We investigate the impact of the My Future Buddy (MFB) program on students’ socio-emotional skills, educational outcomes, and their transition to post-secondary education. MFB is a bundled intervention consisting of (i) information provision, (ii) career counselling, and (iii) soft-skills training, targeting secondary school students in Southern Italy. The program integrates in-school sessions delivered by trained psychologists with in-person and remote sessions delivered by volunteer university students who graduated from the same province (and possibly high school) as the target students and act as “buddies” or “mentors”. To study the effects of MFB on short- and long-term educational outcomes, students’ psychological well-being, socio-emotional skills, aspirations and beliefs, and post-secondary choices, we designed a Randomised Control Trial (RCT). This paper illustrates the program and its evaluation and provides some preliminary results from the first year of data collection.

We study the impact of increased incentives for universities to expand on students’ academic performance. In 2012/13 and 2013/14 the existing Student Number Control (SNC) in England – caps to the number of students universities can enrol – were relaxed, allowing universities to expand. These changes generated a higher expansion potential for higher-ranked institutions, which in turn increased the probability of accessing high-ranked institutions for the students at the margin of the reforms. We use this variation to analyse the impact of increased accessibility to high-ranked universities on students’ academic outcomes as the rate from the course initially chosen. We then analyse heterogeneity in this effect according to students’ characteristics and along the rank distribution of universities. We find that the probability of interrupting the course of initial enrolment. Private school students face a lower risk of switching after enrolling in a Russell group institution due to the SNC reform. Compliers tend to come from poorer backgrounds compared to the average treated.

This paper examines the role of the public sector in shaping the labor market costs of motherhood. Using administrative employer–employee data from Italy covering the universe of private sector workers and public sector employees, we show that women employed in the public sector prior to childbirth experience substantially smaller and less persistent employment and earnings penalties than comparable women in the private sector. Mothers also disproportionately move into the public sector after childbirth. To address selection into post-birth mobility, we construct a novel measure of exposure to public sector employment based on former coworkers’ mobility networks. Greater exposure increases transitions into the public sector and improves post-childbirth employment and earnings. Importantly, even among mothers who remain in the private sector, higher exposure is associated with better labor market outcomes and greater use of parental leave. These results highlight the role of sectoral institutions, information, and outside options in mitigating child penalties.

This paper examines the long-term economic consequences of early childhood exposure to organized crime. Linking detailed data on Italian homicides in 1981-1992 with administrative records of labour market trajectories 30 years later, we show that exposure to mafia-related and terror-related killings in utero or early childhood significantly lowers earnings and full-time employment at age 30. The effect is driven by reduced educational attainment, revealing a novel insight on how organized violence hinders human capital accumulation. These findings highlight a previously underexplored channel through which organized crime perpetuates poverty and spatial inequality.