We estimate the employment effects of a large program of public investment subsidies that ranked applications on a score reflecting both objective criteria and local politicians' preferences. Leveraging the rationing of funds as an ideal RDD, we characterize the heterogeneity of treatment...

We investigate the impact of labour market concentration on two dimensions of job quality, namely wages and job security. We leverage rich administrative linked employer-employee data from Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain in the 2010s to provide the first comparable...

This paper analyzes the joint effect of EPL and financial market imperfections on investment, capital-labour substitution, labour productivity and job reallocation in a cross-country framework. In the spirit of Rajan and Zingales (1998) and Ciccone and Papaioannou (2006), we exploit variation in...

We exploit long time series of industry-level data in a group of OECD countries to analyze the short-term labor market effects of reforms lowering barriers to entry and dismissal costs. Our estimates show that both policies induce non-negligible transitory employment losses, a result that is...

This paper analyzes the joint effect of EPL and financial market imperfections on investment, capital-labour substitution, labour productivity and job reallocation in a cross-country framework. In the spirit of Rajan and Zingales (1998) and Ciccone and Papaioannou (2006), we exploit variation in...

We evaluate the effects of an online self-assessment tool on teachers' competencies and beliefs about ICT in education. The causal impact of the tool is evaluated through a randomized encouragement design, involving 7,391 lower secondary teachers across 11 European countries. Short-run impact...

We conducted a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of a summer learning program for vulnerable students across ten cities in Italy (N=1,038). The program had two components: educational workshops in small groups (88 hours) and personalized tutoring (12 hours). Results indicate...

Liste di mobilità (LM) is an Italian labour market programme targeted to dismissed workers. It combines a 'passive' component granting monetary benefits to employees dismissed by firms larger than 15 employees, and an 'active' component providing an employment subsidy to any firm hiring workers...

In this paper we present a counterfactual evaluation of the effect of ICT resources at school on student achievements conducted in Italy. In 2009 156 classes at 6th grade were endowed with additional resources earmarked for purchasing ICT equipments only. By selecting an equivalent number of...

Overconfidence is a well-established bias in which someone's subjective confidence in their own judgments is systematically greater than their objective accuracy. There is abundant anecdotal evidence that overconfident people increase their exposure to risk. In this paper, we test whether...