Essays in Applied Labor and Health Economics

This thesis examines how the conditions and organization of work affect workers’ well-being and behavior, drawing on evidence from administrative and survey data within the Italian context. It focuses on two main dimensions of job quality: physical security and workers’ perceptions of the meaning of work. The first essay, Silent Alarms: Workplace Injuries Under-Reporting in Italy, investigates the phenomenon of workplace injuries under-reporting using administrative microdata from the Italian National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work (INAIL). Exploiting fatal workplace accidents as quasi-exogenous shocks to public attention, the study estimates the effect of salience on reporting behavior through a matching-based difference-in-differences design. Results show that non-severe injury reports rise sharply in the weeks following fatal accidents, revealing systematic under-reporting. The effect is amplified by media coverage and union presence, highlighting the role of information and worker representation in improving compliance and prevention. The second essay, Purpose Under Pressure: The Benefits and Risks of Meaningful Work, examines how workers’ beliefs about autonomy, competence, and relatedness shape perceptions of meaningful work and influence labor-market behavior. Autonomy refers to the degree of control individuals have over their tasks and decisions; competence captures the extent to which workers can use and develop their skills; and relatedness reflects the sense of social connection and belonging experienced at work. Using a novel survey of 3,510 Italian employees and a belief-elicitation framework, the study shows that autonomy and relatedness are perceived as unambiguously beneficial—enhancing job satisfaction and reducing work–life conflict—while competence entails both benefits and costs, being associated with greater job satisfaction but also greater work–life strain. These beliefs align with actual labor-market outcomes, suggesting that intrinsic motivation and job design jointly shape satisfaction, effort, and work–life balance.