Italy has an immobile social structure. At the heart of this immobility is the educational system, with its high direct, but especially indirect cost, due to the extremely long time necessary to get a degree and to complete the subsequent school-to-work transition. Such cost prevents the...

This paper investigates the impact of changes in the funding of higher education in England on students' choices and outcomes. Over the last two decades – through three major reforms in 1998, 2006 and 2012 – undergraduate university education in public universities moved from being free to...

The Further and Higher Education Act of 1992 changed the Higher Education system in the UK by giving all polytechnics university status. Using the British Household Panel Survey and accounting for different sources of selection bias, we show that wage differentials between university and...

Starting in 1999, the Bologna Process reformed the German five-year study system for a first degree into the three-year bachelor's (BA) system to harmonize study lengths in Europe and improve competitiveness. This reform unintentionally challenged the German apprenticeship system that offers...

The Bologna process inspired the Italian 3+2 reform of the university system which constitutes a big increase in the supply of college graduates. This paper is a preliminary attempt to identify the effects of the reform on (i) the relative probability (relative to non-graduates) of employment of...

We use survey data on cohorts of high school graduates observed before and after the Italian reform of tertiary education implementing the 'Bologna process' to estimate the impact of the reform on the decision to go to college. We find that individuals leaving high school after the reform have a...

There is good reason to think that non-elite programs in economics may be producing relatively more research than in the past: Research expectations have been ramped-up at non-PhD institutions and new information technologies have changed the way academic knowledge is produced and exchanged....

In this paper, we provide a comprehensive and up-to-date snapshot of the most important postsecondary education and labor market outcomes in the U.S. using two nationally representative sources of data: The Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and The National Educational...

We examine the causal impact of China's higher education expansion on labor market outcomes for young college graduates using China's 2005 1% Population Sample Survey. Exploiting variation in the expansion of university spots across provinces and high school cohorts and applying a...

Over the last decade, many countries have experienced dramatic increases in university enrolment, which, when not matched by compensating increases in other inputs, have resulted in larger class sizes. Using administrative records from a leading UK university, we present evidence on the effects...