Biography

I am an applied economist, specialized in labour and family economics and the economics of education. In March 2013, I defended my thesis, titled ‘Child Development and Cognitive Outcomes: The Role of Public and Family Inputs’, and was awarded my PhD in Economics from the Catholic University Milan. In my dissertation I analyzed the effects of public and family investments on child development, using both reduced form and structural estimation methods. During my PhD, I spent a visiting period at New York University and I worked as a research assistant for the Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic Economics (CHILD) at the Collegio Carlo Alberto.

I have been a Max Weber Fellow in the Department of Economics at the European University Institute (EUI) since September 2013. My current research is mainly focused on topics in family economics and the economics of education. I am currently working on three different research projects. The first deals with the estimation of a model of mothers’ life-cycle behaviour, where labour supply, time allocation and non-parental child care choices are considered as endogenous and represent the inputs for the child development process. In a more recent work, I study the impact of a reform, increasing the school leaving age, on adolescent crime. The third project aims at identifying the effects of public spending for child care and education on subsequent educational outcomes of children.

Since February 2013, I have been involved in the project ‘Families and Societies – Changing Families and Sustainable Societies’ within the FP7 Framework Programme.

I am also currently enrolled in the EUI Teaching Training programme, and I expect to receive a Max Weber Programme Teaching Certificate in the Summer of 2015.