Propensity Score in the Tails and Returns to Education in Italy

Marilena Furno () and Francesco Caracciolo
Additional contact information
Marilena Furno: Department of Agricultural Sciences, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, 80055 Napoli, Italy
Francesco Caracciolo: Department of Agricultural Sciences, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, 80055 Napoli, Italy

Economies, 2025, vol. 13, issue 2, 1-28

Abstract: The propensity score defining the probability of completing a given degree of education—to balance covariates—and the Mincer equation is here estimated at various degrees of higher education. The novelty is in implementing propensity score and regression estimators together in a double-robust approach in order to ensure against misspecification. The model is analyzed not only at the average but also in the tails of both components to gain a detailed analysis of the tail behavior and robustness. Analyzing survey data from the 2010 and 2020 waves, we find a negative impact of southern regions and gender on education. This impact becomes milder at the mean and is not significant in the right tail. The mixing of propensity score and quantile regression shows the irrelevance of education at low wages and, in a few cases, decreasing premia as school years increase. The private sector rewards lower premiums to young workers, and these distributions are more dispersed, i.e., show higher inequality. In the women’s subset, there is a marked pay gap, even wider for those working in the private sector.

Keywords: double–robust; propensity score; quantile regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E F I J O Q (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/13/2/50/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/13/2/50/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jecomi:v:13:y:2025:i:2:p:50-:d:1590483

Access Statistics for this article

Economies is currently edited by Ms. Adore Zhou

More articles in Economies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().