This paper focuses on the gendered choice of high school in the Italian context, where children are tracked at age 14 and are free to choose the type of school, with no binding teacher recommendation or ability restriction. It is therefore a context in which preferences, however influenced by...

In most OECD countries, girls outperform boys in all subjects except mathematics. Usually, only test scores are utilised as a measure of mathematical skills. In this paper, we argue that in order to measure children's capability in mathematics we need to include some indicators of the attitudes...

Gender differences in the STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines are widespread in most OECD countries and mathematics is the only subject where typically girls tend to underperform with respect to boys. This paper describes the gender gap in math test scores in Italy,...

Italy was the first Western country hit by Covid-19 in February 2020, responding with a tight lockdown and full school closure until the end of the school year. This paper estimates the effect of the pandemic and school closure on the math skills of primary school pupils in Italy. We compare the...

We implement a teaching methodology aimed at improving primary school children's mathematical skills. The methodology, grounded in active and cooperative learning, focuses on peer interaction, sharing of ideas, learning from mistakes, and problem solving. We evaluate the causal effect of the...

This paper estimates the effect of a full year of the COVID-19 pandemic on school performance, focusing on students at the end of upper secondary school who are about to enter the labour market or start university without having had the opportunity to recover. Using longitudinal data from...

We discuss changes in the demand for paid sex accompanying the criminalization of prostitution in the United Kingdom, which moved from a relatively permissive regime under the Wolfenden Report of 1960, to a much harder line of aiming to crack down on prostitution with the Prostitution (Public...

The paper examines the gender wage gap in Italy during the 2008-2012 economic crisis, using cross-sectional EU-SILC data. The gender wage gap increased from 4% in 2008 to 8% in 2012, when for most European countries the gap decreased. After 2010 the growth of the Italian gender wage gap (and its...

This paper investigates the relationship between personality traits in adolescence and health behaviours using a large and recent cohort study. In particular, we investigate the impact of locus of control, self-esteem and conscientiousness at age 15-16, on the incidence of health behaviours such...

We present new estimates of intergenerational earnings elasticity for Australia. We closely follow the methodology used by Leigh (2007), but use considerably more data (twelve waves of HILDA and four waves of PSID). Our adjusted estimates are intended to be comparable to those for other...