We use the repeated random assignment of external examiners to school institutes in Italy to investigate whether the effect of external monitoring on test score manipulation persists over time. We find that this effect is still present in the tests taken one year after exposure to the examiners,...

We study whether the combined significant reduction in the pupil-teacher ratio and increase in parental education observed in Italy between the end of World War II and the end of the 1980s have had a significant impact on the educational attainment and the labor market returns of a...

The purpose of this paper is to provide an update of the empirical evidence on the private returns to education in Italy. First, we show that, whilst returns to education in Italy (based on gross wages) are in line with the European average, educational attainment is generally much lower...

Individual absolute risk aversion is measured for a sample of 1373 male household heads, using the 1995 wave of the Survey on the Income and Wealth of Italian households. This measure, conditional on financial and real wealth and household income, is used as an instrument for attained education...

We study whether a higher share of immigrant pupils affects the school performance of natives using aggregate multi-country data from PISA. We find evidence of a negative and statistically significant relationship. The size of the estimated effect is small: doubling the share of immigrant pupils...

Motivated by anecdotal as well as econometric evidence from Italy, we ask whether private schools can provide lower quality than public schools. Using a stylized model of the education market with sequential entry of a public and a private school, we show that, depending on the underlying...

Using Italian data on standardized test scores, we show that the substantial heterogeneity in how performance changes with the position of questions can alter the rank of individuals and classes as the length of the test increases. We examine whether decomposing test scores into initial...

In 2015, school-work alternation programmes (alternanza scuola lavoro) became compulsory in all Italian high schools, with the purpose of enabling students to combine theoretical learning at school with work-based learning. A distinctive feature of this reform was that the intensity of...