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

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

Fairness in education: the Italian university before and after the reform

In 2001 the Italian tertiary education system embarked in a broad process of reform. The main novelty brought by the reform was a reduction of the length of study to get a first level degree together with the introduction of a two-years, second level, master degree. This paper aims at studying the effects of the reform in terms of fairness. To this end, we first define fairness criteria following a well developed theory of equality of opportunity, we then discuss existing inequality measures consistent with these criteria, we show their relationship, and adapt them to the educational framework. We finally employ this set of measures to show the evolution of fairness in the access to university in Italy before and after the reform. Although not all fairness measures we estimated show a higher degree of fairness after the reform, the large majority does, suggesting a positive effect of the reform under a vast range of possible definitions of fairness

Internationalization Modes and Productivity of Italian Manufacturing: some firm-level evidence

This paper compares the productivity ranking of alternative modes of internationalization for apanel of Italian manufacturingfirms that are (i) purely domestic or internationally engaged in(ii) exports, (iii) foreign sourcing and (iv) foreign direct investment. By using consistent tests ofstochastic dominance offirst and second order, as well as by estimating productivity premiaacrossfirms for all strategies, we aim at investigating whether and to what extent these modes offirm's entry into the foreign markets conform to the predictions of bothHelpman et al. (2004)and Antràs and Helpman (2004)'s seminal papers. While our data confirm the hierarchicaltheoretical ranking of the traditional moves, no evidence emerges that FDIfirms dominate inproductivity foreign sourcingfirms. Obviously, our evidence also supports the prediction in theliterature that domesticfirms exhibit lower performances compared to their internationallyinvolved counterpart

Internationalization modes and productivity of Italian manufacturing: Some firm-level evidence

This paper compares the productivity ranking of alternative modes of internationalization for a panel of Italian manufacturing firms that are (i) purely domestic or internationally engaged in (ii) exports, (iii) foreign sourcing and (iv) foreign direct investment. By using consistent tests of stochastic dominance of first and second order, as well as by estimating productivity premia across firms for all strategies, we aim at investigating whether and to what extent these modes of firm's entry into the foreign markets conform to the predictions of both Helpman et al. (2004) and Antràs and Helpman (2004)'s seminal papers. While our data confirm the hierarchical theoretical ranking of the traditional moves, no evidence emerges that FDI firms dominate in productivity foreign sourcing firms. Obviously, our evidence also supports the prediction in the literature that domestic firms exhibit lower performances compared to their internationally involved counterpart

Inequality of educational opportunità in Italy: how fair is the “3+2” reform

In this paper we propose a definition of fairness in education which is based onthe theory of equality of opportunity developed in the last decades in the philosophical and economic literature (Roemer,1998; Fleurbaey, 2008), we derive opportunity inequality measures based on such conceptual framework, and we use these measures to evaluate the 1999 reform of the Italian university system (the so called “3+2" reform). Looking at 1995-2004 college graduates data our estimates show an improvement in the equality of opportunity in the access to university. However, the aggregated data available for the 2005-2008 suggest that such a positive effect may vanish in the medium run