Local labor systems, Agriculture, Censuses, O50, R10,

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 envisaged a fiscal stimulus of approximately $800 billion, the largest in American history. Chodorow-Reich et al. (2012a) show that the state fiscal relief that was part of this stimulus increases employment. The other objective of ARRA was to "promote economic recovery". We therefore examine its effect on states' economic growth. Since the stimulus each state received is endogenous to a state's economic environment, ordinary least squares underestimates the effect. This endogeneity problem is addressed by using a state's pre-recession Medicaid spending level to instrument for the ARRA fiscal relief each state receives. We find that the ARRA state fiscal relief has indeed had a positive effect on gross state products.

This paper identifies the professional profiles of graduates for job positions in the accommodation sector, in particular, whether specific skills of the position or skills related to the tourism sector are preferred. A conjoint design is applied, which presents the more realistic context of asking respondents to evaluate potential “product” profiles. Managers of accommodation facilities expressed their preferences on four hypothetical profiles of candidates for five job positions: receptionist, administrative clerk, human resources professional, web marketing specialist, revenue manager. Six attributes (academic degree and level, among others) are used to describe the candidate profiles. The data were analysed through a multinomial logit model and an ordinary least squares regression model that highlighted the preferred characteristics of the candidates for the considered job positions. The main findings show that recruitment in accommodation facilities looks at specialized skills and academic programmes appropriate for the specific job positions. Knowledge of the desired characteristics of graduates, which could affect a possible recruitment, is important for designing effective academic curricula.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the economic specialization of the Italian local labor systems (sets of contiguous municipalities with a high degree of selfcontainment of daily commuter travel) by using the Symbolic Data approach, on the basis of data derived from the Census of Industrial and Service Activities. Specifically, the economic structure of a local labor system (LLS) is described by an interval-type variable, a special symbolic data type that allows for the fact that all municipalities within the same LLS do not have the same economic structure.

In Italy, the evaluation of the internal effectiveness of academic training courses has been substantiated, for over 20 years, in periodical surveys on students' opinions on teaching and related services. The first proposal to homogenize the various measurement methods adopted by the Universities was advanced by the former National Committee for the Evaluation of the University System in 2000 and it was the reference model until 2011, when the first Board of Directors of the National Evaluation of University and Research Agency (ANVUR) took over. The Agency's attempt, within the AVA (Self-assessment, Periodic Evaluation and Accreditation) methodological framework, to enrich and update the survey highlighted a number of critical issues, essentially linked to the ways and times of participation of students, compared to the modalities in which the training offers of the universities are organized. Taking a cue from these critical issues, the purpose of this paper is to propose a new, simpler and more rational evaluation model, which still maintains substantial continuity with the inspiring principles of the past plants, and tries to consolidate the monitoring efforts made by the universities to date.