ESSAYS ON EDUCATION REFORMS

The first part is dedicated to explore how educational attainment varies after reforms in compulsory education and can be seen as a starting point for further analysis that make use of these kind of laws to instrument for education. In the second half of the twentieth century reforms in compulsory education laws aimed at increasing educational attainment in many countries. Using individual-level data from a cross-section of country, the question on whether these reforms had the expected effect is addressed. In a regression discontinuity design framework, reforms effects are controlled by mean of a standard linear model, focusing on the average effect, and of a quantile regression model. An introductory part based on a single country study will give advices on the best strategy to identify individuals’ exposure to the reform, taking into account migration and internal mobility, and problems related to low quality of data and discrepancies among them. Then the overall effect of the reforms is considered on a cross section of countries and the results show that the average effect is positive, even if there are substantial differences among the countries considered. Reforms play a role in reducing inequality of educational attainment, having a positive impact on people who belong to the lower quantiles of the distribution of education. After this first introductory part, we focus on a single country and using a representative sample of Ecuadorian young women’s households, we investigate whether education, instrumented by a reform in compulsory education, shapes fertility choices, labor market participation rate and future children’s outcomes. Estimates show that the completion of lower secondary school decreases the probability of early motherhood by 7%. Then, after controlling for labor market preferences in a model where the choices to be a mother and to be in the labor force are considered simultaneously, we find evidence that schooling is positively related to women’s labor market participation rate and negatively to early motherhood. The last section concludes stressing the potential intergenerational effects of changes in the age at first birth, showing that firstborn children born to older mothers have better educational outcomes than those born to younger ones. So policies aimed at increasing women educational attainment are found to be positively related to better women’s outcomes, expressed by lowered teenage motherhood rate and by increased labor market attachment, and also to improved children’s conditions, represented by their schooling attendance. The last chapter takes into account a reform that reorganized the Italian university system in 2001. Based on a survey on employers’ preferences over prospective workers hiring practices, this work focuses on the variations in the demand for skilled labor force after a reform of the Italian University system. This reform caused an increase in tertiary education attendance and a reduction in drop out rates. Whether graduates are more likely to be hired after the increase in the supply of skilled human capital or not is investigated, paying attention to the kind of occupation for which they are required. Since the reform modified both the length of degrees and course contents, this work also attempts to study employers’ choice between the BA and the MA graduates. Results show that the demand for skilled workers increased and this is mainly driven by the fact that employers are substituting less skilled workers with more skilled ones for clerical and technical occupations. Factors that could have altered post-reform hiring decisions are presented and discussed and evidence suggests that they should not lead to overestimate the effect of the University reform.