This paper studies the relationship between the two main dimensions of early-life environment, namely disease burden (measured by infant mortality) and economic conditions (measured by income or consumption per capita), and height and body-mass index (BMI) of recent cohorts of young adult males...

Reliable measures of poverty are an essential statistical tool for public policies aimed at reducing poverty. In this paper we consider the reliability of income poverty measures based on survey data which are typically plagued by missing data and measurement error. Neglecting these problems can...

Height data offer insights into the well-being of populations and historical periods for which other indicators are lacking. Researchers modeling historical heights have typically relied on the restrictive assumption of a normal (Gaussian) distribution, only the mean of which is affected by age,...

In this paper I review evidence on the long-run relation between height and economic development in Italy. I ask three questions: What are the long-run trends of mean height and real incomes in Italy? What do we know about height dispersion? What other aspects of the distribution of height...

We consider a general sample selection model where unit and item nonresponse simultaneously affect a regression relationship of interest, and both types of nonresponse are potentially correlated. We estimate both parametric and semiparametric specifications of the model. The parametric...

This paper studies convergence in per-capita GDP across European regions over the period 1980-2000. We use median unbiased estimators of the rate of convergence to the steady-state growth path, while allowing for unrestricted patterns of heterogeneity and spatial correlation across regions. By...

This paper uses administrative data to study the retirement decisions of Italian private-sector non-agricultural employees during the period 1977-97. Our analysis tries to assess the importance of the financial incentives built into the social security system. The basic idea is very simple: at...

This paper considers the issue of actuarial fairness of the new Italian public pension system in view of the recent trends in old-age mortality and the survival differences by gender, birth cohort and region of residence. After reviewing the secular trends in elderly mortality in Italy, and the...

This chapter analyzes the international evidence on the relationship between educational wage premia and the distribution of personal labor earnings. The aim is to review what is known about the contribution of differences in relative wages across schooling levels to the degree of variability,...