Devolving Skills: The Case of the Apprenticeship Grant for Employers*

One rationale for devolution is that local decision makers may be well placed to adapt national policies to the local context. We test whether such adaptation helps meet programme objectives in the case of the Apprenticeship Grant for Employers. Originally a national programme, aimed at incentivising employers to take on apprentices, reforms a few years into operation gave some Local Authorities negotiated flexibilities in how the scheme operated. We consider the impact of the national scheme and then use a difference-in-differences approach to test whether flexibility led to an increase in the number of apprenticeship starts in devolved areas relative to control groups. We find that flexibility had zero effect. There is suggestive evidence that this is because flexibilities were negotiated on the wrong margins.     

Customers’ judgments and misjudgments of corporate responsibility communication: A cross‐country investigation of the effects on confidence and trust within the banking sector

Customers’ judgment of corporate responsibility (CR) communication and the effect on confidence and trust as interlinked paradigms are intriguing areas of investigation from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. This research aims to clarify the nature of effective CR communication toward customers by identifying situations of over‐ and undercommunication of CR that might cause misjudgments and therefore lower the level of confidence among customers. The study also provides insights to better explain the link between confidence and trust related to customers’ perceptions of CR communication and compares different judgments and misjudgments regarding the banking industries in Italy and the United Kingdom. The study adopts real and fictitious bank case studies to conduct focus groups investigations of 160 millennial customers’ perceptions of CR communication and how it affects their level of confidence. The findings highlight the role of trust in making independent judgments on CR communications. Some similarities and slight differences in the impact of CR communication on confidence emerge between the countries and greatly depend on the customers’ level of trust in real banks and the influence of the industry effect characterizing the banking sector. This study provides fertile ground for future research into the implementation of a more effective and balanced CR communication strategy to increase customers’ confidence and into the understanding of which communication drivers, apparently independent of CR, affect trust in the long term.     

The trend over time of the gender wage gap in Italy

We analyse gender wage gaps in Italy in the mid-1990s and in the mid-2000s. In this period, important labour market developments took place and they could have had a gender asymmetric impact on wages. We identify the time trends of different components of the gender wage gap across all the wage distribution. Although the unconditional gender wage gap remained roughly constant over time, we find that the component of the gap due to different rewards of similar characteristics deteriorated women’s relative wage. We show that especially women at the centre-top of the wage distribution swam against the tide: while the trend in female qualifications slightly reduced the gender wage gap, the gender-relative trends in the wage structure significantly increased it.     

Export and import market-specific characteristics

Using a rich firm-level dataset on the Italian manufacturing industry, this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the role that firms and market characteristics play in shaping firms’ trade activities. We enhance the previous analyses by considering firms’ engagement in international transactions, by focusing on either exports or imports. We show that the determinants of a firm’s export participation and value across countries also drive import behavior. Our research is consistent with the presence of country-specific sunk costs and with a qualitatively similar role of gravity forces and other country attributes on both sides of trading activities. Our evidence, however, militates in favor of a framework where variations in market characteristics have a larger impact on imports than exports.     

Firms’ exporting and importing activities: is there a two-way relationship?

The literature on firm heterogeneity and trade has highlighted that most trading firms tend to engage in both importing and exporting activities. This paper provides some evidence that helps understanding to what extent this is the result of a two-way relationship. Using firm-level data for a group of 27 Eastern European and Central Asian countries from the World Bank Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) over the period 2002–2008, we estimate a bivariate probit model of exporting and importing. After controlling for size (and other firm-level characteristics) we find that firms’ exporting activity does not increase the probability of importing, while the latter has a positive effect on foreign sales. This effect is mainly channeled through an increase in firm productivity and product innovation.     

The invention of shopping tourism. The discursive repositioning of landscape in an Italian retail-led case

Under the label of ‘shopping tour’, tour operators currently offer package tours which aim to highlight for the visitor the commercial appeal of a particular location. A variety of destinations are suitable for tours with such a label. In this context, certain ‘shopping tourism’ destinations simply consist of areas where the concentration of corporation-led retail venues is high. The Novese Area, in the northwest of Italy, has been transforming into such a destination since the opening of the Serravalle Designer Outlet, an outlet ‘village’ which opened in 2000. This paper reports on original research aimed at enquiring about shifts in the representation of the landscape of this area as it is shown in the discourses of local political and business actors. It is argued that this case study portrays a rather unique case of late western urban regeneration practice through which a formal industrial area is turned into a consumption site suitable for tourism. Here, the repositioning process not only influences local planning policies, but feeds – and is fed by – a simultaneous process of consumption normalization.     

The 2008/09 Economic Crisis: The Impact on Psychological Well-Being in the USA

The 2008/09 economic crisis has been the worst crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression. The causes and implications of the so-called “Great Recession” have been widely documented, but the effects of the crisis on psychological well-being have only received limited attention. Using state-level data, this paper aims to assess empirically the impact of the 2008/09 crisis on several indicators of mental health in the USA. The results indicate that unemployment and income levels have a significant and detrimental impact on mental health. This implies that social protection systems—and in particular labor market programs—play a paramount role in reducing the adverse impact of the crisis on mental health.     

Who Trades with Whom? Exploring the Links between Firms' International Activities,Skills, and Wages

Using firm‐level data on the Italian manufacturing industry, we examine how trade activities are related to workforce composition and wages. We contribute to empirical research on these issues in three ways. First, we provide new evidence that is consistent with multi‐attribute models on firm heterogeneity and trade. We show that even after controlling for various company characteristics, including size and capital intensity, exporters still pay higher wages and employ more skilled workers than nonexporters. Second, we consider engagement in international transactions, either by means of exports, imports, or a combination of the two. We show that failing to control for importing activities may bias upward export premia. Third, we look at how the wage and the employment structures of trading firms change with the country of destination and origin of trade flows. We find that wage and skill premia are influenced by the characteristics of partner countries.