This paper exploits discontinuities in the assigment of scholarships targeted at low income students in an Italian University in order to evaluate the effects of monetary incentives on students' academic achievement. Results reveal positive and sizeable causal effects both in terms of credits...

This paper attempts to evaluate the effects of fiscal policy announcements by the Italian government on the long-term sovereign bond spread of Italy relative to Germany. After collecting data on relevant fiscal policy announcements, we perform an econometric comparative analysis between the...

We perform an econometric analysis of the gambling market in Italy over the recession (2009-2012), observing the consumption patterns in "luck" and "skill" games. We find a different effect between the early and late period of the crisis. Whereas gambling initially behaves as normal good, in the...

In this paper, we estimate the gender pay gap along the wage distribution using a detailed decomposition approach based on unconditional quantile regressions. Non-randomness of the sample leads to biased and inconsistent estimates of the wage equation as well as of the components of the wage...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the extent to which local budget spending composition reacts to fiscal rules variations. I consider the budget of Italian municipalities and exploit specific changes in the Domestic Stability Pact's rules, to perform a difference-in-discontinuities...

We identify the degree of intergenerational altruism in an OLG framework à la Barro exploiting the quasi-experimental variation generated by reforms of bequest taxation (estate or inheritance tax, in the U.S.) and taxes on inter vivos real estate donations (gift tax, in the U.S.) that were...

This paper investigates three dimensions of overeducation: incidence, impact on earnings and possible determinants. The analysis focuses on Italian graduates and refers to the cohort that graduated in 2007 using data from the AlmaLaurea survey on graduates' career paths. A new measure of...

This paper studies the impact of size on labor cost and productivity for Italian manufacturing firms. The distributions of both labor cost and productivity display a wide support, even when disaggregated by sector of industrial activity. Further, both labor cost and productivity, when considered...

Among the many studies on migration before the Great War, Italy has received little attention, with a few notable exceptions and without providing a convincing explanation of its economic and demographic determinants. Standard neoclassical approaches explain emigration as driven by relative...

We investigate how cooperative firms reacted to the current crisis. This allows us to compare the behavior of cooperative and conventional firms facing exogenous shifts in demand. After a short survey of a stream of theoretical literature, we analyze a large group of Italian production...