests some ways in which the impact of unobserved heterogeneity and outliers on policy estimates can be treated in a cross‐section framework. The framework applies to the data for 30 OECD countries.

The paper finds that changes in labour‐market performance are inversely linked to lagged unemployment. Changes in the share of construction workers are also significant even in the presence of various kinds of policy change indicators. As far as the latter are concerned, the results highlight the role of unemployment benefits and, especially, active labour‐market policies.

The kind of policy change indicators used do not allow the adoption of panel data techniques.

An important policy role seems to emerge for unemployment benefit reforms and, even more so, active labour‐market policies. The evidence also supports the contention that the construction sector is important for labour‐market performance.

The paper brings to the fore novel evidence about cross‐country labour‐market performance at a time when this issue is of high interest for citizens and policy‐makers.

The main aim of this paper is to examine labour productivity trends in Italy over the period 1981‐2004.

To this end, relying on recent developments in the analysis of non‐stationary dependent panels, the paper develops a new method for estimating total factor productivity (TFP) trends.

The conclusions confirm the view that the recent decline in Italian labour productivity growth is mostly due to a widespread fall in TFP growth.

The main assumption underlying the proposed TFP estimation method is that technology growth is driven by a single trend common to all units included in the panel (industries, regions or countries).

The paper provides two distinct contributions: empirically, it provides robust evidence that TFP slow‐down is the main cause of recent negative trends in labour productivity in Italy. Methodologically, the paper proposes an approach to estimating TFP that enjoys several advantages: only basic data for input and output flows are needed, the non‐stationary nature of the data is explicitly taken into account, and confidence intervals for TFP growth can be computed. This method can thus be easily applied to many routinely available datasets, to either corroborate existing growth accounting estimates or to obtain previously unavailable estimates.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the determinants of self‐employment among rural to urban migrants in China.

The analysis is based on a sample of migrant household heads from the 2008 Rural‐Urban Migration in China and Indonesia (RUMiCI) survey. An estimate of the wage differential between self‐employed and employed workers is obtained by means of an endogenous switching model and used to estimate the employment choice. The procedure is extended to account for migration selectivity bias, for alternative statuses before migration, and for different post‐migration employment histories.

Self‐employed migrants are positively selected with respect to their unobserved characteristics; their wages are substantially higher than what they would have obtained had they chosen paid work. Furthermore, even after accounting for the substantial heterogeneity across cities, industries, occupations, and after correcting for the migration selectivity bias, the wage differential is found to be an important determinant of self‐employment.

The finding that market imperfections do not constrain the self‐employment choice of migrants does not imply that reforms designed to eliminate institutional barriers are undesirable. Policy should target the reduction of gaps between urban residents and migrants (such as the household registration system – hukou), so that migrants can access new business opportunities which are currently a prerogative of urban residents.

The paper analyses the determinants of self‐employment using a recent survey based on a sample of rural‐to‐urban migrants in China. The key findings indicate that migrants who choose self‐employment are positively selected in terms of their unobservable characteristics. Moreover, the wage differential has a strong positive effect on the probability of choosing self‐employment. In the transition to a market economy, which is taking place in China, the identification of the determinants of self‐employment is crucial.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of innovative workplace practices in a sample of manufacturing establishments.

The sample comprises manufacturing establishments located in Italy and a comparable sample extracted from the British Workplace Employee Relations Survey (WERS). The paper controls for sector, size, skill quality and industrial relations.

Job rotation and technical training are positively associated with current performance in both samples. On average, British establishments are more productive: the different endowment in terms of workplace practices, skills and industrial relations accounts for 40 per cent of the gap, while the different efficacy of the endowment on performance accounts for the remainder.

In both samples the introduction of team working implies a relatively important advance along the reorganisation process, which was undertaken in the early stages of reorganisation in British establishments but much later in Italian firms. Linking the progression of the reorganisation to non‐convexities in supermodular production functions may be an interesting line of future research.