Three essays on digital platforms and their impact on labour

Digital platforms have driven a structural transformation of Italian labour markets, with consequences for workers. This thesis examines three settings in which platform diffusion has reshaped employment and earnings, and argues that the common thread is a worsening of working conditions through lower wages and rising precariousness. The first essay uses administrative tax data from MEF-Irpef at the municipal level to estimate the effects of Amazon's entry into Italian local labour markets. Exploiting the staggered opening of Amazon warehouses across municipalities, I find that Amazon presence causes significant declines in local wages and no increase in employment. The second essay draws on firm-level data from INAPP-DPS and shows that, within the hospitality and restaurant sectors, adoption of digital platforms leads to a higher share of non-standard employment. The third essay uses worker-level data from the INAPP-PLUS survey and documents that participation in online labour platforms is associated with lower earnings through unevenly distributed working hours and increases in lower-paying tasks associated with platforms, such as cleaning, food delivery, and micro-working. Taken together, the three essays show that platform diffusion in Italy has not been a neutral force of technological change: the power platforms exert has increased risk and compressed earnings for the workers most exposed to it.