Does the Expansion of Higher Education Reduce Educational Inequality? Evidence from 12 European Countries

Expansion of higher education leads in principle to attainments’ equalization. Using EU-SILC dataset, this hypothesis is tested for 12 European countries. The paper novelty is to convert multi-dimensional information on parental background in a continuous scale to express origins in relative terms, eliminating the influence of compositional changes. It is shown that the higher education expansion brought about an increase in background-related inequality, which mainly occurred in last decade and has been concentrated in the bottom-half of the background distribution. In the top half, a timid inversely U-shaped relationship emerged especially when considering the transition from upper-secondary to tertiary education.Higher Education Expansion, Educational Inequality, Family Background, Measuring Family Background.

Assessing students'equality of opportunity in OECD countries : the role of national and school-level policies

This paper analyses the relationship between equality of opportunities and characteristics of the educational systems, jointly considering country- and school-level features. Because the peer group composition represents a fundamental channel in shaping educational opportunities, we consider all policies, surveyed in the PISA 2006 dataset, that affect the sorting of students to schools. Our empirical analysis shows that the inclusion of sorting policies enhances the capacity of explaining the determinants of the socio-economic gradient with respect to previous studies including only countrylevel features. In particular, it casts doubts on the prominent role attributed to school tracking. However sorting policies do not fully account for the influence of school composition on the socioeconomic gradient; the direct inclusion of peer variables allows to highlight the equalizing impact of mixing students from different backgrounds. Among the other policies, also pre-school enrolment, public expenditure in education and ability tracking display a significant equalizing effect.School composition, equality of opportunity, sorting and tracking policies, family background

Technological Transitions and Educational Policies

This paper presents an out-of-equilibrium model to explain cross-country dierences in the capacity to absorb new skill-biased technologies. The usual mainstream viewpoint stressing the role of labour markets will be re-examined in a context characterized by a sequential structure of both the process of production and the skill formation, whose interaction brings about coordination failures harming the viabiity of the innovation process. In this light, educational policies play a crucial role in restoring the required coordination. The robust results of the simulations show that educational policies appear to be important both in rigid and in exible systems. In the former case, educational policies nanced by taxation allow the system to escape a low productivity nal equilibrium. In the latter, they contrast the nancial constraint associated to a large decrease in the unskilled wage. Altogether, a moderate degree of rigidity seems the most appropriate institutional environment to reach the targets of viability and of a full exploitation of the technological potential.Skill-Biased Technical Change, Labour Markets, Educational Policies, Out-of-Equilibrium Models

Determinants of Renewable Energy Innovation: Environmental Policies vs. Market Regulation

This paper carries out a comprehensive analysis of renewable energy innovations considering four mechanisms suggested by innovation models: 1. policy-inducement; 2. market structure; 3. demand and social cohesion- mainly proxied by income inequality; 4. characteristics of country knowledge base. For OECD countries and years 1970-2005, we build a unique dataset containing time-varying information on quality-adjusted patent production in renewable energy, the latter being a function of environmental policies, green R&D, entry barriers, knowledge stock, knowledge diversity and income inequality. We develop count data models using the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to account for endogeneity of policy support. Our synthetic policy index positively affects innovations especially in countries with deregulated energy markets and low entry barriers. The effect of entry barriers and inequality is negative and of similar magnitude as that of policy. Product market liberalization positively affects green patent generation, especially so when ambitious policies are adopted, when the initial level of public R&D expenditures and when the initial share of distributed energy generation is high. Our results are robust to alternative specifications, to the inclusion of technology-specific effects and to the use of quality-adjusted patents as dependent variables. In the latter case, the estimated effect of lowering entry barriers and of knowledge diversity almost double on citation count relatively to patent count.renewable energy technology; patent; environmental policies; product market regulation; inequality

The Economic Impact of Upward and Downward Occupational Mobility: A Comparison of Eight EU Member States

Recent literature agrees that the degree of intergenerational mobility substantially differs across European countries, ranked between the "mobile" Nordic countries and the "immobile" Anglo-Saxon and Southern ones. In this paper we will compare the intergenerational transmission of advantages in 8 European countries using EU-SILC dataset. Considering parental occupations as background variable, our main aims are to assess whether residual returns to background on offspring’s labour incomes persist after controlling for intermediated background-related outcomes (education and occupation) and to disentangle the role played by upward and downward occupational mobility on earnings. Our empirical analyses show that cross-country differences occur in the labour markets rather than in the educational stream. Consistently with previous findings, residual background effects on earnings are not significant in Nordic and Continental countries whereas they appear large in Anglo-Saxon and Southern ones. When the impact of backward and upward mobility is assessed, in all countries but Nordic ones penalties for upgrading emerge mostly in top occupations and are higher in less-mobile countries. These patterns are smoothened but preserved in bottom occupations and robust to different labour income measures.Residual Returns to Background, Earning Impact of Occupational Mobility, International comparison, Intergenerational Inequality.

