Massimo Anelli

University Study Choices and Labour Market Results

During his visit to CESifo, Massimo Anelli plans to present his paper entitled “The Long-run Labour Market Effects of University Field of Study”. For this paper, he has linked individual Italian high school and university administrative data with social security records. The possibility of following 20 cohorts of students for up to 26 years on the labour market after university graduation opens up unique opportunities to explore new dimensions of the role of fields of study in the labour market: the paper focuses in particular on career trajectories and on the labour market determinants of payoff differentials across field. To identify causal returns, he exploits a unique feature of my data – the formal field of study suggestions given by high school teachers to students at the end of their secondary education.

Mr Anelli’s research agenda focuses on education and the role of human capital in several domains such as labour markets, migration, politics and demography. The common denominator of his work is the use of original administrative data, derived from digitisation of physical archives or from access to restricted social security data and government registries.

In the same period, he also plans to complete a revision of a paper on the effects of “Foreign Peer Effects on STEM Major Choice” and to finalise a paper on the effects of automation on voting behaviour in Europe (“We Were The Robots: Automation and Voting Behaviour in Western Europe”). Other papers he is currently working on are related to the effects of Italian emigration (“Youth Drain, Entrepreneurship and Innovation”) and of “Civic Culture”.

Massimo Anelli is Assistant Professor at Bocconi University. He received his PhD from the University of California, Davis in 2015. He is a Research Affiliate at CESifo and at IZA, as well as a Research Fellow at the Dondena Centre and at Fondazione Rodolfo DeBenedetti.