Luca Bonacini

• Junior Assistant Professor at University of Bologna

Identifying structural breaks in the dynamics of COVID-19 contagion is crucial to promptly assess policies and evaluate the effectiveness of lockdown measures. However, official data record infections after a critical and unpredictable delay. Moreover, people react to the health risks of the virus and also anticipate lockdowns. All of this makes it...

Journal of Population Economics. First Online October 2020. In the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home (WFH) became of great importance for a large share of employees since it represents the only option to both continue working and minimize the risk of virus exposure. Uncertainty about the duration of the pandemic and future...

School closures during the 2020 pandemic forced countries to rapidly adopt distance learning, with uncertain effects on education inequalities. Using PISA 2018 data from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, we find that students unable to learn remotely, because of a lack of ICT resources or of a quiet place to study, experience si...

Human Capital Theory considers individuals' education as an investment in terms of money, time, effort, and the renouncement of income opportunities that they expect will be compensated during their working life. While these benefits are mainly in the long run, direct and indirect costs are conditioned by the present circumstances, and in particula...

This study explores the impact of light‐touch interventions on the academic outcomes of female scholarship recipients. In a randomized trial involving nearly 2000 students at the University of Bologna, we delivered a targeted message highlighting how higher education can reduce the gender gap in the labour market, and boost employment prospects. Th...

This paper investigates the influences engendered by both the type and localization of schools on the distribution of test scores in four European countries (i.e. Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Slovenia). Based on PISA 2018 data and applying the unconditional quantile regressions, results show that the type and localization of schools significantly...

We disentangle the channels through which Covid-19 has affected the performance of university students by setting up an econometric strategy to identify separately changes in both teaching and evaluation modes, and the short and long term effects of mobility restrictions. We exploit full and detailed information from the administrative archives of...

Why so few women graduate in Economics? We investigate the gender gap among Italian university graduates in Economics between 2010 and 2019. With women's probability of graduating in Economics being 27% lower than men's, the gap is larger than in Business and even STEM. The association between the gender gap and the mathematical content of high sch...

This study aims to identify the main determinants of students' performances in reading and maths across eight European Union countries (i.e). Based on student level data from the OECD-PISA 2018 survey and by means of the application of efficient algorithms, we highlight that the number of books at home or a variable combining the type and location...

This study aims to identify the main determinants of students' performances in reading and maths across eight European Union countries (i.e). Based on student level data from the OECD-PISA 2018 survey and by means of the application of efficient algorithms, we highlight that the number of books at home or a variable combining the type and location...

Unlabelled: Is remote learning associated with education inequalities? We use PISA 2018 data from five European countries-France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom-to investigate whether education outcomes are related to the possession of the resources needed for distance learning. After controlling for a wide set of covariates, fixed e...

Why so few women graduate in Economics? We investigate the gender gap among Italian university graduates in Economics between 2010 and 2019. With 27 missing women for every 100 males, the estimated gap is larger than in Business and even STEM. The association between the gender gap and the mathematical content of high school curricula is especially...

Does the settling of foreigners cause a rise in anti‐immigrant sentiment due to resource competition? Or do direct interactions lead to more respectful relations? And what if one also considers the settlement of foreigners in neighbouring municipalities? Applying an instrumental variable approach to variables collected at the Italian municipality l...

La scommessa di questo lavoro è di indagare come il sistema locale dei servizi sociali abbia reagito all’impatto dei flussi migratori, in un contesto regionale come l’Emilia-Romagna, descrivendo le principali dimensioni intorno alle quali si sono articolati i processi organizzativi nei nove comuni capoluogo. Come cioè sia avvenuta l’integrazione tr...

Why so few women graduate in Economics? We investigate the gender gap among Italian university graduates in Economics between 2010 and 2019. With women's probability of graduating in Economics being 27% lower than men's, the gap is larger than in Business and even STEM. The association between the gender gap and the mathematical content of high sch...

The Covid-19 pandemic crisis has caused, in addition to the serious effects on the health systems, a sharp slowdown in the Italian and European economy, mainly weighing on the weakest sections of the population with a worrying increase in economic and social inequalities. Using a multidisciplinary approach, this study focuses on the link between so...

This study aims to identify the main determinants of student performance in reading and maths across eight European Union countries (Austria, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, and Slovenia). Based on student-level data from the OECD’s PISA 2018 survey and by means of the application of efficient algorithms, we highlight that the...

Bonacini, L., Camurri, V. (2020), Più consegne, meno diritti: l’infausta parabola giuridica dei rider, Maggio 2021. https://www.eticaeconomia.it/piu-consegne-meno-diritti-linfausta-parabola-giuridica-dei-rider/

https://glabor.org/working-from-home-and-income-inequality-in-the-time-of-covid-19-glo-policy-note-no-4/

Three main shocks have affected advanced economies over the last 25 years, with significant consequences for work, production and economic growth. The first is technological change associated with robotics and the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution. The second, which is partly related to the first, is the diffusion of ICT and the development of...

Bonacini, L., Gallo, G. e Scicchitano, S. (2020), L'altra faccia dello smart-working, in Etica ed Economia, Nov. 2020. https://www.eticaeconomia.it/laltra-faccia-dello-smart-working/

Bonacini, L., Costantini, E. (2020), L’immigrazione tra politiche umanitarie e politiche securitarie: che fine ha fatto l’integrazione?, in Etica ed Economia, Ott. 2020. https://www.https://www.eticaeconomia.it/limmigrazione-tra-politiche-umanitarie-e-politiche-securitarie-che-fine-ha-fatto-lintegrazione/

Questo lavoro esplora il ruolo dell’attitudine allo smart working nella distribuzione del reddito da lavoro in Italia. I lavoratori con un’alta attitudine al lavoro agile hanno in media un vantaggio salariale del 10% rispetto ai lavoratori con una bassa attitudine allo smart working, che raggiunge il 17% tra i lavoratori con i redditi più alti. Si...

Three main shocks have affected advanced economies over the last 25 years, with significant consequences for work, production and economic growth. The first is technological change associated with robotics and the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution. The second, which is partly related to the first, is the diffusion of ICT and the development of...

Italy, like other advanced economies, is in the midst of a profound transformation of the production system. At the heart of these processes are two long-term shocks: exposure to competition from emerging and newly industrialized countries and exposure to new digital technologies (ICT and robots). These clusters of technologies have pervasive effec...

Inter municipal cooperation (IMC) represents a solution adopted all around the world in order to jointly provide services considering the complexity of contemporary socio-economic contexts. However, empirical evidence on IMC solutions is still week. The purpose of this paper is to analyse associations of municipalities (Unioni di Comuni, UC), the p...