We use longitudinal data based on administrative archives from 1985 to 2002 to estimate the relationship between wages and firm size in Italy. By controlling for individual fixed effects, we find that larger firms pay significantly higher wages, although the individual unmeasured ability...

We analyze how the absence behavior of Italian public sector employees has been affected by a law, passed in June 2008, reducing sick leave compensation and increasing monitoring. We use micro data on 889 workers employed in public administration. We find that the employees’ probability of...

Using data for 9, 13 and 15-year-old students from three different datasets (PIRLS-2006, TIMSS-2007 and PISA-2009), we investigate whether the age at school entry affects children school performance at the fourth, eighth and tenth grade levels. Since student's age in a grade may be endogenous,...

Efficiency wages theories argue that the threat of firing, coupled with a high unemployment rate, is a mechanism that discourages employee shirking in asymmetric information contexts. Our empirical analysis aims to verify the role of unemployment as a worker discipline device, considering the...

In this paper we analyze class size effects on college students exploiting data from a project offering special remedial courses in Mathematics and Language skills to freshmen enrolled at an Italian medium sized public University. To estimate the effects of class size we take advantage of the...

In this paper we examine the signalling value for skills of different examination systems in relation to errors that may affect grades obtained by students. Firm use school grades as a signal of the effective skills of workers, taking into account that evaluation are effected by stochastic...

We investigate whether Italian regions haveconverged in terms of output per worker because of physical capitalaccumulation, human capital accumulation or thanks to technological catch-up. Inorder to identify channels of convergence we adopt the methodology recentlyproposed by Wong (2007) and...

We analyze the effect of gender quotas on electoral participation by using a rich dataset of Italian municipal elections. Gender quotas were in force in Italy from 1993 until 1995. Because of the short period covered by the reform, some municipalities never voted using gender quota. This allows...