According to the latest findings of the MIUR (Ministry of Education, University and Research), Alunni con cittadinanza non italiana 2004-2005 (MIUR, October 2005), 4.2% of the school population in Italy is made up of non-Italian citizens, with no reference to students who have one Italian parent...

The strong adverse selection that immigrants face in hosting labour markets may induce them to adopt some behaviours or signals to modify employers’ beliefs. Relevant mechanisms for reaching this purpose are personal reputation; exploiting ethnic networks deeply-rooted in the hosting country;...

The tracking of pupils by ability into elite and non-elite schools represents a controversial policy in many countries. There is no consensus on how large the elite track should be and little agreement on the effects of any further increase in its size. This paper presents a natural experiment...

This article exploit a data base of 1.522 observations related to Lombardy’s municipalities to run a cross sectional estimation of the drivers of MW selection. We find no evidence of a significant correlation between the percentage of selected MW selection and market variables such as the unit...

This paper considers the estimation of binary choice panel data models with discrete endogenous regressors. We present a switching probit model which accounts for selectivity bias as well as for other forms of time invariant unobserved heterogeneity. Individual effects are allowed to be...

We study the driving forces behind the adoption of environmental innovations (EI) in the Italian industry over 2006-2008 through analyses of the new wave of Community Innovation Survey (CIS) data that covered for the first time environmental innovation adoptions. We investigate whether the first...

The cross-sectional dynamics of the U.S. business cycle is examined through the lens of quantile regression models. Conditioning the quantiles of firm-level growth to different measures of technological change highlights a deep connection between counter-cyclical skewness and the transmission of...

This paper studies whether conformism behavior affects individual outcomes in crime. We present a social network model of peer effects with ex-ante heterogeneous agents and show how conformism and deterrence affect criminal activities. We then bring the model to the data by using a very detailed...

It is a common assumption that regions within the same country converge to approximately the same steady-state income levels. The so-called absolute convergence hypothesis focuses on initial income levels to account for the variability in income growth among regions. Empirical data seem to...

This paper proposed a methodological framework for the assessment of carbon stocks and the development and identification of land use, land use change and land management scenarios, whereby enhancing carbon sequestration synergistically increases biodiversity, the prevention of land degradation...