Saggi di Economia Sanitaria e del Lavoro

This thesis is composed of three chapters. Chapter 1 is titled “Did the Massachusetts Health Reform Program Increase Self-Employment?” and is single authored. It investigates whether affordable health insurance could lead to self-employment generation by studying the case of the Massachusetts Health Reform program. In this study, I use the synthetic control methodology to confirm the absence of a statistically significant effect of the reform on aggregate self-employment. However, I do detect positive and significant short-run effects of the reform on the probability that individuals become incorporated self-employed. This effect is restricted to individuals 40 years old or younger. I also find that for employees in this age range the reform caused a significant wage reduction. This finding highlights that the higher reform-mandated health insurance coverage was at least in part financed by employees. Chapter 2 is titled “Italian MDs' location choices: A Stated Preference Experiment” and is a joint work with Prof. Marco Bertoni (University of Padova, Italy) and Dr. Yuanyuan Gu (Macquarie University, Australia). It studies physicians' migration intentions and relative preferences for various job characteristics by undertaking a Discrete Choice Experiment with medical students at the University of Padova in Italy. Using a mixed logit model, we estimate students' willingness to pay for various job characteristics and find that not only are they willing to sacrifice a significant portion of their yearly salaries for desirable job features but also that they are willing to pay significantly more for them in order to stay in Italy. We also find significant heterogeneities in the likelihood of emigrating on the basis of observable non-cognitive characteristics. Specifically, we find that students with an internal locus of control, higher willingness to take risks and higher levels of altruism are more predisposed to leaving their home countries. Chapter 3 is titled “Does a Longer Work Horizon Affect Offsprings' Labour Market Outcomes?” and is single authored. This chapter studies the effect of an increase in the work horizon of middle-aged workers on the school-work transition of their offsprings aged 15-29 years. I exploit the variation in the parental work horizon induced by the 2012 Fornero reform in Italy that abruptly changed the age and years of social security contribution requirements for pension eligibility. Utilising a difference-in-difference strategy, the study shows that the reform-induced increase in the work horizon of mothers caused an increase in the probability of their offsprings seeking their first job. This effect is concentrated mostly on male offsprings and is stronger in southern Italy where there is also a significant decline in the offsprings' likelihood of being students. Fathers, however, did not significantly affect the student status or any labour market outcomes of their offsprings.