The Legacy of 1969? Essays on the Historical Roots of Italy's Economic Decline, 1960s-2000s

本文探讨了意大利近期经济衰退的历史原因，重点考察了20世纪60年代至80年代意大利经济的结构性变化。这篇论文的总体假设是，1969年以后，工会讨价还价偏好的转变倾向于平等主义，促使蓝领工人的工资水平和工资分配发生了根本性变化，改变了企业的相对要素价格，并改变了对个人的激励。首先，我通过重建20世纪50年代至90年代20个行业的合同工资和有效工资的新系列，从历史的角度量化了这种转变。在确定了这种转变的意义之后，我测试了这一假设的含义，探索了单独的具体假设。关于企业，我假设高技能和低技能工人之间相对工资的变化激励了生产要素之间的替代，促进了资本深化和制造企业外包实践的增加。这些组织结构的变化也在总体上产生了影响，在1970年代维持了小型制造企业的蓬勃发展，尽管存在显著的部门异质性。关于个人，我假设，入门级合同工资的增加和工资差距的缩小降低了入学高中教育的动机，特别是影响了为制造业工作提供技术教育的学校。这将解释20世纪70年代至80年代男性教育水平停滞不前的原因，这种停滞通过技能不匹配继续影响着意大利的增长潜力。最后，我探讨了合同最低工资空间均等化--伴随着平等主义工资推动--对国内移民流动的影响。我的假设是，工资的名义均等化降低了从低收入地区移民的动机，导致了失业率的空间失衡。因此，这篇论文揭示并讨论了1969年的关键时刻与过去几十年意大利经济的一些结构性弱点之间的联系。

The thesis investigates the historical causes of Italy's recent economic decline, focusing on structural changes in the Italian economy between the 1960s and the 1980s. The overarching hypothesis of the thesis proposes that a shift in labour unions' bargaining preferences in favour of egalitarianism provoked radical changes in the wage level and the wage distribution for blue-collar workers after 1969, altering relative factor prices for firms and modifying incentives for individuals. I first quantify this shift in historical perspective by reconstructing new series of contractual and effective wages across twenty industries between the 1950s and the 1990s. After having established the significance of the shift, I test the implications for this hypothesis, exploring separate specific hypothesis. With respect to firms, I hypothesize that the changes in relative wages between high-skill and low-skill workers incentivized the substitution between production factors, promoting capital deepening and an increase in outsourcing practices among manufacturing firms. These organisational changes also had repercussions at the aggregate level, by sustaining an efflorescence of small manufacturing firms during the 1970s, albeit with significant sectoral heterogeneity. With respect to individuals, I hypothesize that the increase in entry-level contractual wages and the compression of wage differentials reduced incentives to enrol in upper secondary education, especially impacting schools that provided technical education for manufacturing jobs. This would explain the stagnation in male educational attainment between the 1970s and the 1980s, which continues to affect Italy's growth potential through skill mismatch. Finally, I explore the effect of a spatial equalization of contractual minimum wages-which accompanied the egalitarian wage push-on internal migration flows. I hypothesize that the nominal equalization of wages reduced incentives to migrate from low-income regions, contributing to spatial imbalances in unemployment rates. The thesis thus uncovers and discusses connections between the critical juncture of 1969 and some structural weaknesses that have characterized the Italian economy in the past decades.