In this paper we investigate the effects of class size on the achievements of a sample of college students enrolled at a middle-sized Italian public university. To estimate the effects of class size we exploit the exogenous variations in class size determined by a maximum class size rule...

By casual empiricism, it seems that many firms take explicit account of the family ties connecting workers, often hiring individuals belonging to the same family or passing jobs on from parents to their children. This paper makes an attempt to explain this behaviour by introducing the assumption...

In this paper we examine the signalling value for skills of different examination systems in relation to errors that may affect grades obtained by students. Firm use school grades as a signal of the effective skills of workers, taking into account that evaluation are effected by stochastic...

We analyse peer effects among students of a middle-sized Italian public university. We explain students’ average grade in exams passed during their Second Level Degree course on the basis of their pre-determined measures of abilities, personal characteristics and peer group abilities. Thanks...

In this paper sport data are used to study the effects of manager replacement on firm performance. Using match results of the major Italian soccer league (“Serie A”) we analyze the effects of coach (manager) changes in terms of team performance. From our preliminary estimates, including year...

We conducted a field experiment involving 720 Italian undergraduate students to investigate the existence of gender differences in performance in competitive settings and whether performance is affected by one's opponent gender. The experimental design was aimed at disentangling gender...

Time preferences can affect divorce probability both affecting the quality of the match and affecting the spouses' reactions to negative shocks. We analyze the relationship between time preferences and divorce decisions using data from the Italian Survey on Household Income and Wealth, which...

We investigate whether and how time pressure affects performance. We conducted a field experiment in which students from an Italian University are proposed to choose between two exam schemes: a standard scheme without time pressure and an alternative scheme consisting of two written intermediate...

A range of evidence exists demonstrating that social capital is associated with a number of important economic outcomes such as economic growth, trade and crime. A recent literature goes further to illustrate how historical events and variation can lead to the development of differing and...

The reduction of early school leaving to less than 10 percent of the relevant population by 2020 is a headline target in the Europe 2020 strategy and one of the five benchmarks of the strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training. Designing adequate policies to combat...