Research

WP version: Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza Working Paper Series No. 121, Università Cattolica, Nov 2022.

• I show that parents select schools by considering attributes of the student-school match that improve the learning outcomes beyond average school quality. Using the centralized algorithm for offers to primary school 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 most-preferred school versus an institution ranked lower increases achievement by 0.10 SD beyond school value-added among students with similar characteristics. Only a small part of the match effects of parental choice can be explained by student’s characteristics such as gender, ability, or socioeconomic status.

             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.

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

• We investigate the stages of childhood at which parental job loss is most consequential for their child’s education. Using Danish administrative data linking parents experiencing plant closures to their children, we compare end-of-school outcomes to matched peers and to closures hitting after school completion age. Parental job loss disproportionally reduces test taking, scores, and high school enrolment among children exposed during infancy (age 0-1). Effects are largest for low-income families and low-achieving children. The causal chain from job loss to education likely works through reduced family income. 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. 

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 provide novel and general evidence on the causal effects of schooling on cognitive skills in adulthood. We exploit exogenous variation in schooling induced by institutional reforms targeted at increasing education quantity. An additional year of schooling increases internationally-comparable numeracy and literacy scores across 21 countries and the full distribution of working age. The effect is non-linear: postgraduate and high school degrees have disproportional effects, and reforms targeting early and late school years generate larger skill gains. Exploiting unique data on the use of skills, we argue that experience in skill-intensive jobs magnifies the impact of schooling on skills.

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).

WP version: Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza Working Paper Series, n. 106, Università Cattolica, Jun 2021.

• ​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.