The future of work

Gianluca Salvatori The future of work. The belief that long-term automation creates as many jobs as it destroys is currently wavering. For some years now, we have witnessed a phenomenon that gives cause for concern when it comes to employment. New technologies are now replacing features that until recently were not considered automatable. The future of work has never been so difficult to predict. It may seem like an unsubstantiated allegation: after all, on other occasions in the past, we have gone through high-impact changes that have substantially altered the forms and the ways we work. It happened with the transition from agriculture to modern industry, and again during every industrial revolution. However, every time the emergence of new jobs - in sectors other than those where technological innovation has developed, because the "income effect" overtook that of substitution - has ended up compensating, in the medium to long term, for the loss of traditional activities - such as blacksmith or horse groomer - caused by the introduction of new technologies. More often than not, the quality of the working conditions actually improved; until now, in fact, the new jobs that have replaced the ones destroyed have been generally better and more well-paid than those replaced by innovation. Read More

WP 43 | 12 Do cooperative enterprises create social trust?

This paper contributes to the literature by carrying out the first empirical investigation into the role of different types of enterprises in the creation of social trust. Drawing on a unique dataset collected through the administration of a questionnaire to a representative sample of the population of the Italian Province of Trento in March 2011, we find that cooperatives are the only type of enterprise where the work environment fosters the social trust of workers. Read More

WP 34 | 12 Innovative private-public partnerships

The crisis in global markets has severely affected the labor market, on the one hand, making it even more difficult for disadvantaged people to find new jobs and, on the other, creating new conditions of social fragility and thus new labor needs. While social cooperatives are a concrete way to respond to these emergencies, they often find themselves having to self-sustain in a highly competitive market with narrow profitability margins and restrictive spending policies. Read More

WP 05 | 10 Working in the profit versus not for profit sector: what difference does it make? An inquiry on preferences of voluntary and involuntary movers

We investigate what is behind the profit/not for profit wage differential by comparing judgments on job characteristics of workers who voluntarily or involuntarily moved from the first to the second sector. Our findings support the differential profit/nonprofit compensation hypothesis and shed light on mechanisms that go beyond the work-donating behavior of intrinsically motivated workers. Read More