Expected earnings and expected returns to education are seen by labor economists as a major determinant of educational attainment. In spite of this, the empirical knowledge about expectations and their formation is scarce. In this paper we report the results of the first systematic study of the...

This paper investigates the determinants of grades achieved in mathematics by first year students Economics. We use individual administrative data from 1991 to 2005 to fit an educational production function. Our main findings suggest that good secondary school achievements and good maths skills...

We analyze students' cheating behavior during a national evaluation test. We model the mechanisms that trigger cheating interactions between students and show that, when monitoring is not sufficiently accurate, a social multiplier may magnify the effects on students' achievements. We exploit a...

We use survey data on cohorts of high school graduates observed before and after the Italian reform of tertiary education implementing the 'Bologna process' to estimate the impact of the reform on the decision to go to college. We find that individuals leaving high school after the reform have a...

Expected earnings and expected returns to education are seen by labor economists as a major determinant of educational attainment. In spite of this, the empirical knowledge about expectations and their formation is scarce. In this paper we report the results of the first systematic study of the...