Yoann Morin (p), Lionel Védrine

Marco Mariani

Previous literature on training and agglomeration economies have shown that local labour market characteristics impact firm sponsored training negatively. In the French case, firms have an obligation to invest a part of the payroll in training by the law of 1971: thus, in denser areas, this obligation to train could lead firms to over-invest into training. This effect in denser areas is explained by matching effects: firms are more likely to find workers with the proper skills and their need to train workers could be therefore less important. On the other hand, it has been shown that when local sectoral competition is harder, firms are more likely to offer longer training. Indeed, in denser areas firms who can't find the right worker for a job could also provide longer training to train their workers for the specific skills they need. This could lead to heterogeneous returns to training for firms. The first part of this study uses a generalized propensity score matching approach to identify the effects of training on firms' economic activity. Then, we study how these effects could be heterogeneous depending on local labour market characteristics. We use French data about firms' workers, firms economic activity (balance sheet) and a unique dataset of training investment for every french firm with more than 10 employees.

Greta Falavigna (p), Lisa Sella , Igor Benati

Marco Mariani

In the last years, social dynamics of gender equality are increasingly analyzed across many fields. In this context, the present work focuses on gender dynamics in politics, analyzing the effect of the Italian electoral law n. 215/2012 on the active participation of women in municipal elections.
This law introduces “gender balance rules” aimed at fostering female active participation in the political arena and fighting the phenomenon of minor representation, and sometimes the exclusion, of women from Italian political competition at all administrative levels. In particular, the law introduces two mechanisms in medium and large (>5000 inhabitants) municipalities: a gender quota in electoral lists, guaranteeing that no gender counts more than 2/3, and the double gender preference, allowing electors to express two preferences if the candidates have different sex.
The availability of panel microdata on candidates in Italian municipalities for the time span 2008-2016, including the implementation of the electoral reform, allows evaluating its effect in contrasting the exclusion/minor representation phenomenon, getting rid of the endogeneity bias typical of gender studies.
Combining spatial, economic and social characteristics of municipalities with electoral data on candidates allows an econometric evaluation of factors affecting the female probability of candidacy. This work proposes an empirical investigation of the main determinants of female participation at the local level. In particular, the Correlated Random Effect panel data framework is applied, which allows estimating both between (cross-section) and within (time-series) effects with no unreliable orthogonality condition imposed between the regressors and the individual unobservable effects. The opportunity to have a panel data allows, through a counterfactual approach, to observe different behaviors in terms of women candidates before and after the gender norm, considering different size of municipalities.
Estimation results are in accordance with main findings in the literature. In particular, female participation declines when average family size increases, implying that higher involvement in domestic activities generally reduces women’s propensity to political involvement. The negative effect of urbanization degree suggests that women are more involved in small-scale activities, while the positive effect of female activity rate suggests that women with higher social capital are more likely to participate in the political arena. Moreover, CRE unobservable effects show different geographical paths (North/South), probably representing the unexplained cultural component.
This study provides very relevant considerations for policy-makers to align disparity between men and women regarding the access to politics. Moreover, results suggest the most suitable instruments to encourage women empowerment.

Ugo Finardi , Elena Ragazzi, Lisa Sella (p)

Marco Mariani

The general objective of the paper is to present the results of an evaluation of the effects produced by the regulatory measures introduced in recent years for the purposes of gender rebalancing in the elective offices.
Women still encounter huge difficulties in being included in political decision-making. Even when they have the chance of participating to political competition as candidates, this is not a guarantee that they are elected and assigned to important political positions.
Many countries have introduced rules and mechanisms to accelerate the rebalancing process. The general feeling is that their effectiveness may vary a lot, because they need to be well designed and effectively implemented to achieve good results, so asking an important evaluation question.
Different types of mechanisms may be designed to ensure gender balance in politics.
The main options adopted are: Gender shares in the lists of candidates; Double/triple gender preference; Alternate list. The three mechanisms can be paired, and their effectiveness depends also on their application with different voting regulation.
We start from a statistical recognition of gender shares among candidates and elected representatives for all institutions in Italy. The impact evaluation is limited to the case of municipalities. In the other cases, the lack of a credible counterfactual forces us to limit to statistical analysis of observed change. In the depicted situation, the voting regulation for the administrative elections is a perfect context where to evaluate the effectiveness of gender rebalancing mechanisms.
The paper presents the results of an evaluation based on RDD approach around the two thresholds present in the law (5.000 and 15.000 inhabitants). Moreover, the determinants of the impact are analysed, based on variables that affect women participation in electoral competition.