INEQ organises a research seminar series, which centers on empirical research on the causes and consequences of (socio-)economic inequalities and their measurement, from both micro- and macro perspectives. As INEQ is a multidisciplinary institute, we welcome contributions across social science disciplines.

On May 12, Federica Braccioli (WU Vienna) will present at the Economics of Inequality Research Seminar. She will discuss the paper "Education Expansion, College Choice and Labour Market Success", co-authored with Paolo Ghinetti, Simone Moriconi, Costanza Naguib, and Michele Pellizzar.

We study the choice of acquiring STEM and non-STEM college education using variation induced by the proximity to universities offering different types of programs. We adopt a novel methodology allowing the identification of the distribution of response types and treatment effects in a multiple unordered discrete choice setting (Heckman and Pinto, 2018). The empirical analysis is based on confidential survey data for Italy, combined with administrative information about the founding dates of all Italian universities and faculties. We find that most compliers are women at the margin of choosing STEM education versus not going to college. We simulate the effects of expanding the supply of STEM education and discover that, in addition to substantial effects on employment, the gender disparity in STEM education could potentially decrease by up to 20%.

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