Relying on a rich firm-level dataset, we investigate the factors underlying the demand for foreign languages (FL) by Italian manufacturing firms. As main determinants, we focus on innovation and internationalization activities, these latter ranging from export to FDI. In the empirical analysis,...

The importance of a highly skilled workforce has become increasingly relevant in the context of the European Union’s new strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth — ‘Europe 2020’. Policies encouraging wide participation in continuing training are therefore an important...

This report describes concisely, and in an intuitive way, the policy evaluation framework and the different counterfactual analysis evaluation strategies: propensity score matching, regression discontinuity design, differences-in-differences and instrumental variables. For each method we present...

The importance of a highly skilled workforce has become increasingly relevant in the context of the European Union's new strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth -- 'Europe 2020'. Policies encouraging wide participation in continuing training are therefore an important component of...

Understanding and estimating the impact of fiscal incentives on innovation are crucial elements for policy evaluation. This is so because innovation- be it of the product or the process type- is able to move the production frontier and hence, ultimately, enlarge society’s consumption...

The paper investigates the relationship, surprisingly often forgotten by the literature, between firms' language skills and their international performances. After having contextualized the concept of language within the broader concept of culture, the paper introduces language's characteristics...

In a context of intensive and global economic competition, European countries are growingly concerned with the consequences of increasing numbers of young people temporarily or permanently prevented from entering the job market and the difficulties faced by college and university graduates to...

The importance of a highly skilled workforce has become increasingly relevant in the context of the European Union new strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth - ‘Europe 2020’. At the individual level, a good education is increasingly decisive for employment prospects and...

The main purpose of this study is to investigate upon the impact of fiscal incentives on firm’s innovative performance. We use data from the 7th, 8th and 9th waves of the “Indagine sulle Imprese Manifatturiere Italiane†by Unicredit (previously managed by Capitalia-Mediocredito...

This paper examines the use of game theory in educational sciences. It describes the evolution of game theory from the defining axioms of Von Neumann and Morgenstern in 1944 to the present. After the Introduction and this description, the third part presents the methodology used to select...