Giorgio Brunello

University of Padova | UNIPD · Department of Economics and Management

This study proposes reciprocity between parents and children to explain the observed matrilineal advantage in grandparent—grandchildren relationships in Europe. On the one hand, maternal grandparents look after grandchildren more than paternal grandparents do. On the other hand, daughters help their parents with personal tasks more than sons do. Th...

Using a representative sample of European firms, we study whether financing constraints affect employers’ investments in employee training and physical capital differently. We measure financing constraints with an index that combines survey and balance sheet data. We instrument this index with the non-performing loans ratio of the bank that provide...

We investigate whether math tests taken by German primary and secondary students during a high stakes grade produce higher scores than tests done during low stakes grades. We define as high stakes grade the final grade of primary or secondary school, because good performance in that grade can affect future opportunities. Our difference-in-differenc...

In 2017 the Italian government established the Fund to Finance Basic Research Activities – FFABR – with the purpose of assigning a 3,000-euro research grant to the most productive applicants among eligible assistant and associate professors. We show that many low-productivity researchers applied to the program while many high-productivity ones did...

We review the recent economic literature on skill shortages and skill mismatch by paying particular attention to the demand side of skill mismatch, which have not received much attention in the relevant literature. We discuss measurement issues and how skill shortages and mismatch vary both with the business cycle and with structural factors. We re...

We use the repeated random assignment of external examiners to schools in Italy to investigate whether the effect of external monitoring on test score manipulation persists over time. We find that this effect is still present in the tests taken one year after exposure to the examiners. In the second year after exposure, however, this effect disappe...

We show that, when performance on a math test depends on students’ endurance, longer tests do not necessarily provide a more accurate measure of students’ competencies or a higher correlation between the ranking of classes (or schools) based on test performance and the ranking based on the underlying competencies. We revisit the finding that female...

We study the effects of low-skilled immigration on firm profits, average wages, employment, capital and total factor productivity (TFP) by combining firm-level and local labour market data from Italy. We find that low-skilled immigration increases profits by reducing average wages and total labour costs. This effect is small on average, but about t...

Pension reforms rising minimum retirement age force some senior workers to retire later than originally expected. We evaluate the impact of a 2011 Italian reform, implemented during a recession, on youth and prime age employment. Our research design is based on difference-in-differences, and exploits the variations in the intensity of the treatment...

By comparing siblings attending the same school at different points of time, we investigate whether the effect of peer quality on long‐term labor market outcomes varies with parental background. We find that exposure to better peers – who have higher mean parental education – increases lifetime earnings of disadvantaged students, coming from famili...

We use data from three waves of Add Health to study the short- and long-run effects of high school peers’ genetic predisposition to high BMI —measured by grade-mates’ average BMI polygenic scores— on adolescent and adult obesity in the U.S. We find that, in the short-run, a one standard deviation increase in peers’ average BMI polygenic scores rais...

Using a representative sample of European firms, we study whether and to what extent financing constraints affect employers' decision to invest in employee training. We combine survey data on investment activities with administrative data on financial statements to develop an index of financing constraints. We estimate that a 10 percent increase in...

While there is a vast literature considering the labour market effects of immigration, less has been done to investigate how immigration affects the educational choices of young natives. Using Italian provincial data and an instrumental variables strategy, we show that the recent rise of low skilled immigrants has increased both the probability tha...

We estimate the effect of grandchild care on the depression of grandmothers and grandfathers, using data from the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and an identification strategy which exploits both the random variation in the timing of interviews across individuals and the fact that the demand for childcare declines with the age of...

Using a “difference-in-differences” approach, we show that the share of entrepreneurs in Italy declined more in industrial districts than in comparable labour markets during the 3 years following the 2008 recession. We have examined alternative explanations of this finding, thus concluding that it is consistent with the idea that intense social int...

Does Postponing Minimum Retirement Age Improve Healthy Behaviours Before Retirement? Evidence from Middle-Aged Italian Workers * By increasing the residual working horizon of employed individuals, pension reforms that raise minimum retirement age are likely to affect the returns to investments in health-promoting behaviours before retirement, with...

Abstract We have shown that vocational education does not perform as well as academic education both in labour market outcomes and in the level of basic skills, including literacy and numeracy. This is especially true for higher education. Only at the upper secondary or post-secondary level does vocational education perform slightly better than aca...

Several commentators have argued that the short-term advantage of vocational versus academic education, which is a smoother school-to-work transition, trades offwithlong-termdisadvantages,which are lower employment and/or lower wages. Using data based on the careers of individuals born in the United Kingdom in 1958, we find evidence of a trade-off,...

