The number of Italian firms in function of the number of workers is well approximated by an inverse power law up to 15 workers but shows a clear downward deflection beyond this point, both when using old pre-1999 data and when using recent (2014) dat
a. This phenomenon could be associated with employent protection legislation which applies to companies with more than 15 workers (the Statuto dei Lavoratori). The deflection disappears for agriculture firms, for which the protection legislation applies already above 5 workers. In this note it is estimated that a correction of this deflection could bring an increase from 3.9 to 5.8% in new jobs in firms with a workforce between 5 to 25 workers.
We investigate quintessence cosmologies with a matter component consisting of particles with an increasing mass. While negligible in early cosmology, the appearance of a growing matter component has stopped the evolution of the cosmon field at a reds
hift around six. In turn, this has triggered the accelerated expansion of the Universe. We propose to associate growing matter with neutrinos. Then the presently observed dark energy density and its equation of state are determined by the neutrino mass.
