TY  - JOUR
AU  - Ichino,Andrea
AU  - Maggi,Giovanni
TI  - Work Environment and Individual Background: Explaining Regional Shirking Differentials in a Large Italian Firm
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 7415
PY  - 1999
Y2  - November 1999
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7415
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7415.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Andrea Ichino
University of Bologna
Dipartimento di Economia
Piazza Scaravilli, 2
40126, Bologna  - Italy
E-Mail: andrea.ichino@unibo.it

Giovanni Maggi
Department of Economics
Yale University
37 Hillhouse Avenue Rm 27
New Haven, CT 06511
Tel: 203/432-3569
Fax: 203/432-6323
E-Mail: giovanni.maggi@yale.edu
AB  - The prevalence of shirking within a large Italian bank appears to be characterized by significant regional differentials. In particular, absenteeism and misconduct episodes are substantially more prevalent in the south. We consider a number of potential explanations for this fact: different individual backgrounds; group-interaction effects; sorting of workers across regions; differences in local attributes; different hiring policies and discrimination against southern workers. Our analysis suggests that individual backgrounds, group-interaction effects and sorting effects contribute to explain the north-south shirking differential. None of the other explanations appears to be of first-order importance.
ER  -