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on Information and Communication Technologies |
| By: | Sardo, Alessio; Arlia, Daniela; Cerruti, Gianluca |
| Abstract: | Purpose This paper aims to explore the interaction between labor market reforms and housing policies in Italy, Spain and the UK. Design/methodology/approach By providing a comparative legal analysis of significant policy changes at the macro level and a descriptive overview of the evolution of their main economic determinants – wages and housing prices – at the micro level, the study highlights the socioeconomic impact of these reforms and their contribution to urban disparities. Findings The analysis suggests that the implementation of labor market reforms aimed at increasing flexibility and competitiveness coincided with heightened precarity, particularly for low-wage and nonstandard workers across all countries. Research limitations/implications The analysis does not address causality. Practical implications The paper suggests that stratified labor policy and work deregulation have an impact on urban inequality and wage distribution at sub-city level. Social implications The study argues that these reforms, coupled with macro-events such as the increase in global trades and the advent of ICT, might have exacerbated the socioeconomic inequalities at both national and local levels over the last decades by disfavoring less skilled workers, particularly in large cities. Originality/value The originality of the paper lies in its integrated analysis of labor-market reforms and housing policies as jointly producing urban disparities. Rather than treating wage stagnation, employment precarity and housing unaffordability as separate phenomena, the paper connects them through a comparative framework covering Italy, Spain and the UK. Its contribution is also empirical and spatial: it combines national regulatory trajectories with city-level evidence from Milan, London and Madrid, showing how macro-level reforms translate into uneven urban outcomes. This multi-scalar approach offers a distinctive perspective on the legal, economic and territorial roots of contemporary inequality. |
| Keywords: | European Cities;housing affordability;housing market analysis;housing prices;reforms;wage disparities |
| JEL: | R14 J01 N0 |
| Date: | 2026–12–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:141253 |
| By: | Gert Bijnens; Anders Humlum; Stijn Vanormelingen |
| Abstract: | New machinery has long been argued to raise the relative demand for skilled labor, yet firm-level evidence finds no such shift at investing firms. We resolve this puzzle by looking beyond firm boundaries. Linking Belgian data on capital investments, buyer–supplier transactions, and worker skills, we show that the skill bias of new machinery arises entirely at external suppliers. Following machinery investment spikes, purchases from suppliers raise firms’ total demand for high-STEM workers by 45%, three times the rise for other skill groups, while in-house hiring raises it by less than 5%, evenly across skill groups. This external demand comes first from machine integrators and later from complementary services such as software, and is stronger for smaller firms, lumpier investments, and rapidly advancing capital, consistent with fixed and adjustment costs of hiring high-STEM workers in-house. In a general-equilibrium model estimated on our event studies, the rise in machinery per worker from 2003 to 2021 raises relative demand for high-STEM workers by 8.8 log points and their wage premium by 3.1. Measured on payrolls alone, both would fall. |
| JEL: | E22 J23 J24 J31 L24 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35857 |