Carlo Dell'Aringa

Giancarlo Mazzocchi gave important scientific contributions in the field of anti-inflationary policies. In particular he stressed the important role of incomes policy in keeping cost pressure under control. He also stressed the necessity of combining incomes policies with other instruments of economic policy, such as measures directed to improve the functioning of product and labour markets. More competitive product markets and more flexible labour markets are necessary conditions for an incomes policy to be successful. He then analysed the different methods of linking wages to productivity in a dynamic environment and he showed how a «norm» of uniform wage increases can compress wage differentials and produce negative effects on labour mobility.

This introduction provides a survey of the collected papers. At the same time it develops an critical analysis designed to illustrate the file rouge which links the material included in this special issue.

This paper investigates the structure of within-establishment wage inequality in Italy, using linked employer-employee data (European Structure of Earnings Survey). The effect of work organi- sation practices, pay policies, collective bargaining procedures and industrial relations settings are analysed in the context of wage differentials in the firm. The main findings suggest that employees’ characteristics, work organisation practices and firm size are relevant in shaping pay inequality within establishments. Decentralised bargaining is shown to be associated with higher (unconditional) within-establishment wage dispersion; however, when checking both for worker and firm heterogeneity, the association changes sign or is not (statistically) significant. Finally, when the endogenous sorting of establishments is adequately modelled, no causal effect of decentralised bargaining on within-establishment pay inequality is detected.

This paper uses ESES (European Structure of Earnings Survey) data for 1995 in order to investigate the impact of the Italian bargaining system on regional wage differentials and on local wage dispersion. The ESES survey is a large matched employer-employee data-set containing a wealth of information regarding characteristics of both workers and firms. The main findings suggest that in the south of Italy, in specific conditions, the minimum wages established by national sectoral collective agreements oblige some firms to pay higher wages than they would have done had there been no national agreement. In addition, wage dispersion in the south is more compressed for workers covered than for workers not covered by a national collective agreement. These results can be interpreted as indirect evidence for the fact that national collective bargaining creates regional «wage floors».