| dc.description.abstract | The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the debate on the
Beveridge Curve: more specifically, after providing a
theoretical introduction to the Curve in Chapter I, we focus on
some empirical points, concerning globalisation and
technological progress, which the international empirical
literature has not dealt with closely (Chapter II), and on a level
analysis which no previous study has dealt with in the Italian
literature (Chapter III).
Chapter I centres on the matching approach founding the
studies on the Beveridge Curve since the late 1970's, it also
mentions the recent production frontier approach and gives a
look to the possible consequences of the Great Recession on
the matching process and the Curve.
The aim of Chapter II is to test the existence of a Beveridge
Curve analysing the economies of nineteen OECD countries
from 1980 to 2004, and to investigate whether and how
technological progress and globalisation affect the
unemployment-vacancies trade-off. Indeed, in the literature
concerning the Beveridge Curve, only a few contributions
(Pissarides, 1990; Aghion and Howitt, 1994) have examined
the role of technological progress as a significant shift factor
for labour market performance. However, there is no unanimity
about the sign of its impact. Furthermore, few economists
would deny that globalisation, that is the growing international
interdependence in communications, trade, finance, labour
markets (migration), social systems, is one of fundamental
socio-economic phenomena of this turn of century.
Consequently, globalisation is another factor which is expected
to impact on the Beveridge Curve, but no full-fledged
estimation has, to the best of our knowledge, ever been carried
out of this nexus. We can sum up the main results as follows:
a) we find largely favourable evidence for the existence of a
OECD Beveridge Curve; b) lagged values of technological
progress impact positively on unemployment and shift the
Beveridge Curve outwards, producing evidence in support of
the creative destruction effect; c) lagged values of the
globalisation index have a positive impact on unemployment,
also shifting the Beveridge Curve outwards; d) a critical
econometric issue, extremely neglected by the previous
literature, is represented by endogeneity, as shown by tests and
other kind of evidence.
Finally, Chapter III focuses on the Italian labour market. There
are not many studies that have analyzed the Beveridge Curve in
Italy, likely because of the lack of official data on vacancies.
Moreover, no previous study has focused specifically on a
regional level analysis of the Beveridge Curve. Chapter III
aims at filling this gap of the literature using quarterly data for
the 1992-2009 period. In particular, the ISAE labour scarcity
indicator, which is available for all the regions, is used to build
regional vacancy rates. Like in Destefanis and Fonseca (2007),
we also investigate the impact on matching efficiency of the
recent strong development in the number of so-called atypical
jobs (both part-time and temporary)… [edited by author]. | en_US |