Innovation, human capital and earning distribution: towards a dynamic life-cycle approach

Empirical anomalies in the dynamics of earnings following the emergence of new ICT technologies are not consistent with various re-elaborations of the human capital theory. The first part of the paper reviews critically this literature and highlights an important gap concerning the role of institutional infrastructures for the systematisation and diffusion of new knowledge. The dynamic life-cycle approach elaborated in the second part provides a coherent account of the evidence, and indicates interesting implications for innovation and educational policies.Innovation; Human Capital; Earning Distribution;

Measuring the link between intergenerational occupational mobility and earnings: evidence from 8 European Countries

This paper provides a novel glance on the relationship between family background and earnings applying a synthetic index of social mobility built on distributions of parental and offspring occupational statuses. Using the EU-SILC dataset for 8 countries, our analysis shows that country differences mainly concern residual background correlations, left after controlling for background-related intervening factors such as education and occupation. Significant residual correlations, observed in the UK and in Southern countries, mask respectively penalties to upward mobility and an insurance against downward mobility. Insignificant residual effects encompass significant penalties to both downward and upward mobility in Germany and France, a parachute for self-employed in Ireland and no patterns in Nordic countries. In quantile regressions, residual background correlations appear to increase along the earnings distribution. Even if we are not able to provide causal explanations, we suggest that in unequal countries results would hardly agree with a standard human capital explanation.intergenerational occupational mobility, index of social mobility, economic returns to intergenerational occupational mobility, international comparison.

Peer heterogeneity, school tracking and students'performances: evidence from Pisa 2006

This paper analyses the interaction between school tracking policies and peer effects in OECD countries. Using the PISA 2006 dataset, we show that the linear peer effects are stronger and more concave-shaped in the early-tracking educational system than in the comprehensive one. Second, and more interestingly, the effect of peer heterogeneity goes in opposite directions in the two systems. In both student- and school-level estimates, peer heterogeneity reduces students’ achievements in the comprehensive system while it has a positive impact in the early-tracking one. For late tracking countries, this result appears driven by pupils attending vocationally-oriented programs. Finally, peer effects are stronger for low ability students in both groups of countries.peer heterogeneity, peer effects; schooling tracking, educational production functions

Determinants of Renewable Energy Innovation: environmental policies vs. market regulation

This paper carries out a comprehensive analysis of renewable energy innovations considering four mechanisms suggested by innovation models: 1. policy-inducement; 2. market structure; 3. demand and social cohesion- mainly proxied by income inequality; 4. characteristics of country knowledge base. For OECD countries and years 1970-2005, we build a unique dataset containing time-varying information on quality-adjusted patent production in renewable energy, the latter being a function of environmental policies, green R&D, entry barriers, knowledge stock, knowledge diversity and income inequality. We develop count data models using the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) to account for endogeneity of policy support. Our synthetic policy index positively affects innovations especially in countries with deregulated energy markets and low entry barriers. The effect of entry barriers and inequality is negative and of similar magnitude as that of policy. Product market liberalization positively affects green patent generation, especially so when ambitious policies are adopted, when the initial level of public R&D expenditures and when the initial share of distributed energy generation is high. Our results are robust to alternative specifications, to the inclusion of technology-specific effects and to the use of quality-adjusted patents as dependent variables. In the latter case, the estimated effect of lowering entry barriers and of knowledge diversity almost double on citation count relatively to patent count.renewable energy technology, patent, environmental policies, product market regulation, inequality

Peer Heterogeneity, Parental Background and Tracking: Evidence from PISA 2006

The empirical literature using large international students’ assessments tends to neglect the role of school composition variables in order not to incur in a misidentification of peer effects. However, this leads to an error of higher logical type since the learning environment crucially depends on peers’ family background and on peer heterogeneity. In this paper, using PISA 2006, we show how peer heterogeneity is a key determinant of student attainment and of opportunity equalization. Interestingly, the effect of school compositional variables differs depending on the country tracking policy: peer heterogeneity reduces efficiency in comprehensive systems whereas it has a non-linear impact in early-tracking ones. In turn, linear peer effects are larger in early-tracking systems. Besides, higher heterogeneity tends to equalize student differences related to family background. Results do not change in school- and student-level regressions suggesting that the impact of heterogeneity is correctly identified. Results are also robust when we add school-level dummies and several controls correlated with the school choice to alleviate the selectivity bias of linear peer effects.peer heterogeneity, peer effects, schooling tracking, educational production function, equality of opportunities.