Regional unemployment differentials among Italian regions have widened since the mid 1980s, especially between the leading Northern and Central areas and the underdeveloped South. We suggest that the following elements are important to explain the observed phenomenon: a) employment performance...

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...

Using Italian data on standardized test scores, we show that the performance decline associated with question position is heterogeneous across students. This fact implies that the rank of individuals and classes depends on the length of the test. Longer tests may also exhibit larger gaps between...

School vouchers introduced recently in some Italian regions have lowered the cost of private schools. On one side, we provide evidence that Italian private schools may be selected for different reasons than quality considerations. On the other side, by exploiting individual data on voucher...

We use data from a nationally representative survey of Italian graduates to study whether Alma Mater matters for employment and earnings three years after graduation. We find that the attended college does matter, and that college related differences are substantial both among and within regions...