Agglomeration Effects on the Labour Market

This book analyses empirically the impact of industrial and urban agglomeration on various aspects of the Italian labour market, examining in particular whether they lead to wage and labour mobility differentials, or whether they affect the probability of searching and the likelihood of finding a job conditional on having searched. Results show that: a) working in an industrial district does not provide average wage premia, reduces returns to education, does not affect returns to seniority, while raising blue-collar worker mobility across jobs and increasing the probability of being employed, of starting a business, of making a transition from payroll employment to entrepreneurship; b) every additional 100,000 inhabitants in the local labour market increases earnings by 0.1 percent, while not affecting returns to experience and reducing returns to education and to tenure with current firm; c) both urbanization and industry localization raise job seekers' chances of finding employment, while neither of them affects non-employed individuals' search behaviour.