Employment Protection And Regional Worker Flows In Italy

In this paper the authors point out that the theoretical predictions concerning Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) are not fully confirmed by empirical evidence in Italy, a strict EPL country in the nineties, according to OECD indexes. In particular, worker and job flow rates are remarkably high, also in comparison with the other European countries. Furthermore, the differences in regional worker flow rates -computed on both the social security database and the LFS- are relevant, no matter which measure of worker flows is considered. While EPL is the same across regions, the highest worker flow rates are observed in the South, an area generally recognised as the least dynamic of the country, followed by the Northeast, the Centre and the Northwest.