This essay provides a comprehensive interpretative framework to understand the reasons why the school-to-work transition (SWT) is so slow and hard in Italy. The country is a typical example of the South European SWT regime, where the educational system is typically rigid and sequential, the...

This essay discusses the determinants of youth unemployment within the EU and then the alternative policy options currently at stake. We argue that youth unemployment regards especially some peripheral EU countries and is due to a mix of factors that should be addressed more vigorously, starting...

This paper surveys the theoretical approaches used in the literature to study the phenomenon of delayed graduation and university dropout. The classical human capital model does not contemplate failure, which the amended human capital model does. Delayed graduation and university dropout are two...

Purpose – There is a long period from completing studies to finding a permanent or temporary (but at least satisfactory) job in all European countries, especially in Mediterranean countries, including Italy. This paper aims to study the determinants of this duration and measure them, for the...

Providing income support to unemployed education-leavers reduces the returns to investments in education because it makes the consequences of unemployment less severe. We evaluate a two-part policy reform in Belgium to study whether conditioning the prospective entitlement to unemployment...

This survey organizes and discusses the theoretical and empirical literature on the determinants of university student achievements. According to the theoretical framework, the decision to invest in tertiary education is a sequential process made under gradually decreasing levels of uncertainty...

This paper estimates the impact of the Free Education Policy, a major education reform implemented in rural China in 2006, as a natural experiment on the intergenerational transmission of cognitive skills. The identification strategy relies on a difference-in-differences approach and exploits...

This paper contributes to the literature on overeducation by empirically investigating the wage penalty of job-education mismatch among Ph.D. holders who completed their studies in Italy; a country where the number of new doctoral recipients has dramatically increased over recent years while...

This study examines work orientations as a novel determinant influencing job search behaviors, quit intentions, and workplace effort, thereby integrating this concept into the field of labor economics. Work orientations, the intrinsic beliefs regarding the role of work in one's life, relate to...

Self-employment contributes to employment growth and innovativeness and many individuals want to become self-employed due to the autonomy and exibility it brings. Using "subjective well-being" as a broad summary measure that evaluates an individual's experience of being self-employed, the...