Labor Market Reform and Rent-sharing: A Quasi-experiment Experience

We analyze the impact on wages of the adoption of a rent-sharing remuneration scheme aimed at making labor institutions more flexible. We work within a quasi-experimental setting referring to a sample of Italian companies before and after the introduction of the Treu Reform (1997). Our estimations confirm that this reform not only increased insider workers' wages via rent-sharing, but also fueled a sigma-convergence process of the rent-sharing elasticity across the sectors at a different rate. Finally, we deliver a reasoned discussion of the consequences of implementing this reform on the Italian job market. This reform produced advances in the quality of job remuneration but it deepened a structural gap in the Italian labor market composition.