Scicchitano, Sergio

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Professor Scicchitano is an applied economist and Senior Researcher at the National Institute for Public Policies Analysis – INAPP (currently on unpaid leave) in Rome, Italy. He obtained the Italian National Scientific Qualification for the role of Associate Professor in Economic Policy, and in 2022 he won the Kuznets Prize. He is the coordinator of the “Italian” group of research and of the “Coronavirus” thematic group of research at the Global Labor Organization (GLO). He is also Section Editor for "Covid-19" in the 2022 Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics, Springer eds. Professor Scicchitano is Associate Editor for the Eurasian Economic Review (EAER), ed. Springer and Member of the Editorial Board for Economies and European Scientific Journal (ESJ). He is currently involved in many international research projects.

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2022 - 202525
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    The reassuring effect of firms' technological innovations on workers' job insecurity
    (2024) Caselli, Mauro; Fracasso, Andrea; Marcolin, Arianna; Scicchitano, Sergio
    Purpose This work analyses how the adoption of technological innovations correlates with workers' perceived levels of job insecurity, and what factors moderate such relationship. Design/methodology/approach The study makes use of the 2018 wave of the Participation, Labour, Unemployment Survey (PLUS) from Inapp. The richness of the survey and the representativeness of the underlying sample (including 13,837 employed workers) allow employing various empirical specifications where it is possible to control and moderate for many socio-demographic features of the worker, including her occupation and industry of employment, thereby accounting for various potential confounding factors. Findings The results of this ordered logit estimations show that workers' perception of job insecurity is affected by many subjective, firm-related and even macroeconomic factors. This study demonstrates that the adoption of technological innovations by companies is associated with lower levels of job insecurity perceived by their workers. In fact, the adoption of technological innovations by a company is perceived by surviving workers (those who remain in the same firm even after the introduction of such innovations) as a signal of the firm's health and its commitment to preserving the activity. Individual- and occupation-specific moderating factors play a limited role. Originality/value This study estimates how perceived job insecurity relates to the technological innovations adopted by the firms in which the interviewees are employed rather than analyzing their general concerns about job insecurity. In addition, this study identifies different types of innovations, such as product and process innovation, automation and other types of innovations.
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    The role of natural resources, fintech, political stability, and social globalization in environmental sustainability: Evidence from the United Kingdom
    (Elsevier, 2024) Andlib, Zubaria; Scicchitano, Sergio; Padda, Ihtsham Ul Haq
    Numerous studies illustrate that natural resources, financial technologies, social globalization, and political stability are essential factors that influence environmental sustainability. Therefore, researchers in developed nations must explore these interconnections further, mainly when these nations focus on achieving net zero emissions targets. The present analysis illuminates the connotations among natural resources, political stability, fintech, social globalization, and CO2 emissions in the UK. The current analysis has taken the time frame, 2000Q1 to 2021Q4, and employed the latest approach, i.e., the bootstrap ARDL technique, for estimation. The empirical results revealed that natural resources and social globalization are escalating CO2 emissions. Nonetheless, political stability and fintech lead to decreased CO2 emissions in the specific case of the selected developed nation. The present analysis confabulates an uni-directional connotation between all the chosen economic indicators and environmental degradation in the UK. As per the observed empirical outcomes, developed nations must initiate policies and programs to utilize natural resources efficiently without compromising environmental sustainability. In addition, governments in developed nations should encourage financial technologies and political stability to promote ecological sustainability.
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    Technological Innovations and Workers’ Job Insecurity: The Moderating Role of Firm Strategies
    (2023) Caselli, Mauro; Fracasso, Andrea; Marcolin, Arianna; Scicchitano, Sergio
    In this paper, we empirically assess whether the perceived implications of technological innovations on the probability of job loss vary according to the innovation-related strategies adopted by firms. We take advantage of a unique dataset based on a large and representative crosssectional survey covering several characteristics of Italian workers and their firms. We find that the relationship between technological innovations and job insecurity is moderated by firms’ technology-specific training programs, their dismissal plans, and the impact of innovations on the tasks and activities performed by workers. Thus, workers perceptions of job insecurity vary significantly across innovative firms and the adoption of technological innovations in the workplace has a multifaceted impact on the perceptions of job insecurity of the affected workers.
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    Family Management and Historical Origins: The Italian Experience
    (2024) Cardullo, Gabriele; Conti, Maurizio; Damiani, Mirella; Ricci, Andrea; Scicchitano, Sergio; Sulis, Giovanni
    Research Question/Issue The purpose of this paper is to analyze the long-run determinants of the corporate structure of Italian firms to explain the persistent role of a long-run tradition of civic capital that has favored interpersonal trust, fostered cooperation outside of the narrow ties of family members and limited the diffusion of family businesses managed predominantly by family members. Research Findings/Insights We examined a large sample of Italian listed and not listed firms and identified those that operate in current municipalities that in the past used to be independent communes. Such firms featuring experiences of civic engagement are today less likely to be owned by a family and run by family management. Theoretical/Academic Implications Our findings highlight the role of institutions as drivers of corporate governance and signal that long forgotten institutions, by modifying local social capital, may interact with family social capital and have important persistent effects on current corporate governance arrangements. Therefore, significant elements of path dependency may explain current patterns of unbundling of ownership and management. Practitioner/Policy Implications Persistent corporate governance structures are difficult even for policymakers to modify. Our findings suggest that political measures should favor the accumulation of social capital at the local level when aiming to change ownership and management arrangements and limit the misallocation of resources due to family management.
