We try to identify which economic factors might be responsible for the large international differences in student performance. We present time series evidence for a number of European countries which suggests that rising educational expenditures obviously did not improve student performance....

This paper estimates the causal effect of being born to a teenage mother on children's outcomes, exploiting compulsory schooling changes as the source of exogenous variation. We impose external estimates of the direct effect of maternal education on child outcomes within a plausible exogeneity...

This paper estimates the causal effect of being born to a teenage mother on children's outcomes, exploiting compulsory schooling changes as the source of exogenous variation. We impose external estimates of the direct effect of maternal education on child outcomes within a plausible exogeneity...

This paper presents a comparative analysis of economic development in European and Eurasian countries, focusing on the educational level of population, fertility rates, production by sector and foreign trade. Countries are classified into 5 large areas: three for Western Europe, one for Central...

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...

In this article we present an econometric analysis of the relationship between several indicators of economic development and wellbeing in Europe, the United States and Canada. We calculate a compound index of several indicators based on three groups: 1) Life satisfaction and income per capita,...

The EU experience with youth unemployment has changed over recent years with the launch and re-launch of the Lisbon Strategy and the Bologna process. A dramatic shift has taken place from the 1990s emphasis on labour market flexibility as a tool to abate youth long term unemployment to the more...