IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jlawec/doi10.1086-722476.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Effects of Deregulating Retail Operating Hours: Empirical Evidence from Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Lucia Rizzica
  • Giacomo Roma
  • Gabriele Rovigatti

Abstract

We estimate the impact of deregulating shop hours on the structure of the retail sector and the size and composition of its labor force. To identify the effect of interest, we exploit the staggered implementation of a reform that allowed Italian municipalities to adopt fully flexible operating hours in the late 1990s. Our findings indicate that lifting restrictions on hours increased retail employment by 2.4 percent and increased the number of shops in the affected municipalities by 1.8 percent. In combination with estimates using individual-level data, our results further suggest that retail employment grew more in larger retail operations, with a corresponding movement of the labor force toward permanent employees and away from the self-employed.

Suggested Citation

  • Lucia Rizzica & Giacomo Roma & Gabriele Rovigatti, 2023. "The Effects of Deregulating Retail Operating Hours: Empirical Evidence from Italy," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(1), pages 21-52.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/722476
    DOI: 10.1086/722476
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/722476
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/722476
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/722476?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucp:jlawec:doi:10.1086/722476. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.