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    What workers and robots do: An activity-based analysis of the impact of robotization on changes in local employment
    (2025) Caselli, Mauro; Fracasso, Andrea; Scicchitano, Sergio; Traverso, Silvio; Tundis, Enrico
    This work investigates the impact that changes in the local exposure to robots had on changes in Italian employment over the period 2011–2018. It contributes to the debate by providing novel and granular evidence on the impact of robot adoption on new activity-based groups of occupations and by focusing on the overlap between the functional similarities of robot applications and occupations. This framework, consistently centered on workers’ and robots’ activities, reveals highly heterogeneous effects of robotization, ranging from positive to negative across different groups of occupations, thereby supporting a nuanced and granular reading of this debated phenomenon. In particular, the local share of robot operators increases where the increase in robot adoption is larger, while the local share of workers using intensively their torso decreases.
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    On the Emergence of Cooperative Industrial and Labor Relations
    (2023) Cardullo, Gabriele; Conti, Maurizio; Ricci, Andrea; Scicchitano, Sergio; Sulis, Giovanni
    We explore the long run determinants of current differences in the degree of cooperative labor relations at local level. We do this by estimating the causal effect of the medieval communes - that were established in certain cities in Centre-Northern Italy towards the end of the 11th century - and that contributed to the emergence of a cooperative attitude in the population on various proxies for current cooperative labor relations. Conditional on a large set of firm and municipality level controls, as well as a full set of province fixed effects, we find that firms located in municipalities that had been a free medieval commune in the past, have higher current probabilities to adopt two-tier bargaining structures and to be unionized. We also report IV and propensity score estimates that confirm our main results.
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    The call of nature. Three post-pandemic scenarios about remote working in Milan
    (Elsevier, 2024) Biagetti, Marco; Croce, Giuseppe; Mariotti, Ilaria; Rossi, Federica; Scicchitano, Sergio
    In recent years remote working (RW) arrangements have increased in many countries, mainly because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has also intensified the need for humans to live closer to nature. Within this context, the paper aims to discuss three possible future scenarios for the spread of RW by 2050, and how this could affect residential choices, people's relationship with the natural environment, and thus the renewed role of large cities, small towns, and areas close to nature. A specific focus is placed on the city of Milan in northwest Italy. To give empirical foundations to our scenarios, we analyzed data for the year 2021. The first scenario we consider (the Gentrified City) implies the risk that Milan will become a gentrified city, thus pushing social and economic inequality. However, on the contrary, our data suggest that in Italy a potential pool of workers would leave the city and move to a small town or closer to nature if allowed to work remotely. This trend could lead to the second scenario (the Doughnut City), but data for Milan show that the share of those willing to leave Milan is lower than the national average, which can be explained by the good quality of offered services; thus, the city center is unlikely to empty due to RW. The desirable option would be represented by the third scenario: some remote workers move to intermediary cities (the Intermediary Cities scenario), reducing territorial disparities.
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    Even more discouraged? The NEET generation at the age of COVID-19
    (2024) Aina, Carmen; Brunetti, Irene; Mussida, Chiara; Scicchitano, Sergio
    The Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) status is a long-standing problem that occupies a priority role in the European policy agenda, even more during the post-COVID-19 outbreak. This paper investigates whether and how the COVID-19 pandemic and the quality of institutions affect the probability of being NEET in Italy. In treating the 15–34 unemployed and inactive cohort jointly, our hypothesis is that the COVID-19 exposure has increased the risk of being NEET during the second quarter of 2020 whereas the quality of institutions could mitigate it. Estimates on a unique dataset obtained by merging the Italian Labor Force Survey with the Institutional Quality Index dataset, confirms it. In addition, in dealing the 15–24 and 25–34 cohorts separately, our results show that individuals in the older age group are the most affected. Finally, “good deeds” implemented by institutions, such as active policies conducted at regional level, are a further educational investment that could protect from becoming NEET.
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    Working from Home and Job Satisfaction: The Role of Gender and Personality Traits
    (2024) Esposito, Piero; Mendolia, Silvia; Scicchitano, Sergio; Tealdi, Cristina
    In this paper we investigate the effect of working-from home (WFH) on job satisfaction. We use longitudinal data from Italy to estimate a difference-in-differences model, in which the treatment group includes individuals who transitioned to remote work in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and continued to work from home in 2021. We perform the analysis, which extends to various aspects of self-reported job satisfaction, by gender and personality traits as per the Big-Five framework, encompassing Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Our findings reveal that WFH exhibits a positive influence on job satisfaction, albeit exclusively among women, and with some heterogeneity, depending on personal characteristics. Specifically, this effect seems more noticeable in women characterized by elevated Openness to Experience, whereas those with heightened conscientiousness or neuroticism levels tend to experience less satisfaction when working remotely.
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    Intergenerational (im)mobility in Pakistan: Is the social elevator broken?
    (2024) Andlib, Zubaria; Sadiq, Maqsood; Scicchitano, Sergio
    There is a large literature on intergenerational social and educational mobility in developed countries, but the evidence in developing countries is still scant. In the current literature, household background has been predicted as a significant determinant of individuals' current and future social status because it influences almost every aspect of their lives. We examine various channels through which household socio-economic background and other household and individual characteristics affect individuals' educational and social opportunities in a developing economy, Pakistan. To accomplish the objectives, we have used a rich dataset: the Pakistan Standards of Living Measurement (PSLM) survey 2019-20, which contains information on individuals and their real parents. The empirical analysis highlights that the level of parents' education is more relevant than the level of parents' occupation skills in individuals' social and educational opportunities. In addition, household wealth, region and province of residence, migration status, and disabilities are also significant predictors of intergenerational mobilities in Pakistan. Our results narrate an unequal and dual labour market in Pakistan. Based on empirical outcomes, the study has offered suitable policy implications for developing economies and Pakistan in particular.