In this paper we investigate the existence and the size of territorial differences in Italian students' mathematical competencies. Our analysis benefits from a new data set that merges the 2003 wave of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) with territorial data collected...

Building upon some education studies finding that cooperative behaviour in class yields better achievements among students, this paper presents a simple model showing that free riding incentives lead to an insufficient degree of cooperation between schoolmates, which in turn decreases the...

There are two main dimensions of inequality in Italy. On one side, there is geography. The sharp division between a more developed North and a backwards South has been a central feature of the country since the birth of the Italian national state, and is still, a central topic of Italian...

In this paper we investigate the existence and the size of geographical differences in Italian students’ mathematical competencies. We analyze a novel data set that combines the 2003 wave of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) with information about local economic...

The “prospect of upward mobility” (POUM) hypothesis formalised by Benabou and Ok (2001a) finds explicit assumptions under which some individuals that are poorer than the average optimally choose to oppose redistribution policies. The underlying intuition is that these individuals rationally...

In this paper we investigate the existence and the size of territorial differences in Italian students’ mathematical competencies. Our analysis benefits from a new data set that merges the 2003 wave of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) with territorial data...

Building upon some education studies finding that cooperative behaviour in class yields better achievements among students, this paper presents a simple model showing that free riding incentives lead to an insufficient degree of cooperation between schoolmates, which in turn decreases the...

This paper presents empirical evidence from the Programme for International Student Assessment 2003 survey on the role of students' attitudes towards competition and cooperation in mathematical literacy achievement. While individual competitive attitudes are positively correlated with test...

Building upon some education studies finding that cooperative behaviour in class yields better achievements among students, this paper presents a simple model showing that free riding incentives lead to an insufficient degree of cooperation between schoolmates, which in turn decreases the...