Dramatic reforms recently proposed to change the system of rules governing the Italian labour market maintain that: i) it is possible to reconcile an increased flexibility of the employment (the Blanchard precarité) with a higher confidence of the representative worker about the continuity and stability of his income flow; ii) employment flexibility is the only remedy to the unemployment problem of Southern Italy (Mezzogiorno). The paper tries to show that the arguments supporting these two propositions are flawed under many basic aspects.

Guido Cella, in "STUDI ECONOMICI " 77/2002, pp. , DOI: