We investigate whether the impact of recessions on entrepreneurship is affected by the presence of industrial districts, a source of local agglomeration economies. Using Italian Labour Force quarterly data from 2006 to 2011 and a "difference-in-differences" approach, we show that the share of entrepreneurs in local labour markets where industrial districts are present has declined more than in comparable areas after the beginning of the 2008 recession. The estimated negative differential effect ranges between 4.8 and 7.9 percent in absolute value. We examine alternative explanations -including differences in industrial specialisation and composition, access to credit propensity, exports, population density and the composition of talents -and conclude that our result is consistent with the intense social interactions typical of industrial districts, acting as a multiplier that amplifies the response to shocks.
There has been increasing interest in recent years in monopsony in labour market. This paper discusses how we can measure monopsony power combining insights from models based on both frictions and idiosyncrasies. It presents some evidence from the UK and the US about how monopsony power varies across the wage distribution within markets, over the business cycle and over time.
We study the transitions from career to gradual and permanent retirement by a sample of (Continental) European males aged 55 to 70 in the late 2000s. We find that only 14.6% of the workers in this sample moved from a career to a bridge job by the time of the interview, much less than in the United States, where this share is estimated at close to 60%. We use the cross country and time variation in employment protection legislation and minimum retirement age to study whether recent changes in these labour market institutions have had any effect on the transitions out of career jobs. We find that policies that have increased minimum retirement age and reduced the strictness of employment protection legislation have raised the hazard into gradual retirement in Northern and Central European countries and the permanence in career jobs in Mediterranean countries. JEL codes: J26, J11, J21
The UK has suffered from persistent spatial differences in unemployment rates for many decades. A low responsiveness of internal migration to unemployment is often argued to be an important cause of this problem. This paper uses UK census data to investigate how unemployment affects residential mobility using very small areas as potential destinations and origins and four decades of data. It finds that both inand out-migration are affected by unemployment, although the effect on in-migration appears to be stronger -but also that there is a very high 'cost of distance' so most moves are very local. Using individual longitudinal data we show that the young and the better educated have a lower cost of distance but that sensitivity to unemployment shows much less variability across groups.
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