Little innovation, many jobs: An econometric analysis of the Italian labour productivity crisis

Federico Lucidi and Alfred Kleinknecht

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2010, vol. 34, issue 3, 525-546

Abstract: Over the past 20 years, Italy has realised changes in labour legislation, leading to a decentralisation of wage bargaining and increased flexibility in labour relations. Both these factors have helped to curb wage growth and to enhance employment growth, but have also led to a crisis in Italian labour productivity growth. Our estimates among 3,000 firms show that firms with a high share of flexible workers, a high labour turnover and lower costs of labour (relative to capital) experienced significantly lower rates of labour productivity growth. Our findings raise doubts about the mainstream call for flexibilisation of European labour markets. We argue that the Italian shift towards a low-productive and labour-intensive growth path is problematic against the background of an ageing population. Copyright The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (64)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/bep011 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:cambje:v:34:y:2010:i:3:p:525-546

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Cambridge Journal of Economics is currently edited by Jacqui Lagrue

More articles in Cambridge Journal of Economics from Cambridge Political Economy Society Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().