Essays on the economics of human capital accumulation

This thesis explores channels through which human capital accumulation can be fostered focusing in particular on education policies. Chapter 1 analyzes the effects of the UK Widening Participation Policies which aim at raising the motivation towards school of teenagers from low socio-economic background. I use a Sharp Regression Discontinuity design to estimate the effects of raising aspirations on college enrollments. The estimates obtained show that the policy had a significant positive impact on pupils' aspirations and on their propensity to stay on in education after the age of 16, but did not affect college enrollment rates except for pupils coming from richer families. To interpret these empirical results I build a model of schooling choice that incorporates non cognitive traits such as aspirations in the ability production function. Chapter 2 again focuses on tertiary education policies and looks at an Italian reform which generated a substantial geographical expansion of tertiary education supply. I implement a Difference-in-Differences analysis and find that the reform significantly increased girls' enrollment rates but not boys'; on the other hand, boys substituted education away from home with education at the local university. These results suggest that girls face some non financial cost of moving away from home which may eventually prevent them from attending college. Chapter 3 analyzes the impact of parental migration on the household investments on the human capital of children left behind. I frame the household decision making problem as a sequential game in which the migrant spouse decides how much remittances to send back and then the one left behind allocates the total available budget according to his preferences. Such model predicts that the migrant anticipates the spouse's choice and manages to offset the possible negative impact on expenditure for children. The model predictions are tested using data from Indonesia

Towards a collaborative way of living

In the absence of a national policy, locally developed policies and projects have so far experimented different degrees of innovation, stemming from different roots. They all share problems linked to the implementation of new urban developments and the reuse of relevant portions of the existing stock, including both the underused public housing stock and the unsold private one. The paper discusses the main three issues arising from various local examples in Italy. The first issue investigates the new models of governance and the role of the social manager as key elements in social housing interventions. A second issue explores potentially successful fiscal tools for the implementation of social affordable housing, mainly integrated with the regeneration of the private existing stock. As a third issue, the economic sustainability of different projects is a challenge that needs an appreciable private / public partnership. Intersecting the three issues, the paper intends to investigate the housing policies and illustrate the planning and regulatory instruments adopted in recent years in major cities, so to expand mainly the supply of the rental affordable market. Besides, the paper intends to identify the role of public, private and not profit actors, paying attention to non-traditional stakeholders, like the Bank Foundations, which have dedicated ethical investments and real estate funds to supply affordable housing. Finally, some interesting case studies of collaborative housing recently produced by a Foundation in Milan, are presented as attempts to enhance the construction of a community welfare

Cost of surgical intervention for reconstructive therapy of HIV-associated facial lipoatrophy

M Massella¹, J Ivanovic², R Bellagamba², R De Vita³, L Fracasso³, V Tozzi², V Fragola¹, M Rizzica², P Narciso²¹Istituto Superiore Sanità, Rome, Italy; ²National Institute for Infectious Disease – Lazzaro Spallanzani, Rome, Italy; ³Regina Elena National Cancer Institute of Rome, ItalyAbstract: This study aims to assess direct cost of reconstructive interventions with facial fillers for treatment of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus)-associated facial lipoatrophy (FLA). Evaluation was performed on data from patients enrolled in one arm of a comparative study of immediate versus delayed reconstructive treatment of facial lipoatrophy. Median costs were standardized for efficacy, estimated using data reported by physicians and patient reported outcomes. The variations of the results were evaluated with a sensitivity analysis. Evaluation was performed on 66 patients characterized by significant differences in terms of severity of FLA. Total cost resulted of €140,416.15, with a median cost per patient of €2126.04 (interquartile range [IQR]: 1599–2822). Taking into consideration severity of disease, median costs were €1641.67 (IQR: 1326.67–2126.04) and 2557.12 (IQR: 1939.34–2872.04) (P = 0.0) respectively for patients with low and high severity scores at baseline. Significant differences in term of cost-effectiveness ratios were also found between patients with different severity of FLA, and sensitivity analysis showed that these ratios increase with higher severity scores at baseline and vary widely depending on the costs of filler. Although these results cannot be considered representative because of important limitations, the present study suggests the severity of disease as an important determinant of costs.Keywords: dermal fillers, antiretroviral therapy, lipodystrophic syndrome, HAAR