Employment of disabled people in the private sector. An analysis at the level of Italian Provinces according to article 13 of law 68/1999

Law 68 of March 12, 1999, whose aim is to regulate and promote the employment of disabled people, has contributed significantly to the employment of persons with disabilities, and consequently to their social inclusion. In particular, article 13 of this law offers exemption from national insurance contributions to private institutions that employ disabled people. In this paper we propose a two-step analysis to assess the effectiveness of this law at the level of Italian Provinces for the year 2005. In the first phase, we verify by means of data envelopment analysis which Provinces are ranked among the most efficient ones in the application of article 13 of law 68/99. Then, through the use of cluster analysis, we examine differences among Provinces in terms of the factors that determine their different efficiency in the employment of disabled people. The results show that the employment of disabled persons is significantly affected by three groups of factors, i.e. the input endowment of the factors which affect the employment of disabled people, the Province ability to coordinate actions geared to achieving the employment of persons with disabilities, and the promotion of policy actions aimed at supporting the social inclusion of disabled people.