The Gender Gap in Academic Achievements of Italian Graduates

We analyse the academic performance of Italian students who graduated in 2004, and their occupational status and earnings in 2007. We find that the educational and occupational performances of male and female students do differ: girls outperform boys in academic achievement, but male graduates outperform female graduates in labour market outcomes. One could wonder why female students put more effort into educational performance than male students, given that they will receive lower wages. We find a rationale for this choice in the higher marginal return that female students gain from their higher grades. We address our empirical analysis to four points: first, we show that, for the most part, the difference in educational performance is explained by the diversity in unobserved characteristics between male and female students. Second, we provide empirical evidence that the amount of effort supplied is the key determinant of the unobserved characteristics. Third, we argue that female students study hardly because they gain a higher marginal return from success in educational competition. Fourth, as this finding may be consistent with both human capital and sorting models of education, we test the hypothesis that female students use their higher grades to signal their ability to potential employers.

Gender stereotyping and wage discrimination among Italian graduates

This paper addresses the gender pay gap among Italian university graduates on entry to the labour market and stresses the importance of gender stereotypes on subjective assessment of individual productivity. Our data show that in contexts where the stereotype is most likely to occur, the unexplained component of the gender pay gap is higher. Moreover, we find evidence that being excellent at school does not ensures that a woman will be rewarded as an equivalently performing man, but serves to counteract the gender bias in on-the-job evaluations.

Who skims the cream of the Italian graduate crop? Wage-employment versus self-employment

This paper tests whether the academic achievement is a significant determinant of the employment status in the Italian labor market: are the new entrepreneurs selected from the top or bottom end of the graduates ability distribution? Is the cream of the graduate crop pulled into selfemployment by the higher expected earnings or are the individuals with lower degree score pushed into entrepreneurship by poor alternatives? Our data show a strong negative relation between academic achievement and self-employment status, i.e. we assess the skimming of the best graduates into wage and salary work.

Dai da Ganaceto (Modena) ai da Calaone (Padova) fra conti veronesi, Canossa ed Estensi

Adottando un rigoroso metodo prosopografico, l'autore analizza le vicende di una importante casata aristocratica legata ai Canossa, che tra X e XII secolo giuoca un ruolo di rilievo nella competizione tra i poteri dell'area padano-orientale: le città (Verona, Venezia), la grande aristocrazia di "ufficio" (gli Estensi, i conti di Verona), le istituzioni ecclesiastiche assise sul territorio

Gender stereotyping and wage discrimination among Italian graduates

This paper addresses the gender pay gap among Italian university graduates on entry to the labour market and stresses the importance of gender stereotypes on subjective assessment of individual productivity. Our data show that in contexts where the stereotype is most likely to occur, the unexplained component of the gender pay gap is higher. Moreover, we find evidence that being excellent at school does not ensures that a woman will be rewarded as an equivalently performing man, but serves to counteract the gender bias in on-the-job evaluations

And Yet they Co-Move! Public Capital and Productivity in OECD: A Panel Cointegration Analysis with Cross-Section Dependence

In this paper we add to the debate on the public capital - productivity link by exploiting very recent developments in the panel time series literature that take into account cross sectional correlation in non-stationary panels. In particular we evaluate the productive effect of public capital by estimating various production functions for a panel of 21 OECD countries over the period 1975-2002. We find strong evidence of common factors that drive the cointegration relationship among variables; moreover, our results suggest a public capital elasticity of GDP in the range 0.05-0.15, depending on model specification. Results are robust to the evidence of spillovers from public capital investments in other countries and to controlling for other productivity determinants like human capital, the stock of patents and R&D capital.Public capital; Productivity; Panel Cointegration; Cross-section Dependence.

A piezoelectric based energy harvester with dynamic magnification

Energy harvesting from ambient vibrations exploiting piezoelectric materials is an efficient solution for the development of self-sustainable electronic nodes. This work presents a simple and innovative piezoelectric energy harvester, intrinsically including dynamic magnification and inspired by fractal geometry. After an initial design step, computational analysis and experimental validation show a very good frequency response with five eigenfrequencies below 100 Hz. Even if the piezoelectric transducers were put only on a symmetric half of the top surface of the structure, the energy conversion is good for all the eigenfrequencies investigated