This paper provides a novel glance on the relationship between family background and earnings applying a synthetic index of social mobility built on distributions of parental and offspring occupational statuses. Using the EU-SILC dataset for 8 countries, our analysis shows that country...

This paper analyses the relationship between equality of opportunities and characteristics of the educational systems, jointly considering country- and school-level features. Because the peer group composition represents a fundamental channel in shaping educational opportunities, we consider all...

This paper analyses the interaction between school tracking policies and peer effects in OECD countries. Using the PISA 2006 dataset, we show that the linear peer effects are stronger and more concave-shaped in the early-tracking educational system than in the comprehensive one. Second, and more...

Recent literature agrees that the degree of intergenerational mobility substantially differs across European countries, ranked between the "mobile" Nordic countries and the "immobile" Anglo-Saxon and Southern ones. In this paper we will compare the intergenerational transmission of advantages in...

The empirical literature using large international students’ assessments tends to neglect the role of school composition variables in order not to incur in a misidentification of peer effects. However, this leads to an error of higher logical type since the learning environment crucially...

The authors investigate the impact of exogenous product market competition shocks on returns to skills in Italy using a new longitudinal dataset on individual working histories. This impact is identified using three exogenous shocks affecting competition: the unforeseen devaluation of the Lira...