In 2000, the Lombardy Regional government introduced, for the first time in Italy, a voucher plan to stimulate families to enroll their children to private schools. After this intervention, many other Regions launched similar policies. Despite the high political attention to this theme in Italy,...

In many countries, governments abandoned negotiated methods for allocating public resources among universities, moving towards the adoption of formula-funding models. From a policy perspective, a relevant issue is to correctly design such formulas, to stimulate universities in pursuing better...

In Italy, the process of devolving more powers on educational matters to Regions and schools poses some relevant policy challenges, among which the necessity to determine “standard” costs for schools stands as a major priority. In this paper, we propose an approach based on cost functions...

Educational systems can be characterized by a complex structure: students, classes and teachers, schools and principals, and providers of education. The added value of schools is likely influenced by all these levels and, especially, by interactions between them. We illustrate the ability of...

This paper deals with the reforming processes in higher education (HE) from centralized systems towards more competitive ones. In particular, I discuss these issues referring to the Italian case, and the market-like mechanisms introduced in it during 1990s and 2000s.The focus of the paper is in...