Personale docente

Luca Cattani is currently Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Parma’s Department of Law, Politics and International Studies. Luca received his PhD in European Law & Economics in 2014 defending his thesis “Educational mismatch in the Italian and European labour markets” at the University of Bologna where he had also completed with honours a Master’s Degree in Local and Global Development (2010). Luca has previously served as Assistant Professor of Applied Economics at the Gran Sasso Science Institute (GSSI), and as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bologna (2020-2021) and at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (2018-2019). In July 2018, Luca won a 1-month international visiting fellowship funded by IAS-Warwick and served as a visiting researcher at the Institute for Employment Research of the University of Warwick, collaborating on the project “Graduate labour market transitions in the UK and Italy”. Between 2014 and 2021, Luca has taught economics courses in both undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at the University of Bologna and the University of Padua.

His main research interests include human capital and education, graduate labour markets, skills demand and supply and HRM strategies at a firm level. Luca’s most recent research focuses on learning gains, the interregional mobility of human capital, the relationship between technological change and skills, work flexibility and firm growth, and the interplay between the green and digital transitions. On these topics, Luca has published on both international and national leading journals such as Research Policy, Industrial and Corporate Change, Studies in Higher Education, Regional Studies and Economia Politica.

Luca has participated in several publicly co-funded national and international research projects such as, among others: H2020 “Working, yet poor”, “CTE Sicura” funded by the Italian Ministry for Economic Development (former MISE, now MIMIT), and “COME (Competences for Manufacturing in Emilia-Romagna)” funded by the Emilia-Romagna Regional Assembly.

Key publications

2024 “The kind of things that money just can't buy: the role of potential absorptive capacity in enhancing firm-level employment growth”, con Savoia, F.; Bullini Orlandi, L., Technological Forecasting and Social Change, published online, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2024.123646

2024 “‘Get back to where you once belonged’? Effects of skilled internal migration on Italian regional green growth”, con Pinate, A. A., Dal Molin, M., Faggian, A., Papers in Regional Science, published online, doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pirs.2024.100036

2023 "Firms’ eco-innovation and Industry 4.0 technologies in urban and rural areas", Regional Studies, con S. Montresor e A. Vezzani, published online, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2023.2243984

2023 “Education, routine, and complexity biased Knowledge Enabling Technologies: Evidence from Emilia-Romagna, Italy”, Industry and Innovation, vol. 30, issue 1, pp. 103-134, con R. Antonietti, F. Gambarotto, G. Pedrini, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13662716.2022.2045910

2022 “Coevolution of Job Automation Risk and Workplace Governance” in Research Policy, Volume 51, Issue 3, con F. Belloc, G. Burdin, F. Landini, W. Ellis, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2021.104441