An empirical analysis of the interplay between households consumption and children’s schooling decisions

Post date: 04-Jan-2017 06:31:44

12 GENNAIO 2017, ore 14.30, Sala Riunioni Primo Piano

Relatrice: Prof.ssa Daniela Sonedda UPO, DiSEI

Titolo: An empirical analysis of the interplay between households consumption and children’s schooling decisions

Abstract: The implementation at the beginning of the 2000s of two almost overlapping reforms let Italy be a quasi-experimental setting to study the e ects that such institutional changes have had on the joint household decisions to consume and enrol children at higher education. On the one hand, exogenous variation of the pending-incoming civil trials ratio (an higher court e ciency) has a ected the marginal costs and benefits of the access to the credit market. On the other hand, the introduction of a shorter undergraduate course program has exogenously changed the marginal costs and benefits of a university degree. Although these reforms were implemented independently of each other, their simultaneity gives us the opportunity to analyse whether and to what extent household non-durable consumption responds to changes in the years of schooling of the children (and viceversa). Our empirical analysis shows the existence of positive non-separabilities in the utility function between non-durable consumption and years of schooling.

Coautore: C. Aina