This paper proposes the use of a new technique, the Stochastic Multi-criteria Acceptability Analysis (SMAA), to evaluate education quality at school level out of the PISA multidimensional database. SMAA produces rankings with Monte Carlo Generation of weights to estimate the probability that...

In combating the spread of COVID-19, some governments have been reluctant to adopt lockdown policies due to their perceived economic costs. Such costs can, however, arise even in the absence of restrictive policies, if individuals' independent reaction to the virus slows down the economy. This...

The main goal of this paper is to document and analyze the long-term evolution of inequality of opportunity (IOp) in the four largest European economies (France, Germany, Great Britain and Italy). Relative IOp represents an important portion of total income inequality, with values ranging from...

This paper develops a normative approach to the measurement of ex-ante inequality of opportunity in a multidimensional setting, i.e., when the individual outcome is represented by a multidimensional variable. We characterize three classes of social welfare functions, all endorsing ex ante...

A large strand of the literature on panel data models has focused on explicitly modelling the cross-section dependence between panel units. Factor augmented approaches have been proposed to deal with this issue. Under a mild restriction on the correlation of the factor loadings, we show that...

In this paper we study the allocation of time devoted to informal learning and education, i.e. those activities carried out during leisure time and outside formal education courses which boost individuals' human and social capital. For immigrants the private investment in these activities is...

Italy has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. A solution, often advocated to incentivize fertility, could be to reform the Italian fiscal system, taking inspiration from the French fiscal family treatment. This would imply introducing the quotient system, where taxation is not on an...