We use a reform that was recently implemented in Italy to investigate the effects on academic achievement of more stringent requirements for the admission to the next grade at upper secondary school. We study how such effects are mediated by changes in family and school inputs, and in the...

Due to pension reforms, minimum retirement age increased substantially in Italy between the second part of the 1990s and the early 2000s. We compare the training participation of pre- and post-reform cohorts of private sector employees and estimate that adding one year to minimum retirement age...

We estimate the effect of the high school curriculum (or track) on the returns to college using data from the Italian PLUS (Participation Labour and Unemployment Survey) survey. We find that college graduates with vocational high school are less likely to be employed than graduates with academic...

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...

This paper studies how schooling admission tests affect economic performance in an economy where individuals are endowed with both academic and non academic abilities and both abilities matter for labor productivity. We develop a simple model with selective government held schools, where...

We develop a simple search equilibrium model of workplace training and education based on two features. First, investment in education improves job-related learning skills and reduces training costs burdened by firms. Second, firms with vacant skilled job slots can choose between recruitment...

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...

We derive bounds for the average of math and language scores of elementary school students in Italy correcting for pervasive score manipulation. Information on the fraction of manipulated data is retrieved from a natural experiment that randomly assigns external monitors to schools. We show how...

We ask whether local agglomeration affects how recessions impact on entrepreneurship by comparing the probability of being an entrepreneur before and after the Great 2008 Recession in local labour markets where industrial districts are present and in comparable areas. Using Italian Labour Force...

We use the variation of training policy over time and across Italian regions to identify the relationship between individual training and earnings. Using longitudinal data for the period 1999 to 2005, we find that the marginal effect of one additional week of formal training on monthly earnings...