The “Retired Husband Syndrome”, that affects the mental health of wives of retired men around the world, has been anecdotally documented but never formally investigated. Using Japanese micro-data and the exogenous variation across cohorts in the maximum age of guaranteed employment induced by a 2006 Japanese reform, we estimate that the husband's e...

Several commentators have argued that vocational education provides a smoother school to work transition than academic education. In the long - run, however, the skills it provides depreciate faster and individuals with this type of education are less capable of adapting to technical change. Because of this, its short – term advantages trade off wi...

We investigate the impact of local social pressure on firms' firing decisions. Using linked employer-employee data, we show that secondary establishments located further away from headquarters have higher dismissal rates than those located closer. The effect of distance on dismissals is stronger, the greater the visibility of the firm in the local...

Is Childcare Bad for the Mental Health of Grandparents? Evidence from SHARE * We estimate the causal effects of regular and occasional grandchild care on the depression of grandmothers and grandfathers, using data from the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and an instrumental variables strategy which exploits the variation in the ti...

The existing empirical evidence on the effects of birth order on wages does not distinguish between temporary and permanent effects. Using data from 11 European countries for males born between 1935 and 1956, we show that firstborns enjoy on average a 13.7% premium in their entry wage compared with later-borns. This advantage, however, is short -li...

We estimate the effect of education on lifetime earnings by distinguishing between individuals who lived in rural or urban areas during childhood and between individuals with access to many or few books at home at age 10. We instrument years of education using compulsory school reforms and find that, whereas individuals in rural areas were most aff...

Several commentators have argued that vocational education provides a smoother school to work transition than academic education. In the long - run, however, the skills it provides depreciate faster and individuals with this type of education are less capable of adapting to technical change. Because of this, its short – term advantages trade off wi...

OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Paper n.168

Due to pension reforms, minimum retirement age in Italy increased substantially above age 50 between the second part of the 1990s and the early 2000s. We evaluate whether these reforms affected training participation by private sector employees aged 40–54, who entered their fifties during the relevant years. We find evidence of a sizeable effect: o...

We use data on professional chess tournaments to study how endogenous selection affects the relationship between age and mental productivity in a brain-intensive profession. We show that less talented players are more likely to drop out, and that the age-productivity gradient is heterogeneous by ability, making fixed effects estimators inconsistent...

The reduction of early school leaving to less than 10 percent of the relevant population by 2020 is a headline target in the Europe 2020 strategy and one of the five benchmarks of the strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training. Designing adequate policies to combat early school leaving is a difficult task that requires b...

Using Italian data, we evaluate the effects on the consumption of unhealthy snacks of a European Union-wide campaign providing fruit and vegetables to school children and promoting healthy diet habits. We use scanner data of supermarket sales in the city of Rome. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we compare the sales of these snacks before...

There is growing evidence that social pressure shapes firms' behavior. Given how sensitive communities are to downsizing, this suggests that firms are likely to be under strong social pressure when considering reducing employment. Using French linked employer-employee data, we show that social pressure induces firms to refrain from dismissing at sh...

We investigate whether the impact of recessions on entrepreneurship is affected by the presence of industrial districts, a source of local agglomeration economies. Using Italian Labour Force quarterly data from 2006 to 2011 and a "difference-in-differences" approach, we show that the share of entrepreneurs in local labour markets where industrial d...

In the large empirical literature that investigates the causal effects of education on outcomes such as health, wages and crime, it is customary to measure education with years of schooling, and to identify these effects using the exogenous variation provided by school reforms increasing compulsory education and minimum school leaving age. If these...

We use a natural experiment to show that the presence of an external examiner in standardized school tests reduces the proportion of correct answers in monitored classes by 5.5 to 8.5% – depending on the grade and the test – with respect to classes in schools with no external monitor. We find that the effect of external monitoring in a class spills...

We use the compulsory school reforms implemented in European countries after the II World Word to investigate the causal effect of human capital on the Body Mass Index (BMI) and the prevalence of overweight and obesity in Europe. We depart from the current literature in two main directions. First, we complement the standard analysis of the causal i...

We use a multi-country setup to show that years of schooling have a protective causal effect on the BMI of females living in eight European countries. This effect is non negligible but smaller than the one recently found for the US. No such effect is found for males. There are also indications that the response of BMI to changes in years of schooli...

We use data on international chess tournaments to study the relationship between age and mental productivity in a brain-intensive profession. We show that less talented players tend to leave the game in the earliest phases of their career. When the effects of age on productivity vary with unobserved ability, commonly used fixed effects estimators a...

