This paper studies the role of the expansion of higher education (HE) in increasing the equality of tertiary education opportunities. It examines Italy's experience during the 1990s, when policy changes prompted HE institutions to offer a wider range of degrees and to open new sites in...

This paper studies the role of the expansion of higher education (HE) in increasing the equality of tertiary education opportunities. It examines Italy's experience during the 1990s, when policy changes prompted HE institutions to offer a wider range of degrees and to open new sites in...

Thanks to the effort of two local educational authorities, in two regions of North Italy (Valle d'Aosta and the autonomous province of Trento) the PISA 2009 test was re-administered to the same students one year later. This paper is the first to analyse in the OECD-PISA context the potential...

In this paper we investigate the existence and the size of territorial differences in Italian students' mathematical competencies. Our analysis benefits from a new data set that merges the 2003 wave of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) with territorial data collected...

Building upon some education studies finding that cooperative behaviour in class yields better achievements among students, this paper presents a simple model showing that free riding incentives lead to an insufficient degree of cooperation between schoolmates, which in turn decreases the...

Building upon some education studies finding that cooperative behaviour in class yields better achievements among students, this paper presents a simple model showing that free riding incentives lead to an insufficient degree of cooperation between schoolmates, which in turn decreases the...

"In this paper we investigate the existence and the size of territorial differences in Italian students' mathematical competencies. Our analysis benefits from a new data set that merges the 2003 wave of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) with territorial data...

Thanks to the effort of two local educational authorities, in two regions of North Italy (Valle d'Aosta and the autonomous province of Trento) the PISA 2009 test was re-administered to the same students one year later. This paper is the first to analyse in the OECD-PISA context the potential...

The paper provides an empirical investigation of labor market pooling. The analysis concentrates on Italian industrial districts and shows that there is scattered evidence of a widespread wage premium. In particular, there is no evidence of district differentials for the returns to seniority...