No abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to empirically test whether various flexible work arrangements produce different effects on alternative measures of job satisfaction in Europe. To test the existence of heterogeneity in the impact of flexibility on job satisfaction, the paper verifies whether this relation varies with workers' characteristics. Design/methodology/approach -Empirical evidence is based on a representative sample of European employees taken from a specific wave of the Eurobarometer survey. An ordered probit estimator is used to get the relevant estimates and endogeneity problems have been addressed by exploiting the richness of the data-set in terms of information on workers' attitude toward work and life (used as proxies of unobserved time-invariant factors, which are the primary source of endogeneity). Findings -A positive link was found between functional flexibility and job satisfaction and either no effect or a negative impact of quantitative flexibility. The positive impact of functional flexibility is greater when considering satisfaction for intrinsic aspects of the job. Estimates by workers' characteristics highlight interesting differences by age, skill and country of residence.Research limitations/implications -The major limitation is the cross-sectional nature of the data, but there was no awareness of any panel data containing information on all the relevant variables of this analysis. Originality/value -With respect to the existing literature, the paper simultaneously considers different types of flexibility and estimates their effect on different facets of job satisfaction, also considering the impact of flexibility on job satisfaction by workers' characteristics. This evidence may be useful to firms in designing more tailored flexibility packages.

The authors study the effect of corporate board gender quotas on firm performance in France, Italy, and Spain. The identification strategy exploits the exogenous variation in mandated gender quotas within country and over time and uses a counterfactual methodology. Using firm-level accounting data and a difference-in-difference estimator, the authors find that gender quotas had either a negative or an insignificant effect on firm performance in the countries considered with the exception of Italy, where they find a positive impact on productivity. The authors then focus on Italy. Using a novel data set containing detailed information on board members’ characteristics, they offer possible explanations for the positive effect of gender quotas. The results provide an important contribution to the policy debate about the optimal design of legislation on corporate gender quotas.

We provide evidence on whether ICT-related teaching practices affect student achievement. We use a unique student-teacher dataset containing variables on very specific uses of computer and ICT by teachers matched with data on national standardized tests for 10 th grade students. Our identification strategy relies on a within-student between-subject estimator and on a rich set of teacher's controls. We find that computer-based teaching methods increase student performance if they help the teacher to obtain material to prepare lectures, if they channel the transmission of teaching material, if they increase students' awareness in ICT use and if they enhance communication. Instead, we find a negative impact of practices requiring an active role of the students in classes using ICT. Our findings suggest that the effectiveness of ICT at school depends on the actual practice that teachers make of it and on their ability to integrate ICT into the teaching process.

We provide evidence on whether ICT-related teaching practices affect student achievement. We use a unique student-teacher dataset containing variables on very specific uses of computer and ICT by teachers matched with data on national standardized tests for 10 th grade students. Our identification strategy relies on a within-student between-subject estimator and on a rich set of teacher's controls. We find that computer-based teaching methods increase student performance if they help the teacher to obtain material to prepare lectures, if they channel the transmission of teaching material, if they increase students' awareness in ICT use and if they enhance communication. Instead, we find a negative impact of practices requiring an active role of the students in classes using ICT. Our findings suggest that the effectiveness of ICT at school depends on the actual practice that teachers make of it and on their ability to integrate ICT into the teaching process.

Digital skills are increasingly important for labor market outcomes and social participation. Do they also matter for academic performance? This paper investigates the effects of digital literacy on educational outcomes by merging data from the Italian National Assessment in secondary schools with an original data set on performance tests of Internet skills for 10 th grade students. Our identification strategy relies on a rich set of individual, family, school and classroom control variables that are not commonly available in previous studies. The findings indicate that, overall, Internet skills have a positive impact on academic achievement. This effect is stronger for students with low academic performance or low family background. It is also stronger for students in technical or vocational schools.

The level at which collective bargaining takes place is usually considered important in determining wage levels and wage inequalities. Two different situations are considered: a first in which bargaining is only 'multi-employer', and a second in which it is 'multi-level', in the sense that workers can be covered by both a 'multi-employer' and a 'single-employer' contract at the same time. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of these different institutional settings on pay dispersion. The study is carried out using the European Structure of Earnings Survey, which is a large dataset containing detailed matched employer-employee information for the year 1995. The countries analysed are Italy, Belgium and Spain. The empirical results generally show that wages of workers covered by only a 'multi-employer' contract are no more compressed than those of workers covered by both 'multi-employer' and 'single-employer' contracts. This implies that where workers are not covered by single-employer bargaining, they receive wage supplements paid unilaterally by their employers. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2007.

We empirically analyzed the labor market participation of Italian women, with special emphasis on the role of intergenerational family links. Older relatives, on the one hand, discourage the work participation of women by requiring care; on the other hand they may provide household services favoring labor supply. We studied this dual impact estimating a trivariate probit model where the three choices to be in the labor force, to use informal help from older relatives and to care for them are jointly determined. Our estimates show that care duties towards members of the previous generation hinder the labor market participation of Italian women, and that informal help received from older relatives strongly increases their probability of being engaged in paid work. Keywords Female labor supply Á Intergenerational linksThe standard model of labor supply is based on the study of the time allocation decision of an individual between work and leisure, the latter being generally intended as time not devoted to activities in the market. However, household production theory (Becker 1965) underlines that the choice actually regards the allocation of time between work in the market, household work and leisure. This extension of the standard model proves to be