While it is well known that birth order affects educational attainment, less is known about its effects on earnings. Using data from eleven European countries for males born between 1935 and 1956, we show that firstborns enjoy on average a 13.7 percent premium over laterborns in their wage at...

Using a natural experiment designed by the Italian national test administrator (INVALSI) to monitor test procedures in Italian primary schools, this paper shows that the presence of an external examiner who monitors test procedures has both a direct and an indirect effect on the measured...

By allowing people to obtain divorce without the consent of their spouse, Unilateral Divorce Laws (UDLs) increase the risk of divorce. Using the staggered introduction of UDLs across European countries, we show that households exposed to UDLs for longer time accumulate more savings. This effect...

Pension reforms that raise minimum retirement age increase the pool of senior individuals aged 50+ who are not eligible to retire from the labour market. Using data from Italian provinces and regions and an instrumental variable strategy, we estimate the effects of local changes in the supply of...

We ran a randomized field experiment to ascertain whether a costless manipulation of the informational content (restricted or enhanced information) and the framing (gain or loss framing) of the invitation letter to the breast cancer screening program in Messina, Italy, affects the take-up rate....

We investigate whether the effects of schoolmates' gender and average parental education on educational achievement, employment and earnings vary with individual family characteristics such as the gender of siblings and own parental education. We find that the benefits from exposure to...

We estimate the effect of winning a mayoral election on long-run licit earnings, which plays a key role in the selection of local political leaders. We use Italian administrative social security data from 1995 to 2017 and a sharp regression discontinuity design based on close elections. Over a...

We use European Union Labour Force Survey data for the period 2005-2018 to investigate the cyclicality of training in Europe. Consistent with the view that firms use recessions as times to update skills, we find that training participation is moderately countercyclical for the employed. Within...