We investigate whether classical studies in high school – that emphasize in Italy the study of ancient languages such as Latin and Greek - affect personality traits. Using Italian survey data, we compare individuals who did classical studies in high school with similar individuals who...

We estimate the direct and spillover effects of a large-scale early childhood intervention on the educational attainment of over 2,000 disadvantaged children in the United States. We show that failing to account for spillover effects results in a severe underestimation of the impact. The...

This paper estimates returns to education using a dynamic model of educational choice that synthesizes approaches in the structural dynamic discrete choice literature with approaches used in the reduced form treatment effect literature. It is an empirically robust middle ground between the two...

We estimate the direct and spillover effects of a large-scale early childhood intervention on the educational attainment of over 2,000 disadvantaged children in the United States. We show that failing to account for spillover effects results in a severe underestimation of the impact. The...

While recent studies mostly find that attending child care earlier improves the skills of children from low socio-economic and non-native backgrounds in the short-run, it remains unclear whether such positive effects persist. We identify the short- and medium-run effects of early child care...

While recent studies mostly find that attending child care earlier improves the skills of children from low socio-economic and non-native backgrounds in the short-run, it remains unclear whether such positive effects persist. We identify the short- and medium-run effects of early child care...

In Sweden, females outperform males on compulsory and high school GPAs by a third of a standard deviation, while males outperform females on the Swedish SAT by the same magnitude. We establish that GPAs capture different attributes and skills compared to SAT scores. Differences in motivation and...

We analyse how schooling in multigrade classes affect the formation of student cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Our identification strategy is based on some institutional features of the Italian educational system establishing a minimum number of students per class. Classes that do not reach...

We use the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) data to construct several measures of non-cognitive skills and to analyze the relationship between non-cognitive skills and earnings. We construct measures for non-cognitive skills based on previous research in...

We investigate the time investment in cognitive and non-cognitive childcare activities by parents with different educational attainment. In a second step we also investigate this effect for three different child age cohorts. Past research shows that the degree of success in the labour market is...