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...

In this paper we study the furniture industry in two European countries, Germany and Italy. Although the two industries are characterized by very similar output and technology, they differ widely in terms of market organization, most notably the distribution of firms by size, and the...

In this paper we ask what is the length of working life in Europe, whether it differs by gender, birth cohort, and schooling level, and what are the main differences across countries. We also ask whether there is a trend towards shorter working lives, and to what extent it is due to the delayed...

We investigate the relationship between ageing, cognitive abilities and retirement using the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), a household panel that offers the possibility of comparing several European countries using nationally representative samples of the population...

A common problem in applied regression analysis is that covariate values may be missing for some observations but imputed values may be available. This situation generates a trade-off between bias and precision: the complete cases are often disarmingly few, but replacing the missing observations...

Social surveys are usually affected by item and unit nonresponse. Since it is unlikely that a sample of respondents is a random sample, social scientists should take the missing data problem into account in their empirical analyses. Typically, survey methodologists try to simplify the work of...

Reliable measures of poverty are an essential statistical tool to evaluate 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 measurement error and missing data problems. Neglecting...

This paper shows that the “lump of labor” assumption fails in Italy. The direct relationship between the unemployment rate of the young and the labor force participation of the old is pro-cyclical, i.e. a higher labor force participation of the old is related to a lower unemployment rate of...