Unexplored Dimensions of Discrimination

The 2012 European Conference of the Fondazione Ing. Rodolfo Debenedetti addressed the issue of labour market discrimination.

• The first report, entitled “The Wage Gap in the Transition from School to Work” and coordinated by Giovanni Peri (University of California, Davis), studied the role of family background and gender discrimination in access to the labor market in Italy, based on a novel and unique data collection, which follows the career of a sample of individuals since high school. Other participants to the research team were: Luca Flabbi (Georgetown University, USA), Sara de La Rica (Universidad del País Vasco, Spain), Massimo Anelli (University of California, Davis), Mauricio Tejada (Georgetown University, USA) and Ainara González de San Román (Universidad del País Vasco, Spain).

Discussant: Christopher Flinn (New York University) and Daniel Hamermesh (University of Austin, Texas).

• The second report, entitled “Unexplored Dimensions of Discrimination in Europe: Religion, Homosexuality and Physical Appearance” and coordinated by Eleonora Patacchini (Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”) addressed relatively unexplored dimensions of discrimination, such as physical appereance, religion, and sexual orientation. The report also included the results from a field experiment on the Italian labour market aimed at analysing the effect of perceived homosexuality and of appearance in general on the recruitment process of job applicants. Other participants to the research team: Giuseppe Ragusa (LUISS Guido Carli, Rome) e Yves Zenou (Stockholm University).

Discussant: Jan van Ours (Tilburg University) e Alan Manning (London School of Economics).

Final panel discussion: “Lessons for Equal Opportunities Legislation”

Participants:

Sergio Briguglio (ENEA, Centro Ricerche Frascati)
Daniela Del Boca (University of Turin)
Matteo Winkler (Università Bocconi, Milan).

Chairman: Tito Boeri (Università Bocconi and fRDB)