We use a natural experiment to show that the presence of an external examiner in standardized school tests reduces the proportion of correct answers in monitored classes by 5.5 to 8.5% – depending on the grade and the test – with respect to classes in schools with no external monitor. We find that the effect of external monitoring in a class spills...

We study the transitions from career to gradual and permanent retirement by a sample of (Continental) European males aged 55 to 70 in the late 2000s. We find that only 14.6% of the workers in this sample moved from a career to a bridge job by the time of the interview, much less than in the United States, where this share is estimated at close to 6...

We use a natural experiment to show that the presence of an external examiner has both a direct and an indirect negative effect on the performance of monitored classes in standardized educational tests. The direct effect is the difference in the test performance between classes of the same school with and without external examiners. The indirect ef...

In November 2008, the Agriculture Council of the European Commission adopted a proposal for a European Union-wide campaign to provide fruit and vegetables to school children and to promote healthy diet habits and more balanced nutrition patterns. We use scanner data of supermarket sales to evaluate the effects of this campaign on the consumption of...

We use data on international chess tournaments to study the relationship between age and mental productivity in a brain-intensive profession. We show that less talented players tend to leave the game in the earliest phases of their career. When the effects of age on productivity vary with unobserved ability, commonly used fixed effects estimators a...

We use survey data from the US and Japan to investigate whether having leader positions at middle and high school, as well as participating in sports and clubs is affected by the gender composition of siblings. We find that having only sisters at age 15 increases substantially the probability of school leadership in the US but has no statistically...

We estimate the effect of education on lifetime income in Europe, by distinguishing between individuals who lived in rural or urban areas during childhood and between individuals who had access to many or few books at age ten. We instrument years of education using reforms of compulsory education in nine different countries, and find that individua...

We adopt amulti-country setup to showthat years of schooling have a causal protective effect on the body mass index of females living in nine European countries. No such effect is found for males. The protective effect for European females is not negligible but is smaller than one recently found for the United States and stronger among overweight f...

Southern regions in Italy are characterized by higher overweight rates than Northern and Central regions. This gap is higher for young males than for females. We fully account for the differences in overweight rates with a relatively parsimonious set of covariates, and show that the key factors accounting for these differences vary substantially by...

Using data for Germany and 23 other economies in Eastern and Western Europe, this paper estimates the monetary returns to education acquired under communism more than 10 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. We show that, in the 2000s, Eastern European workers who completed their education under communism earned in the 2000s similar returns to t...

We use the regional and time variation of training grants in Italy to identify the causal effect of (formal continuing vocational) training on earnings. We estimate log-linear earnings regressions with constant marginal returns to training and find that one additional week of training increases monthly net earnings by 1.36%, substantially less than...

In this paper we estimate the effect of education on lifetime earnings in Europe, by distinguishing between individuals who lived in rural or urban areas during childhood and between individuals who had access to many or few books at age ten. We instrument years of education using reforms of compulsory education in nine different countries, and fin...

Many European countries have delayed the time when school tracking starts in order to pursue equality of opportunity. What are the efficiency costs of de-tracking secondary schools? This paper builds a stylized model of the optimal time of tracking, estimates the relevant parameters using micro data for 11 European countries and computes the effici...

In this paper we investigate the contribution of health related behaviors to the education gradient, using an empirical approach that addresses the endogeneity of both education and behaviors in the health production function. We apply this approach to a multi-country data set, which includes 12 European countries and has information on education,...

This paper reviews the empirical economic literature on the relative importance of non cognitive skills for school and labour market outcomes, with a focus on Europe. There is evidence that high cognitive test scores are likely to result not only from high cognitive skills but also from high motivation and adequate personality traits. This suggests...

We develop a theoretical and empirical analysis of the impact of barriers to entry on workplace training. Our theoretical model yields ambiguous predictions on the sign of this relationship. On the one hand, given the number of firms, a deregulation reduces profits per unit of output, and thereby reduces training. On the other hand, the number of f...

According to the standard principal-agent model, the optimal composition of pay should balance the provision of incentives with the individual demand for insurance. Do income taxes alter this balance? We show that the relative share of Performance-related pay (PRP), on total pay is reduced by higher average and marginal income taxes. Empirical evid...

We study whether a higher share of immigrant pupils affects the school performance of natives using aggregate multi-country data from PISA. We find evidence of a negative and statistically significant relationship. The size of the estimated effect is small: doubling the share of immigrant pupils in secondary schools from its current sample average...