The 1990s witnessed an emerging interest on the part of labor economists in employer-employee matched data. This volume collects three studies, which represent some of the first analyses to test the usefulness of these types of observations (the INPS data) for the study of the Italian labor market during the early 1980s. They exploit a measure of relative wages (the average wage paid to similar workers in the firm) to provide insights in three areas: wage determination within the firm, turnover, and sex discrimination.
The emerging picture shows an environment where workers' mobility decisions are deeply affected by their career perspectives within their present firm; where women are more attached employees than men; and where workers' forward-looking behavior is potentially reinforced by their abilities to share in the economic gains and losses of their employer. A postscript by Kevin Lang (Boston University) discusses the generalizability of the findings and raises questions for future research.

Monica Galizzi received her Laurea in Economia e Commercio and her Dottorato in Politica Economica from the Università Cattolica-Milano. Afterwards she received her PhD in Economics from Boston University. From 1994 to 1998 she worked as labor economist at the Workers Compensation Research Institute in Cambridge, MA. In 1999 she joined the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, where she is currently Associate Professor in Economics. She has published articles on issues of labor mobility, gender discrimination, and economic outcomes of occupational injuries.