We provide new evidence on the impact of peer effects on the schooling decisions of teenagers. In November 1980 a major earthquake hit Southern Italy. In the aftermath, young men from certain towns were exempted from compulsory military service. We show that the exemption raised high school...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between the number of lawyers and civil litigation across Italian provinces over the period 2000-2005. First, we document the existence of a positive correlation between the number of lawyers and litigation. We then employ a 2SLS approach to verify...

The correlation between the socio-economic status of parents and their offspring has emerged as one of the stylized facts in economics, though cross-country and cross-occupation variation is remarkable. However, part of the underlying mechanism behind intergenerational persistence remains to be...

PISA 2012 included an optional computer-based assessment (CBA) focusing on mathematics, reading skills and problem solving. Italian students performed better in the CBA than in the paper-based assessment (PBA). This was not due to any specific features of the student samples in Italy and in the...

Students� competencies are influenced by a host of factors, including the individual school�s effectiveness. Measuring this contribution is extremely difficult. One way of circumventing the problem is by focusing on changes in competencies over time, i.e. value-added measures. Using...

The paper empirically tests the relationship between underground labour and schooling achievement for Italy; a country ranking badly in both respects when compared to other high-income economies; with a marked duality between North and South. In order to identify underground workers; we exploit...

The paper considers the teachers� labour market in Italy. The quality and motivation of teachers are certainly among the determinants of pupils� achievement, but they are difficult to measure, so we examine the composition of the pool of teachers and their behaviour to infer...

A political-economic model is provided to study the impact of low-skilled immigration on the receiving country's education system, in terms of sources of school funding, expenditure per pupil, and type of parents who are more likely to send children to privately funded schools. The education...

The paper compares the quality of Italian Medical schools� freshmen on the basis of the scores obtained in the locally conducted entry exams which are using a common national test frame. The test is quite selective (partly because of the reduced size of the intake yearly allowed): winners...

The problems of Italy�s education system mostly stem from its modus operandi and interactions with the expectations of families and students. The recent signs of improvement in Italian students� proficiency, plausibly reflecting greater emphasis on rigour, could be reinforced by making...