Research

LISER  Working Paper No.  2023-12, Dec 2023
IZA Discussion Paper No. 16367, Aug 2023.

We investigate the stages of childhood at which family shocks are most consequential for a child’s education. Using Danish administrative data, we link parents experiencing plant closures to their children. We compare end-of-school outcomes to matched unexposed peers and closures hitting shortly after school completion. Parental job loss disproportionally reduces test taking, scores, and high school enrolment among children exposed during infancy (ages 0-1). Adolescents suffer milder adverse effects, while little impacts are detected in mid-childhood. Effects are largest for low-income and low-achieving children and closely reflect family income losses. Maternal time investment partially offsets the effect of reduced income.

Presented at: Copenhagen Education Network Workshop, Università Cattolica, JEM23, IWAEE, VIVE, AIEL Conference, EALE Conference, NetCIEx Workshop, ASSA (poster), Bank of Italy Human Capital Workshop (poster), LEER Conference, SOLE, SIE, ECINEQ, ESPE, SEHO. 

CESifo Working Paper No. 10926, January 2024. 

IZA Discussion Paper No. 16064, Apr 2023. 

Understanding parental response to non-test score attributes is crucial to design effective school choice systems. We study an intervention providing hard-to-find information on the school environment at local institutions, while holding information on school performance constant. Outflow to private education is reduced by 17%, with larger responses among advantaged students. Parents respond by increasing take-up of offers from local schools, increasing competition for seats. Social interactions increase the program’s impact by 40%. Consistent with our interpretation, the intervention does not affect parental demand for school performance. We conclude that simple, low-cost interventions can improve state schools’ finances and peer quality.​

Media coverage: QMUL. 

Presented at: QMUL, University of St Andrews, University of Strathclyde, University of Dundee, University of East Anglia, SOFI (Stockholm University), CESifo (scheduled), SMYE, IFO Conference on Genes, Social Mobility, and Inequalities across the Life-Course, EffEE Conference (poster), IWAEE, EALE Conference, AIEL Conference, SEHO Annual Meeting, RES Conference, Workshop on Fertility, Health, and Human Capital (University of Belfast).

WP version: IZA Discussion Paper No. 15876, Jan 2023

We examine whether more schooling causally increases the cognitive skills of adults. Using education reforms in twenty-one European countries as natural experiments, we link cohorts’ exposure to reforms to internationally comparable numeracy and literacy scores from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development–Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. An extra year of schooling increases adult skills by about 0.2–0.25 standard deviations. The gains are non-linear: completing high school and, especially, college delivers larger skill improvements than the average additional year. Across reform types, expansions of pre-primary and secondary education generate the largest increases in skills. Using information on how individuals use skills at work and at home, we provide evidence consistent with a mechanism whereby education improves access to skill-intensive jobs that sustain and further develop skills over the life cycle. Overall, raising educational attainment can deliver lasting skill gains, particularly when followed by opportunities to use and build skills in the labour market. 

Presented at: Università Cattolica, LESE Conference, EffEE Conference (poster), IWAEE, COMPIE Conference, EALE  Conference, AIEL Conference, Workshop on Human Capital, Labour Markets and Public Policies (University of Naples).

I show that parents select schools that improve the student-school match. Using the centralized algorithm for offers to primary schools in London, I compare the achievement of students who are as good as randomly enroled in schools ranked differently in their application. Enroling at the first choice compared to a school ranked lower increases achievement by 0.03 standard deviations per year beyond the average school value-added across students. Match effects arise from unobserved student's and school's attributes, and are larger for relatively advantaged students. Results imply that parental choice can increase aggregate learning.

             Media coverage: Royal Economic Society; Forbes; Thomas Fordham Institute.

Presented at: QMUL, the IFS, the LSE, Università Cattolica, SIdE WEEE Workshop, Brucchi Luchino Workshop, the IZA Summer School in Labour Economics, IWAEE, ESEM, IZA Workshop on the Economics of Education, Padova Applied Economics Workshop, AIEL Conference, ICEEE, RES Conference, SMYE, COMPIE Conference.

We use the UK’s 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) to study the attributes of top-scoring (four-star) publications in Economics and Econometrics. Although official documents contain aggregate scores for each institution, we show how these aggregates can be used to infer the score awarded by REF panellists to each publication. We demonstrate that this score responds to journal prestige as measured by the Thomson Reuters Article Influence Score. Several econometric analyses confirm the limited contribution of other publication attributes, such as the citation counts, to the awarded score, and publications in the top generalist and top-five economics journals are unambiguously awarded four stars. We conclude that in large-scale evaluations such as the REF, peer reviews and bibliometrics should be viewed as complementary modes of assessment: the time-consuming task of peer reviews would be more cost-effective if targeted to publications whose quality cannot be unambiguously classified using bibliometrics.

​​                  Media coverage: QMUL.

Presented at: Brucchi Luchino Workshop, RES Conference, ANVUR.

Recent surveys on adult competences (e.g., IALS, PIAAC) show that competences are positively correlated with schooling and parental background. However, the institutional differences across countries mediate the impact of these variables, thus leading to less/more egalitarian distributions of competences as well as to difference in the gradient of competences on employment probability and earnings. This chapter intends to exploit existing data sets to explore the varieties of educational systems, distinguishing between inclusive and selective according to whether they are associated with less or more dispersed distribution of competences, once they are controlled for schooling and parental background. Typical reform indicators (that are time varying and can therefore be associated to different age cohorts) include duration of compulsory schooling, age of secondary school tracking, school autonomy, central examination, and student financial aid.

RFBerlin Discussion Paper 194/26, Jul 2026.

IZA Discussion Paper No. 18798, Jul 2026.

Presented at: AIEL, Bolzano Applied Micro Workshop, USI Lugano, SEHO, fRDB. 

We study how committee dynamics affect the recognition of academic excellence and its consequences in the labour market. Using administrative records from a major Italian university and exploiting exogenous variation in the gender composition of graduation committees, we show that equally prepared female graduates are significantly less likely to receive laude honors when evaluated by male-majority committees, while males are unaffected. The effect is concentrated among students advised by female or early-career faculty and disappears when a woman chairs the committee, pointing to the role of authority and influence in deliberations. We show pre-defense gender gaps in adivsors’ official laude requests in male-majority committees, consistent with nominations responding to expected committee support. Gaps in academic distinction translate into meaningful entry-wage penalties, contributing to gender gaps at labor-market entry.

DEF Unicatt WP 148, Dec 2025.

Awarded the VisitINPS Fellowship by the National Social Security Institute (INPS)

We study how worker-specific ability to generate earnings evolves over the life cycle. We measure the dynamics of earning ability by extending the canonical AKM model of wage determination to allow worker effects to vary as individuals age. Age-dependent estimates of earning ability unveil heterogeneous career trajectories, with high-ability workers sorting into higher-paying employers early in their careers and moving to different firms to a lesser extent thereafter. We show that earning ability significantly decreases after job loss, suggesting that it is at least partly match-specific. This result is particularly pronounced for high-ability workers, who, conversely, are the ones experiencing the lowest penalties in employer pay after job loss.

Presented at: INPS, AIEL, SEHO.