In this paper we estimate relative age effects in academic performance using a unique database of students at Bocconi University. The identification exploits school entry cut-off ages that generate up to 11 months difference between the youngest and the oldest students within each cohort. Our...

A large part of the Italian welfare system is designed and implemented at the very local level, leading to a high degree of heterogeneity in the type and the generosity of available programs across the country. As a consequence, studies of welfare use based on standard household surveys may fail...

Unskilled workers in low productivity jobs typically experience higher labour turnover. This paper shows how this empirical finding is related to variation in the efficiency of the matching process across occupations. A simple theoretical model of employers' search shows that firms find it...

Gender stereotypes are well established also among women. Yet, a recent literature suggests that learning from other women experience about the effects of maternal employment on children outcomes may increase female labor force participation. To further explore this channel, we design a...

The spread of high-speed Internet epitomizes the digital revolution, affecting several aspects of our life. Using German panel data, we test whether the availability of broadband Internet influences fertility choices in a low-fertility setting, which is well-known for the difficulty to combine...

There is a growing concern that the widespread use of computers, mobile phones and other digital devices before bedtime disrupts our sleep with detrimental effects on our health and cognitive performance. High-speed Internet promotes the use of electronic devices, video games and Internet...

There is a large literature on social interactions and still little is known about the economic mechanisms leading to the high level of clustering in behavior that is so commonly observed in the data. In this paper we present a model in which agents are allowed to interact according to three...

This paper contrasts measures of teacher effectiveness with the students' evaluations for the same teachers using administrative data from Bocconi University (Italy). The effectiveness measures are estimated by comparing the subsequent performance in follow-on coursework of students who are...

This paper estimates the impact of college teaching on students' academic achievement and labor market outcomes using administrative data from Bocconi University (Italy) matched with Italian tax records. The estimation exploits the random allocation of students to teachers in a fixed sequence of...

We use a new dataset and a novel identification strategy to analyze the effects of residential segregation on the employment of migrants in 8 Italian cities. Our data, which are representative of the population of both legal and illegal migrants, allow us to measure segregation at the very local...