We use a new dataset on eight Italian cities and a novel identification strategy to analyze the relationship between the employment status of migrants and the percentage of migrants living nearby. Our data contain information at the very local level (i.e. the residential block) and are...

Unskilled workers in low productivity jobs typically experience higher labour turnover. This paper shows how this empirical finding is related to variation in the efficiency of the matching process across occupations. A simple theoretical model of employers' search shows that firms find it...

The enlargement of the European Union has increased concerns about the role of generous welfare transfers in attracting migrants. This paper explores the issue of welfare migration across the 15 countries of the pre-enlargement Union and finds a significant but small effect of the generosity of...

In this paper we investigate whether peers' behavior influences the choice of college major. Using a unique dataset of students at Bocconi University and exploiting the organization of teaching at this institution, we are able to identify the endogenous effect of peers on such decision through a...

In this paper we estimate relative age effects in academic performance using a unique database of students at Bocconi University. The identification exploits school entry cut-off ages that generate up to 11 months difference between the youngest and the oldest students within each cohort. Our...

We study how class size and composition affect the academic and labor market performances of college students, two crucial policy questions given the secular increase in college enrollment. We rely on the random assignment of students to teaching classes. Our results suggest that a one standard...

This paper estimates the impact of college teaching on students' academic achievement and labor market outcomes using administrative data from Bocconi University (Italy) matched with Italian tax records. The estimation exploits the random allocation of students to teachers in a fixed sequence of...

We study the distributional effect of a wage indexation mechanism - the Scala Mobile (SM) - that heavily compressed the distribution of Italian wages during the 1970s and 1980s. The SM imposed large real wage increases at the bottom of the distribution and was essentially irrelevant for...

This paper proposes a new measure of skill mismatch to be applied to the recent OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). The measure is derived from a formal theory and combines information about skill proficiency, self-reported mismatch and skill use. The theoretical foundations underling this...

Using a randomized experiment in a public Swiss university, we study the impact of online live streaming of lectures on student achievement and attendance. We find that (i) students use the live streaming technology only punctually, apparently when random events make attending in class too...