Fair and unfair income inequalities in Europe

This paper analyses the extent of income inequality and opportunity inequality in 25 European countries. The present work contributes to understanding the origin of standard income inequality, helping to identify potential institutional setups that are associated to opportunity inequality. We distinguish between ex ante and ex post opportunity inequality. We find that ex ante equality of opportunity exhibits positive correlation with public expenditure in education, whereas ex post equality of opportunity is also positively associated to union presence and to fiscal redistributio

Ambient Seismic Noise Image of the Structurally Controlled Heat and Fluid Feeder Pathway at Campi Flegrei Caldera

The TIDES-COST Action (STSM-ES1401-34011) provided a travel grant to framework the research project. The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science - Short-Term Fellowship (JSPS/OF215/022) financed the work, undertaken at Tohoku University and concluded at the University of Aberdeen. We thank Giuseppe Vilardo and Eliana Bellucci Sessa for providing the geomorphological maps, and Simona Petrosino and Paola Cusano for the P- and S-wave pickings used to localise the seismicity. Informal revisions from Guido Ventura, Nick Rawlinson and Chris Kilburn helped us improving the analyses and interpretation, respectively. We acknowledge the help of Naveed Khan in parallelising the codes and two anonymous reviewers who improved the analysis, interpretation, and readibility with their comments. All data to reproduce the maps can be downloaded from the World Data Center PANGAEA data repository, permanent link https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.890238.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Higher education and equality of opportunity in Italy

Purpose: This paper aims at studying the degree of equality of educational opportunity in the Italian university system. Methodology: We build on the approaches developed by Peragine (2004, 2005) and Lefranc et al. (2006a, 2006b) and focus on the equality of educational opportunities for individuals of different social background. We propose different definitions of equality of opportunity in education. Then, we provide testable conditions with the aim of (i) testing for the existence of equality of opportunity (EOp) in a given distribution and (ii) ranking distributions on the basis of EOp. Definitions and conditions resort to standard stochastic conditions that are tested by using nonparametric tests developed by Beach and Davidson (1983) and Davidson and Duclos (2000). Findings: Our empirical results show a strong family effect on the performances of students in the higher education and on the transition of graduates in the labor market. Moreover the inequality of opportunity turns out to be more severe in the South than in the regions of the North- Center

Inequality of Opportunity in Europe: is there a role for institutions?

This paper studies the cross-country differences in conventional measures of inequality of opportunity in Europe in the space of individual disposable incomes. Exploiting two recent waves of the EUSILC database reporting information on family background (2005 and 2011), we provide estimates of inequality of opportunity in about 30 European countries for two sufficiently distant data points, allowing a check of consistency for country rankings. In addition, we exploit two observations available for most of the countries to explore the relationship between many institutional dimensions and inequality of opportunity, finding evidence of negative correlation with educational expenditure (especially at the pre-primary level) and passive labour market policies