Job Protection and Mortgage Conditions: Evidence from Italian administrative data

Seminar abstract

In this paper we combine administrative data from the Italian national institute for social security and proprietary data from a major Italian commercial bank to analyse the impact of job protection legislation on mortgage conditions. Exogenous changes in the degree of job protection against individual dismissals of newly hired workers with open-ended contracts are identified by exploiting the 2015 Labour market reform, the so-called Jobs Act, which reduced employment protection of employees in large private firms. We find that the weaker job stability induced by the 2015 legislation change leads to a lower mortgage amount and a lower leveraging capacity, as measured by the loan-to-value ratio. Furthermore, the effect of job insecurity is mitigated by the presence of co-mortgagors while it is amplified for young and low-income households.

How to join this seminar

This seminar is free to attend.

Please contact Dr Anna Sarkisyan for detail on how to join us online.

Speaker bio

Alberto Zazzaro is a Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics and Statistics of University of Naples Federico II, President (elected) of the Società Italiana di Economia for the three-year period 2019-2022, founding member of the MoFiR and research fellow at the CSEF and Centro Studi Luca d’Agliano.

His research interests are in banking, money, migration, remittances, industrial organization, family firms, economic growth and policy evaluation.

His research has been published in academic journals including;

• Economic Journal,
• IMF Economic Review,
• Health Economics,
• Journal of Banking and Finance,
• Journal of Development Economics,
• Journal of Economic Behavior and Organizations,
• Journal of Economic Geography,
• Journal of Economic Growth,
• Journal of Financial Intermediation,
• Journal of Financial Stability,
• Journal of Money Credit and Banking,
• Review of Finance,
• Review of Income and Wealth,
• Review of International Organizations,
• Small Business Economics,
• World Development

Alberto Zazzaro is a member of the Editorial Board of the PSL Quarterly Review, Rivista Bancaria - Minerva Bancaria and SN - Business & Economics, and a member of the Board of Advisors and Board of Trustees of the Italian Economic Journal