In this paper, we estimate the effect of receiving financial aid for a cohort of students who enrolled at Politecnico di Milano (Italy) in the year 2007/2008, through a propensity score matching approach. Using administrative data about these students for four years, the impact of the financial aid on several dimensions of academic performance was…

In this paper, we analyse social inequalities along the horizontal dimension of education in Italy. More precisely, we focus on the role of family background in completing specific fields of study at both secondary and tertiary levels of education. To mitigate the limitations of the traditional sequential model, we construct a typology of…

Using the 2012 PIAAC data, our analysis confirms that there are significantly higher earnings and employment returns to "both" increasing levels of formally recognised education, and to increasing levels of numeracy, literacy and information and communication technologies (ICT) skills proficiencies controlling for the level of education.…

We extend to the longitudinal setting a latent class approach that was recently introduced by Lanza, Coffman, and Xu to estimate the causal effect of a treatment. The proposed approach enables an evaluation of multiple treatment effects on subpopulations of individuals from a dynamic perspective, as it relies on a latent Markov (LM) model that is…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of an Italian training program on the re-employment probability of young unemployed workers. The program consists exclusively of workplace training and is coordinated by employment centers, even if it is fully implemented by firms. Design/Methodology/Approach: The authors develop a…

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to investigate the individuals' dynamics of perceived control and hedonic tone over time, with respect to the 4 performance states as conceptualized within the multiaction plan (MAP) model. We expected to find idiosyncratic and differentiated trends over time in the scores of perceived control and hedonic…

This study aims to investigate about the existence of a graphical facilitation effect on probabilistic reasoning. Measures of undergraduates' performances on problems presented in both verbal-numerical and graphical-pictorial formats have been related to visuo-spatial and numerical prerequisites, to statistical anxiety, to attitudes towards…

The paper examines the determinants of scientific productivity (number of articles and journals' impact factor) for a panel of about 3600 French and Italian academic physicists active in 2004-05. Endogeneity problems concerning promotion and productivity are addressed by specifying a generalized Tobit model, in which a selection probit equation…