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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of an Italian training program on the re-employment probability of young unemployed workers. The program consists exclusively of workplace training and is coordinated by employment centers, even if it is fully implemented by firms.

The authors develop a discrete duration analysis. In particular, the authors compare the re-employment process of individuals that just finished their workplace training program with individuals that just ended their job. The authors specifically take into account the issue of self-selection adopting the propensity score matching estimation.

The results suggest that this workplace training program improves only the immediate re-employability of trained workers, failing to bestow them with durable human capital improvements. These results appear to be robust to spurious duration dependence and to self-selection. The analysis focuses on unobserved heterogeneity and, accounting for it, the authors show that the training implementation is useful to divide “good” trainees (in terms of unobserved heterogeneity) from “bad” ones.

Therefore, the authors suggest that firms are exploiting training as a screening device and that the implemented program is successful in easing the connection between workers and firms, but it fails to provide a durable improvement in skills and in re-employment prospects.

The evaluation of this program is important because it focus specifically on the workplace component of training, whereas previous analyses focused on generic training, because it evaluates a program targeting youth unemployment which is one the most urgent economic issues and because it helps in understanding the actual processes adopted by firms when implementing workplace training.

Youth unemployment is one of the major problems that the economic systems face. Given this issue, the purpose of this paper is to assess whether school-to-work transition is easier for individuals with secondary vocational education compared to general secondary education. The authors want to explore which vocational systems across Europe produce better effects.

The authors use data from a module on “Entry of young people into the labour market” from the 2009 and 2014 European Labour Survey and they estimate multinomial probit models, allowing for violation of the irrelevance of the alternative assumption.

The authors find that in countries with the dual vocational system, vocational education improves employability both in the short and medium run, whereas in countries with a school-based vocational system, results are mixed and, only in some cases, the effect of vocational studies is significantly positive.

Sample size for short-run analysis is a bit small in a few countries (Austria and Germany). Moreover, even if the authors have reason to believe that the methods adopted are mitigating the omitted heterogeneity issues and robustness checks are run on these aspects, these issues cannot be fully excluded.

The authors provide policy implications, showing that dual vocational systems can improve school-to-work transitions and that vocational structure is particularly effective in this case.

The authors provide information on which education model may offer better chance in terms of labour outcomes.

Given the relevance of youth unemployment, the authors provide valuable information on how to mitigate this problem. The use of cross-country comparisons offers great insights on which vocational systems appear to be well-suited to enhance employability.

This paper investigates whether the effect of unemployment benefits (UB) on unemployment duration is the same for individuals belonging to different wealth groups.

Using a sample of newly unemployed individuals from Italy in 2007, we perform estimations of semi‐parametric and parametric Cox hazard models and finds a significant interaction between benefits and wealth.

In particular, we show that the mitigating effect of benefits on liquidity constraints is less marked for individuals from richer households and therefore, for these individuals, benefits do not increase unemployment duration.

The results also show that liquidity constraints are important in determining unemployment duration and that wealth has an important role in the actual effect of UB.

This article studies the evolution of the wage differentials between graduate (skilled) and non-graduate (unskilled) workers in several European countries from the beginning of the 1990s to the beginning of this century. The starting point is that all European countries show a common increase in the relative supply of skilled workers but different evolution of wage differentials. Economics theory usually relates the evolution of wage differentials not only to relative supply but also to skill-biased technological progress. I complement this explanation providing a theoretical model of wage bargaining where wage differentials are determined also by labour market institutions. My empirical findings show that both technological progress and labour market institutions are important in the determination of wage differentials. As for the former, I find that differentials depend on the pace and intensity at which technological progress takes place. As for labour market institutions, their effect, though important, is not always straightforward. In fact, some aspects of institutions, like minimum wage and the duration of unemployment benefits, favour unskilled workers while other aspects, like bargaining power and replacement rates from unemployment benefits, may magnify the differences in outside options and actually increase wage differentials.

Pay varies across individuals. Some variation is endemic to a country's institutions including a country's level of development and its technological infrastructure. Some variation is based on differences in individual attributes, particularly an individual's ability to acquire human capital. Finally, some variation is based on incentives instigated by the government, by one's employer, or by one's family. These incentives often operate indirectly by influencing educational choices, labor force participation, and even cohabitation and marital arrangements. This volume contains eight articles on aspects of the distribution of income. One deals with technology change and the distribution of earnings, two deal with internal labor markets, four deal with incentives that motivate work related behavior, and finally one deals with immigrant labor market success.

How individuals allocate their time between work and leisure has important implications regarding worker well-being. For example, more time at work means a greater return to human capital and a greater proclivity to seek more training opportunities. At the same time, hours spent at work decrease leisure and depend on one's home environment (including parental background), health, past migration, and government policies. In short, worker well-being depends on trade-offs and is influenced by public policy. These decisions entail time allocation, effort, human capital investment, health, and migration, among other choices. This volume considers worker well-being from the vantage of each of these alternatives. It contains ten chapters. The first three are on time allocation and work behavior, the next three on aspects of risk in the earnings process, the next two on aspects of migration, the next one on the impact of tax policies on poverty, and finally the last chapter on the role of labor market institutions on sectoral shifts in employment.

Early models of the functional distribution of income assume constant labor productivity among all individuals. Not until human capital theory developed did scholars take into account how productivity varied across workers. According to early human capital models, this variation came about because each individual invested differently in education and training. Those acquiring greater amounts of schooling and on-the-job training earned more. However, these models neglected why one person would get training while another would not. One explanation is individual heterogeneity. Some individuals are smarter, some seek risk, some have time preferences for the future over the present, some simply are lucky by being in the right place at the right time, and some are motivated by the pay incentives of the jobs they are in. This volume contains 10 chapters, each dealing with an aspect of earnings. Of these, the first three deal directly with earnings distribution, the next four with job design and remuneration, the next two with discrimination, and the final chapter with wage rigidities in the labor market.

COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the lives of people and businesses around the world in different ways. France, Spain, Italy and the UK are among the worst affected countries by this pandemic. The purpose of this paper is to identify and compare different corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities taken by the clubs and player of the major football leagues of these four countries to develop a more comprehensive model of intervention.

This paper has analyzed the initiatives taken by these football clubs and players to address financial vulnerabilities, mental health problems and domestic violence among the stakeholders and compared them with the existing CSR and humanitarian models. A case study approach has been used to collect and analyze data related to the CSR activities taken by the players and club management. Official websites of the clubs, newspaper and journal articles were among the major sources used to collect data for the paper.

Football clubs and players of the four major leagues have raised funds through different campaigns and delivered foods and essential medical supplies to the communities and hospitals to address financial vulnerabilities, mental health issues and domestic violence within their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have provided guidance to their followers using social and television media to improve their physical and mental health during the pandemic. Online competitions, quizzes or virtual hangouts have also been used by the players to engage the stakeholders on a frequent basis. Football clubs have also initiated campaigns to raise awareness within the community on available medical services for the victims of domestic violence and also provided them with shelter, food, medical, legal and online counseling services.

Football clubs and players of the major leagues were always at the forefront to help the communities and hospitals to address issues related to mental health problems, financial vulnerabilities and domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of this paper could help and guide other entities in designing a more comprehensive model of CSR interventions during pandemics or crisis situations to address financial vulnerabilities, mental health problems and domestic violence within their communities.