My research combines quantitative and qualitative methods to better understand inequalities in education and gender economics, and to identify effective public policies that can reduce them. I apply causal inference approaches in policy evaluation, including experimental methods and natural experiment settings, and complement them with qualitative analyses of laws, policies, and stakeholder perspectives.
Collaborating with other researchers, I focus on inequalities in secondary and tertiary education, on gender gaps in economic outcomes, and on the mechanisms through which socioeconomic conditions and social norms contribute to the transmission of inequalities across generations. My work often involves the analysis of large administrative datasets on students (and households — work in progress!) at different stages of life, which I integrate with additional sources to provide a comprehensive picture of the challenges and opportunities within educational systems and labor markets.
Working Papers & Ongoing Projects
Work in progress
[1] How Gender Norms Shape Educational Achievement: A Causal Analysis Through Peer Influence (with Rattini, V.) [JMP, draft available upon request]
Abstract: This paper studies how gender norms transmitted through peer environments shape students' educational choices. Using longitudinal administrative data on five cohorts of Italian students and an instrumental variable strategy based on partially overlapping peers, we identify the effect of exposure to classmates whose mothers work in gender-segregated occupations, including entrepreneurial and self-employed roles that remain predominantly male, holding peers' academic achievement constant. Exposure to peers whose mothers are employed in male-segregated occupations increases enrollment in academically demanding high school tracks by 0.5 percentage points per standard deviation, while exposure to peers whose mothers work in female-segregated occupations lowers it by 4.1 points. The effects are concentrated in the scientific track, are present for both girls and boys, and are consistent with norm diffusion at the classroom level. They are robust to controlling for peers' mothers' education, peers' fathers' occupations, and classroom gender composition. Our findings show that maternal role models spill over beyond the family through classmates, so that the composition of the classroom contributes to the persistence, or the erosion, of traditional gender norms. Schools may therefore broaden students' exposure to non-traditional role models, for instance through career talks with women employed in male-segregated occupations, without reassigning pupils across classes.
[2] Bounded agency in EU higher education governance: policy diffusion, meta-organisation, and soft power in European University Alliances (with Cino Pagliarello, M., and Gunn, A.) — Revise & Resubmit, European Policy Analysis
[3] On the Impact of High School on Academic Performance (ongoing, with Bonacini, L., and Pignataro, G.)
[4] Gender norms, peer beliefs and socio-emotional education: a multi-site study in Italian lower secondary schools — AEA RCT Registry, AEARCTR-0019764, September 25 (ongoing, with Montinari, N.).
Completed projects
[1] Gender Differences in Motivation and Academic Performance — AEA RCT Registry AEARCTR-0011431 (2023, with Bernhofer, J., Bonacini, L., and Pignataro, G.)
For a list of selected research projects and publications, please see my CV.